Jonathan Kennedy raises the tired spectre of “population control” advocates to argue that we should be happy that the world’s population may be undercounted by several billion (Are there billions more people on Earth than we thought? If so, it’s no bad thing, 31 May).
But while acknowledging that coercive measures to reduce population are a thing of the past, he does not mention that, even historically, the majority of these measures were voluntary and based on educating, empowering and providing contraceptive access to women and girls. This works because women choose lower fertility as soon as they are able to. Yet Kennedy ignores the millennia-old history of empires, churches and the military pushing for them to have more children.
