Sterilization and Population Control

Sterilization has emerged in the last two decades as a popular and effective method of birth control. Some argue that it is actually the most important issue of our time considering current debates on climate change, famine, and pollution. A simple method to reduce the pressure on the earth’s resources would be to reduce the human population over the next hundred years. It is now estimated to be the most widely used family planning method in the world, chosen by more than 100 million couples. The highest proportion of sterilized couples are in developing countries, especially where other contraceptive methods are not freely available or easy to administer.

Explanations for this trend vary. One factor is likely to be that surgical procedures for male and female sterilization have improved, becoming faster, safer, and with few inconveniences. In Western societies, sterilization may have increased in popularity because the spouse is no longer required to give formal consent for the operation. Another motivation is concern about the reported adverse effects of some other contraceptive methods, such as the pill and intrauterine devices. As a result of the advice given to women over the age of 35 not to use oral contraceptives, sterilization has increasingly become the option of established couples who have decided their families are complete.

Sterilization and population control

The problem of rapidly increasing population in developing countries has led to the initiation of vigorous birth control campaigns. But these have not always been easy to implement. In a country like India, where more than three quarters of the population still lives in some 600,000 rural villages, children have always been considered an economic asset. Each new individual is a potential new worker, which means greater productivity in the fields and greater security in old age for parents. This meant that when family planning workers visited these towns, birth control methods met with resistance for both economic and religious reasons.

However, in the mid-1970s, the Indian government began a sterilization campaign, initially voluntary but later imposed, and in early 1977 a law was passed stating that all government workers would be sterilized or lose their jobs.

In most of the developing world, sterilization is now becoming an increasingly popular solution to the problem of contraception and, partly as a result of its introduction, more than 30 of these countries have shown declines in 20 to 60 percent in birth rates in recent years. decade.