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cost of other families ' extra rnouths.
Reports indicate that tbe policy will stabilize
China's population by the year 2000. But even now
with the cornparatively modest birthrate of 1.2
percent, China adds the equivalent of Australia's
population each year.
Such a massive social experirnent has not been
without cost. Millions of Chinese mothers, rnany in
the later stages of pregnancy, have had abortions.
Tbere are also disturbing reports of infanticide of
girls. Chinese tradition values
sons,
and many have
taken drastic steps to ensure that their one perrnitted
child is maJe. It is hard to prove, but the Chinese do
adrnit that in sorne rural areas there seems to be a
disproportionate arnount of male births
reported.
China's governrnent is conducting widespread
campaigns to educate their people about the value of
their daughters as well as their sons. But tradition
dies hard. Nobody likes this situation, and the
Chinese have prornised to relax the one-child policy
as soon as it is practica! to do so. But at present the
only alternative would }llean rnillions of children
facing a life of poverty, potential illiteracy and the
ever-present threat of starvation.
In answer to their critics, Chinese point to other
nations with top heavy populations, whose governments
do not exert the discipline that the People's Republic of
China can exert on its people. Many of these nations
are on a collision course with disaster.
Effects of Overpopulation
In Asia today hundreds of thousands of
children go blind every year because of eye
diseases that would take only a few cents
worth of vitamin A to correct. A few more
pennies would provide the vitarnin D and
calciurn that would stop the deforrned and
twisted lirnbs caused by rickets.
Millions die of easily cured and even more
easily prevented diseases- because they have no
access to even mínima! bealth care.
Sorne weeks ago I was driven through the slum
areas j ust outside tbe modern city of Nairobi , capital
of Kenya. On a hillside covered with squalid shacks,
hundreds of children played arnidst piles of rubbish.
Kenya has the world's highest birthrate, and rnust
urgently find a solution to its growing population of
children. Dozens of these children swarmed around
our car. Tbese cbeerful, playful cbildren had no idea
that they were surplus or that they had been born
into a world that rnay have no place for them.
They face a desperate future. There are not
enough places for thern to go to school-and
insufficient jobs for those that do sornehow get an
education. They are, as hurnans view it, a liability
for their already hard pressed nation.
In the slurns of Calcutta, one can sornetirnes hear
a piteous sound coming from the rnounds of garbage
and trash that line the streets of that desperately
overcrowded city. Sometimes it is an abandoned
kitten. Sornetimes it is a newborn baby abandoned in
its first hours of life by parents who knew they
could not care for it.
Sorne of these babies are discovered and are
blessed to be taken to the orphanage. Tbe tiny,
fragile scraps of humanity are lovingly cared for by
those who struggle in the orphanage to preserve eacb
infant's spark of life. Sornetirnes tbey succeed and
they continue to care for the children during their
first years of life. And tben? "We rnust let tbem go
Left to right-Cbildren of
lran, China, Zimbabwe,
Peru, Scotland, Nortbwest
Territories-Canada, and
Spain
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