Either option seems to lead us only one way – towards fear, blame, and control. But the truth is, people were never the problem.

POPULATION MATTERS

Human population has always undergone transformation. At each moment of demographic change, population alarmists have wrung their hands, warning against population ‘booms’ or ‘busts’. And yet, despite oft-repeated predictions of societal collapse, history has made clear that humanity can not only survive population change – but thrives because of it.

This doesn’t mean that population trends aren’t important. Rather, it is precisely because they are so important that we must move past simplistic narratives of “too many” or ‘too few’. Because these narratives also present fertility rates as a problem to be solved, reducing women’s bodies to political battlegrounds and denying half the population their right to bodily autonomy.

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