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25th October 2000
OVERPOPULATION IS NO JOKE SAY KIDDING ASIDE
World Population Awareness Week was marked today
by the launch of a new organisation promoting the positive aspects of remaining
childfree.
Kidding Aside (The British Childfree Association)
has been formed to encourage people to see being childfree as a positive
lifestyle choice.
Jonathan McCalmont, Chair of Kidding Aside said:
"For most of my life I have been made to
feel that I am strange or unusual because I have always known that I don't want
children, I now realise that many other people feel the same way. We have
founded Kidding Aside not only as a support and discussion group for childfree
people, but also to represent the childfree community and ensure our voice is
heard at a nation al level."
An example of the kind of difficulties the
childfree face in living their chosen lifestyle is Jacquelyn Arnold, a Kidding
Aside member who was sterilised at the age of 21.
"I've always known that I didn't want
children, I have no maternal instinct whatsoever and have never enjoyed being
around children. I'd had major problems with the pill for years and yet the only
way for me to live the lifestyle I wanted to was to pay for a private
sterilisation. Even then I was subjected to the kind of lengthy and personally
intrusive counselling that someone making a lifelong commitment by having a
child at my age would never have to experience."
Some people have even greater problems in making
permanent choices about their fertility:
Another member of Kidding Aside in her early 20's
was sent home on the day she was to have her sterilisation because the surgeon
in question decided that he wouldn't carry out a sterilisation on a woman of her
age, despite her counsellor being completely satisfied." said Jacquelyn
Arnold.
"Having control of your own fertility is
a basic human right" she added "however, it appears that making a
permanent decision not to have children is considered unacceptable to some
members of the medical profession who are happy to impose their will on young
women."
According to current predictions, the population
of the UK will continue to increase until 2026, by which time we will have added
another 2 million to our population. The everyday reality of that kind of
increase would be another 200,000 people using the London transport system, 2
million more people to be treated by the NHS and hundreds of thousands more cars
on the road.
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"We chose to launch the organisation
during World Population Awareness week because we no longer live in a society
that needs to encourage people to reproduce, quite the contrary, yet we still
give additional financial benefits and leave privileges to people with children.
Kidding Aside is completely in support of flexible working practices and we
believe that maternity leave is a critically important right, but in an
overpopulated world why do we give a special priority to those who have
children? We are perpetuating the myth that everyone ought to have children and
that everyone is suitable to take on the difficult job of being a parent." said
Jonathan McCalmont.
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