> The argument here is that birth control is a factor that correlates to rising women's empowerment It logically follows that women are empowered if you give t

> The argument here is that birth control is a factor that correlates to rising women's empowerment It logically follows that women are empowered if you give them the right to control their reproduction but that's not the argument here. The argument is whether women's empowerment leads to prosperity in a society and nothing else. You yourself state this: > The reverse (societies without birth control are poor) does not follow. This is what I wrote before myself. What is missing is that someone shows that empowering women is a factor (and if so to what degree) that will lead to prosperity. Just saying it isn't sufficient. I get that people have their values and goals and in this case I agree that women should not be second class citizens in any regard. But I'm sceptical of statements where people connect arbitrary things to something everyone wants (prosperity) just to promote their values and causes. That's usually what politicians do and I'm not one of them. By the way it is also not helpful to tell poor countries do X (where X is accept our values in some regard) and you'll be prosperous and rich, when we cannot prove that indeed they'll be more prosperous if they do this. That'll create resentment or they will stop taking us serious. In fact I'm frequently reading news and comment sections in many languages and I can tell you that this has already happened. They ridicule the West for our stupidity and our values that we try to foist on them.