Commercial after commercial, story after story, we see and read about children in the third world living in deplorable conditions, hungry, even starving.  The television ads depicting sick and dying children implore us to help them.  “For just a few dollars a day you can help feed this child.”  It’s very sad indeed. Tragic actually.  But ultimately the problem should not center around child starvation.  It should center around parents who bring children into a world of starvation.  Human beings are supposed to be more evolved than that. Unfortunately, for many people living in countries throughout the world, that’s not the case.

While it seems like a fair statement that everyone should have a right to bare children, we also need to use our intelligence to decide if we can take care of them.  Sexual intercourse is the last thing anyone should be thinking about when living in squalor, hungry and destitute; a brief period of pleasure without thinking of the consequences.  That alone proves a lack of thought or reasoning.  Animals have an estrus cycle and do what they do because of nature.  This is only one major difference between human beings and animals.

In the western world, we make conscious decisions not to have more children than we can provide for.  Our brains say, hmm, food, clothing, university. Perhaps two children are all I can afford. While those in backwards, non-western societies don’t seem to think at all.  And to those who would argue, what else do they have?  I would answer, how can you have anything when you continue the cycle which has proven to be so wrought with problems.  And still there are others who might say that we don’t have a right to impose our values on them.  To that I would agree.  But then figure out how to deal with your suffering on your own.  These countries require education and skills necessary to lift them from poverty.  Teach them how to dig wells and provide for themselves.  That’s how you help them.  Even with all of the issues in the western world, at least we have made it possible for most people to have the basic necessities needed to live which is lacking in the third world.

So in response to the suffering, the world needs to continue to help those in need only if they agree to use birth control or to be sterilized.  It may seem harsh but that doesn’t interest me. I am only concerned with human suffering.  For those children already here, we need to help them.  But the ONLY way to improve their conditions, is to reduce the burden of more mouths to feed.  Then, once self-sufficient, have children.  This seems fairly logical but of course groups like the Catholic Church would have none it.  Suffering is preferable because in the end, you go to a better place. But what if you don’t?  People need to stand up and say NO to suffering children being born to parents who can’t care for them, barren of the compassion necessary to understand that they can not bring more babies in to such sadness. That’s why we can’t feel sorry for them because they don’t feel sorry for their children who will live in misery and sorrow because of them.