The women’s point of view

Re “Skirting the issue,” Opinion, May 17

Michelle Goldberg provides an incisive overview of the population issue from a socioeconomic perspective.

From an ecological vantage point, the best thing that could happen would be a universal one-child family. The Earth could recover from the wounds that billions of humans have inflicted, and the green technology we are urgently inventing could stay ahead of the damage.

Universal education and readily available contraception are essential to our future.

Debbie Elliott

Pacific Palisades

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Goldberg’s recent book concludes: “There is one thing that unites cultural conservatives throughout the world, a critique that joins Protestant fundamentalists, Islamists, Hindu nationalists, ultra-Orthodox Jews and ultramontane Catholics. All view women’s equality and self-possession as unnatural, a violation of the established order.”

And yet those societies in the world that are the most stable, prosperous and democratic are the ones in which women’s education, health, self-possession, choices and equality are the most pronounced.

Goldberg is right. When the world takes care of women, women take care of the world.

Jane Roberts

Redlands

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Gender feminist writer Goldberg has a very sexist proposition to solving the population issue -- give women all the rights, freedom and support they want and everything will turn out perfectly. She wants women to choose their careers with lavish benefits provided by the state for whenever they personally choose to have children. Options without repercussions seem unfair to both men and motherless working women.

Goldberg also feels that women in poorer countries need more freedom to choose when to have children. But the problems there won’t be solved if we concentrate only on women’s rights. If we give the entire population -- not just women -- consideration and empathy, we would probably reach our goals much more quickly.

Joseph Delvaux

Covina

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As a longtime activist and supporter of international family-planning assistance, I applaud Goldberg’s commentary on human population. It concisely sums up the problem and its solutions. She points out that when we empower women, they know what to do, and they do what is best for their family, their society, their nation and the world.

We all could have a better life if we just give women the tools to better theirs.

James J. Provenzano

Los Angeles

The writer is the former chairman of the Sierra Club Population Committee.