If you want to be perfectly evil about it, let AIDS do it's work. How's that for killing population? How about hunger and ethnic cleansing in Africa? Asian countries are having to deal with these policies of infantcide as a means to keep their populations from starving anymore than they are already. I guess the best bet is to let 100,000 Chinese immigrate to another place and culture to keep them alive.

Seriously, you have no idea how many elements go into population increases. And you'll never believe that "White People" are QUICKLY becoming a minority in American, and have been in the world for years. There is no easy solution to a problem that has been in countries like China for decades. Good luck on suggesting policies to a web forum that won't be even considered by the Chinese government. Why? Because they censor web access.

WE MUST DECREASE THE SURPLUS POPULATION!!!!

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

I hated ethics 101

Gasp! Unwanted children! How horrible! Let kill 'em.

Funny, they did a similar thing with America when it was first discovered.

Maybe they'll populate the sun.

At least people don't get too fat there.

Think how much we'll extend the life of the sun if we fired off the homeless into sun!

Hell, I'd jump on a rocket headed toward the sun. It would be worth it.

I condone infanticide.

Without it, there would have been no Oedipus Rex, or maybe Sparta would've been less macho gay and more wimpy gay. You have to take these kinds of things into consideration.

Infanticide is a very Classical idea. I'm all for it if the doctor wears a toga.

If we were worried about space, we would build cities on top of eachother.

If we were *******s, we would kill our kids.

Oh...

Eats babies.

Cities on top of each other... MAN. Terroristessez would bomb the beams and everyone would DIE PANCAKE STYLE! DIEEEE!!!

I don't know what living in an overpopulated place is; I don't need to in order to know why killing a baby because you think it's life would suck is a BAD thing.

Furthermore, there ISN'T a logical way to argue against it, Mr. Ethics 101. The simple fact of the matter is that killing a baby because it's unwanted by it's birth parents is STUPID. They need to stop reproducing.

I say legalize it
but if they want to kill their child
make the mother do it
unless she is completely heartless, she won't be able to

You could actually argue that it's better to kill a baby because of future suffering it will incur as a result of living in a poor, impoverished country

And you didn't read my original post: Who the **** are you to say what a good quality of life is? Isn't living a better quality of life than NOT at ALL!? That's the most pessimistic thinking I've ever heard.

I'm not taking that stance. I'm just pointing out that it is an argument people would make.

Avenger's just explainin the utilitarian stance on infanticide which would appear to be about the only reasoning that can justify it. I can understand you're pissed Kirb, it suggests that when a baby is born with a disability that it would be easier just to kill it. By that logic it would have been a good idea to kill you as a babe which frankly is stupid and no doubt deeply insulting to you.

That's part of it, yeah, but I'm more offended by the sheer lack of humility people have for a living being. It just doesn't make sense to me how THAT is any different than gas chambers or that whole prisoner scandal with the iraqi prisoners. Honestly, how is killing a child EVER considered humane? If the child couldn't live on it's own, or something like that, I might even THINK about it, but it's clear that these people support KILLING UNWANTED BABIES. This just shows how irrisponsible human kind is.

We were all raised in a culture where such things are viewed as horrible. However, other cultures don't have the same view. What you view as horrible could very well be a normal part of another culture's everyday life.

Um, not really, no. Take a look at some of the "horrific" things in culture. It's VERY apparent that you can tell when it's truly culture shock that makes people call it "horrible."

This, however, is unnatural and cannot at all be contributed to culture. Honestly, name any other common unaccepted cultural act, and I can agree that it's just "different cutlure." THIS is inhumane.

Cannibalism? They usually only eat their old, or their captured. It's considered respectful, while gross, makes sense. They don't eat people for fun or by random, but for a logical reason. They would have died anyway.

But killing a perfectly healthy child because you can't afford it, or you don't want to keep it? Adoption agencies are WORLD WIDE, now. I can understand a less civilized society killing unwanted children, but a perfectly modern society has NO excuse. That's not culture, it's laziness.

YES.

The Wikipedia article supports this as well.

Socities have practiced this in the past, and it happens out in the wild all the time.

It happens in nature.

Nature is the epitome of natural.

Ignore the fact that I said a modern society has no excuse.

Besides, when it happens in nature, it's due to the child not being able to live on it's own. The mother is only ending her child's suffering by giving it the same end.

IF the child wasn't going to survive, I'd understand killing it, totally. That isn't what we're talking about, at all.

