World Congress of Families V - Day Two: Family and Demography

AMSTERDAM, Aug. 12/Christian Newswire -

"Family and Demography" was one of the main topics of discussion on day two of the World Congress of Families V on August 11, 2009 at the RAI Center in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Steven W. Mosher, President of the Population Research Institute, spoke of a "Gendercide in Asia."

According to Mosher, policies that limit the number of children a family may have are a contributing factor to the trend of sex-selective abortions; which Mosher called "a chilling reality in many countries in Asia."

Mosher cited an estimate from the British medical journal The Lancet that as many as half a million female fetuses are aborted in India each year because of their gender. Mosher further claimed that "the problem extends beyond India" and is bringing about disastrous consequences.

Mosher:

A recent United Nations Population Fund report says at least 60 million girls are 'missing' in Asia because of sex-selective abortion, infanticide and neglect. The most egregious example is China, where a brutally enforced one-child policy has produced a national ratio of 117 boys born for every 100 girls.

In another lecture on the topic of "Family and Demography," John D. Mueller of the Ethics and Public Policy Center contended that there is a direct relationship between church attendance and birth rates.

Mueller said that families that do not attend church produce 1.2 births per family (well below the replacement level of 2.13 births per family), while families that attend church at least once a week produce 3.22 births per family. Mueller adds that these statistics hold true across religions and nationalities.

Don Feder, the Communications Director for World Congress of Families delivered a lecture on the "Philosophical Roots of Demographic Winter."

According to Feder:

In the past, people didn't ask why have children any more than they asked why eat or breathe. It was such a natural part of existence that it needed no rationale. ...You had children because, in the act of procreation, humanity finds its future. You had children to share the joy you felt at being alive.

The World Congress of Families is the premier gathering of individuals and organizations that promote the concept of the "Natural Family" from around the world.

The World Congress of Families (WCF) is an international network of pro-family organizations, scholars, leaders and people of goodwill from more than 60 countries that seek to restore the natural family as the fundamental social unit and the 'seedbed' of civil society. The WCF was founded in 1997 by Allan Carlson and is a project of The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society in Rockford, Illinois (www.profam.org). To date, there have been four World Congresses of Families -- Prague (1997), Geneva (1999), Mexico City (2004) and Warsaw, Poland (2007). A fifth World Congress of Families is being held in Amsterdam, Netherlands, August 10-12, 2009 ( www.worldcongress.nl).