In China you are only allowed to have one child. If you have more than one child legally, you are fined for each additional child. The Chinese government says this is to control population and according to the article below, it has prevented 400 million births. The cons to this law is that it has caused an imbalanced sex ratio, countless abortions, and several other health hazards.
After the May 12th deadly earth quake in China, thousands were killed, many being children. The Chinese government has now created exemptions for their one child law. According to the article if your child was killed in the earth quake, you are allowed to have another child without being fined for it. If you have an illegal child, you can now register it and not be fined if your only legal child was killed in the earth quake. The terms legal and illegal refer to if the child is registered with the Chinese Government.
Even though I understand their reasoning for having the law in place, I personally don't like the law because I come from a big family and would be extremely bored if I didn't have any siblings to play with, my house definitely would be much more boring without all of us! I just don't see why people want to put laws into place that control a family's dynamics. If the family can afford to take care the child and provide for him or her, why tell the parents they can't have the child legally or else they will be fined? What do you think?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080526/ap_on_re_as/china_earthquake_one_chi...
I think that the reason China has a law prohibiting the number of children one family can have is because of the massive number of people that inhabit a small physical space. China has approximately 1.3 billion people living in a an area of approximately 9.6 million square kilometers. That puts a huge strain on China's resources and physical area available for all of its citizens.
Does that make it right for them to limit the number of children per family? I'm kind of up in the air on this one myself...
I agree with you on the fact that they're limiting the number of children because of a large number of people living in a small area, I was just wondering if you thought it to be just or not, and why?
To be honest, I really don't know whether or not I think its just. It seems wrong to deny families the chance to have multiple children and lead their lives the way they want to. On the other hand, it makes sense to limit the number because of the physical area restraints. Plus, those 400 million possible births that were prevented would be adding a lot of strain to the entire world. But then the families are killing unwanted children. But in my mind, there needs to be some sort of "population control" for the earth otherwise we would totally overrun the planet. See how I'm having trouble making a decision here? Hmmm....maybe this will be a topic for a new blog...
I'm stuck in the same position you are. I believe there does need to be some kind of population control, but the way they are going about it seems almost a little too extreme...