But a lot of these cases aren't occuring in the first world. It's going on in the poorest of countries. It will happen in parts of Africa where food is too scarce to risk trying to raise a baby. It will also happen in areas so remote that there isn't any chance of giving the child over to adoption. I don't think anyone is realistically saying that people ought to be doing this in the US or western Europe.

In some case, it is though. Especailly in these impoverished nations where there is poor sanitation, or the child is poor sick.

Care to back that up? The reference the Wikipedia article used says that the young bottlenose dolphins died from impact injuries, and that there was otherwise nothing wrong with them that they could tell.

Also, some fish just eat their young because they're there.

Some animals will take their young off to die if they are not healthy though. Cats do this.

Cats will eat their own young if they're nervous and think their litter is under threat. And among lions, when a new male takes over the pride he will kill all the cubs to cause the females to go into oestrus as quickly as possible and so as not to waste time raising the young of his former rival.
Nature isn't quite so black and white.

Not everyone marries, not everyone can have children, not everyone is heterosexual, not everyone lives long enough to sire children, and not everyone stays in China. The population would decrease with a two-child law.

Yeah it happens in nature.

Why should we act precisely as we do in nature, when we have the capacity to actually consciously change our habits, our culture, and many other things. There is no purpose for this in a modern society. Nature? Maybe. But not civilization.

There is a big difference between nature and modern society. Though not as big as some might think, it is still distinct.

You can hate me for this if you want, but I'm going to throw this out there any how for you guys to think about. Please understand that I have a child of my own and would never do anything to hurt him. Here is my responds:

Unfortunately, "nature" or more specifically, the checks and balances therein, doesn't always work as effeciently as it should. For instance, as is relevant to the topic, miscarriages occur when there is a problem with the pregnancy. In other words, the body "detects" (I use the word loosely) that there is a problem and aborts the pregnancy on it's own. HOWEVER, to assume that this is the sole basis for why life should or should not exist "as nature intended" would be wrong. There are situations where the mother's body is unable to "detect" problems with the pregnancy and the body does not "naturally" abort an underdeveloped or "defective" (again, terminology is used loosely) baby.

I had a Female cat when I was growing up. It was an outdoor cat so it was always getting pregnant. Most of the time she would either have a healthy litter or on uncommon occassions have a miscarriage. However, there were the rare occassions where she gave birth to "defective" kittens. In one instance, the kittens were perfectly healthy...except for their eyes. They were blind. She took her kittens, one at a time, and took them under the house so that they would die of a heat stroke.

Was what the mother cat did wrong? These kittens would have never been able to take care of themselves. Would it have been right for the mother cat to care for them for the rest of her life? My grandfather stayed at my grandmothers bed side for years, yet he was the first to die (the strain of caregiving is taxing). What do you think would happen to the kittens after the mother cat died? What's the most common responds you get from parents about what they want for their children?

Keep in mind that a lot of our "moral understanding" comes from YEARS of LIVING. What has an infant missed if they have never lived? What is life? When does a child become a Sentiant Lifeform? When does it become Intelligent? When does it become Self-Aware? When does it develop a Conscience? For the religiously inclined, I tend to believe that beings must first be sentiant to have a soul. After all, are you not tested on those three above qaulifications by God?

Just some things to think about.

[QUOTE=Vincent Valentine]Not everyone marries, not everyone can have children, not everyone is heterosexual, not everyone lives long enough to sire children, and not everyone stays in China. The population would decrease with a two-child law.[/QUOTE]
Ok despite longer life spans and such, sure, it'll increase. But, does that law apply to couples? What if they seperate? Women only? Men too? How do you regulate two children; two children per what?

Probably until we killed him, and placed his head on our wall.

Condoms don't have as high of a prevantative pregnancy factor as people think. Sure, they help, but they fail to. I just had a friend get pregnant even though her boyfriend uses a condom. Now, they're using condoms & diaphragms.

I don't know how either of them feel anything.

I also don't know why I know all this...

Final Fantasy 7...

ONLY IT WAS THOSE SHINRA BASTARDS.

THEY KILLED WEDGE, AND BIGGS, AND JESSIE! THOSE DIRTY ****S!!! AND THEY BLAMED IT ON AVALANCHE! (Avalanche, Irony..)

Haha, that was the only game I've ever seriously gotten mad at the bad guys for being bad guys.

The moral dilemma this poses becomes a lot more trivial when you dispose of them by dropping them into a large body of water (such as the Atlantic) in quantities of either one gross, or even a metric ton if need be.

Problem solved.

You know what I decided about OTHER CULTURES?

I don't give a rats ***. At all.

Anyone, that is from a different culture, has no right to call anything another culture BARBARIC.