The Duggars, Babies & More Babies
The Duggars at 20 might make you want to shout, "Stop the Baby Insanity!" Or it might make you ask yourself, "Why is it Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar continue to insist on making more babies?"
On one hand, their religious faith drives why they keep having babies. They adhere to Quiverfull principles of family planning, which essentially is no “planning” per se--no birth control, not even NFP, or natural family planning, because as Nancy Campbell, a Quiverfull leader says, “even natural family planning may be a selfish attempt to thwart the sovereignty of God.” When they use birth control and “refuse to have children,” “no woman can legitimately claim to love the Lord with all her heart, soul, mind and strength, if she withholds her womb from His service.”
Now to many, this kind of thinking sounds just plain crazy. However, there needs to be respect for everyone’s right to religious freedom so on one level we should respect their beliefs even though may be far from our own.
Where I begin to have the problem is when those beliefs impact others and our world. Let’s start with the carbon footprint of every one of their children. A according to Datablog at Guardian.uk, each person in the U.S. has an 18 tonne carbon emissions rate. A tonne is a metric ton, and equivalent to about 2200 pounds. So in standard tons we use in the U.S. that is almost 40,000 pounds of carbon emissions per person. So with 20 kids, that’s almost 800,000 pounds of carbon footprint.
When it comes to the impact of their reproductive actions, how can a religion promote such a level of irresponsible parenthood? The Catholics seem to get it—take how Pope Paul VI defines responsible parenthood in his 1968 encyclical Humane Vitae:
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