Last week many news outlets, like Fox News, attacked Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for breaking the long-standing taboo and asking whether we need better, and sustainable, family planning in the United States. Read our letter to AOC here. Erika Mathews, Executive Director of the national child-protection organization Having Kids, is urging supporters to find and politely engage directly with AOC’s critics, by simply asking them a few questions either by email, social media, or in-person interviews. Her critics are easily identifiable online – just google “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez” and “children,” and if you need help finding a particular person, just email us at info@havingkids.org
HK WILL PUBLISH AND PUBLICIZE A SUMMARY OF THE BEST ENGAGEMENT.
Erika urges supporters to engage with AOCs critics using a few simple questions. She had this to say. “It’s time to have an open and honest conversation about the future, which will mostly be determined by the family planning decisions people make today. Smaller families are the best way to mitigate climate change and other environmental crises – are AOC’s critics saying we should not do what works best? Rich kids become rich adults and poor kids become poor adults. Better family planning can level the playing field. Are AOC’s critics against a level playing field? Nearly 700,000 kids are abused each year in the U.S. Are AOC’s critics suggesting we should arbitrarily push random people to have kids, people that might not be ready to be good parents? Is that the future we want?”
It’s your future. It’s your kids future. Do we really want it filled with billions more people who did not get what they needed growing up?
Here are the facts: The most effective way to address many of the impacts on our environment and other species, like climate change, is by choosing smaller families. Yes, it’s up to 20 times more effective than changing diet or forms of transportation. By 2100 world population could vary by billions of people, depending on whether the average woman in the world today has one child more or one child fewer in her lifetime. The science of early childhood development shows the disproportionate impact the beginning of our lives has on the rest of our lives. This holds true, among other things, for economic inequality. Better family planning is the best way to reduce inequality. Other interventions are simply too late.
According to Erika, “We can change the direction the world is headed. We just have to start a serious conversation. AOC is right to break the taboo.”
Having Kids is a 501(c)3 nonprofit nonprofit organization dedicated to reforming family planning by replacing parent-centered family planning models with the human rights-based and child-first Fair Start model.
