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Population Control: An Introduction
Mattei Radu
Editor’s Note: The following is a speech
given by Mattei Radu, a third year law
student at Villanova University, to the
Villanova University pro-life group in the
fall of 2004.
Introduction
Population control is a vast topic, with
many dimensions. I can’t hope to
exhaustively treat them all. Instead, I’d
like to provide an introduction to the main
issues surrounding population control, and
in the process – I hope – leave you with
heightened intellectual and moral clarity in
a much-muddled area.
An additional caveat: in high school, I was
warned that there were “lies, damn lies, and
statistics.” Unfortunately, in the field of
demographics, numbers are often the name of
the game. I have done my best to guarantee
the accuracy of the statistics used herein.
Furthermore, they are often derived from
sources that could hardly be accused of
practicing pro-life bias, such as the United
Nations. Nevertheless, I encourage anyone
in doubt to double check for themselves what
I have contended.
Population control is widely accepted in the
Western world; indeed to call it
controversial is almost a misnomer. Any
refutation of it must look at three distinct
areas and answer three main questions.
First, one needs to examine the facts of
worldwide population, and discover whether
there really is an overpopulation crisis.
Next, one is obliged to analyze the effects
of population control, and find out whether
it is beneficial for society, the economy,
and the environment. Finally, intellectual
honesty requires that one evaluate
population control in ethical terms.
Initially, I think the following excerpt
from Dr. Brian Clowes of Human Life
International provides a useful working
definition of “Population Control”:
The anti-life philosophy asserts that in
order for a nation to advance economically
or socially, it must strictly control its
reproduction. This goal is paramount, so
the elite may use any means necessary to
implement it, including widespread
coercion. Alan Guttmacher, former Medical
Director of the International Planned
Parenthood Federation (IPPF), said “each
country will have to decide its own form of
coercion and determine when and how it
should be employed. At present, the means
available are compulsory sterilization and
compulsory abortion. Perhaps someday a way
of enforcing compulsory birth control will
be feasible.”
Defusing the Population Bomb
What is the current status of the Earth’s
population? As of November 16, 2004, the
U.S. Census Bureau estimated the number at
6,400,753,204. This certainly sounds like a
large figure, but further investigation
reveals a rather astounding conclusion.
If I were to stand up in any classroom on
Villanova’s campus, or any college for that
matter, and announce that every single
living person in the world could fit inside
the state of Texas, I would probably be
forcibly committed to a mental institution.
All of you would probably agree with that
decision, if I argued further that everyone
could live comfortably, each and every
person, within the borders of Texas. Well,
to find out where I belong, all one needs is
a calculator and an almanac.
Texas has an area of 267,277 square miles.
If 6.4 billion people were divided up into
families, with two parents and three kids
per family, going through all of the
arithmetic, each family would get exactly
5,821 square feet for a domicile. Remember,
this is in Texas alone, everyone could have
that much space in one state out of the
U.S., which is in turn one country (not even
the largest) in North America, which is in
turn one continent out of seven (again not
the largest).
The point is that there is no overpopulation
problem; God has provided mankind with a
gigantic earth to fill with people, and we
are in no danger of reaching capacity any
time soon. After all, the Lord’s first
command in the Bible was to “Be fruitful and
multiply, and fill the earth and subdue
it….”
Indeed, according to the latest evidence,
the next great (actual) threat may be that
of under-population. In the 2003 revision
to the United Nations Population Division’s
World Population Prospects, the low-variant
projection is that the earth’s population
will peak at 7.5 billion people in 2040.
That report further avers that that number
will plummet to 2.3 billion in 2300. These
figures paint a bleak picture for the future
according to Stanford-educated Steven
Mosher, president of the Population Research
Institute, who submits:
And once the peak is reached, we are in for
a roller coaster ride of frightening
dimensions, as the bottom literally drops
out of the world’s population….The world of
tomorrow will resemble “old Europe” of today
– graying, aged, and dying….Europe
will be losing 3 to 4 million people a year
by mid-century. Asia will be close behind,
as the voluntary childlessness of the
Japanese is matched by the forced pace of
population reduction due to China's
one-child policy. China's population will
peak at 1.5 billion in 2020 or so, and then
dramatically shrink. By mid-century, Europe
and Asia could be losing a quarter of their
populations each generation. Mexico, as the
head of that country's National Population
Council recently told me, is having barely
enough babies to maintain the current
population, and fertility rates continue to
drop. While birth rates in Africa remain
high, the AIDS epidemic continues to claim
new victims, and Africa's long-term
demographic destiny is in doubt.
Between 1965 and 2001, the total fertility
rate (TFR) for the globe fell from 5.6 to
2.7, a drop of 52%. For a country to keep
itself at replacement level, or in other
words “alive,” its total fertility rate must
be at 2.1 or above. However, it is now
estimated that anywhere from one third to
more than one half of the countries of the
world suffer from birth rates that are below
replacement level. If current trends aren’t
reversed, three quarters of the nations in
Asia, Africa, and Latin America will have
TFRs below replacement level by the middle
of this century. Moreover, by that same
point, for the first time in history, the
amount of people over 60 will outnumber
children under 14.
However, the objection is made that, even if
the physical space exists to sustain a large
population, there is not enough food to meet
basic nutritional requirements. In a
December 2000 speech given at Princeton
University, Dr. Janet E. Smith,
Chair of Life Ethics and Professor of Moral
Theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary,
echoed many scholars in
contending that the food produced by the
U.S. alone could feed everyone on earth.
She also posited that Africa has the
potential to feed 30 billion people, or
approximately 5 times the amount we have
now. This position was confirmed by Fr.
James V. Schall, a long-time political
philosopher at Georgetown University, when
he wrote, “Most people now grant that the
world can produce enough food for whatever
population we have.”
According to National Review, “Global
per capita food production is much higher
than ever before.” Furthermore, the price
for such food has been reduced by 50% since
1950, notwithstanding a doubling in total
population; indeed, “fewer than half as many
people die of famine each year now than did
a century ago-despite a near-quadrupling of
the population.” Food production has become
so bountiful that, theoretically, every
person on earth could eat almost four pounds
of food daily before the supply would be
exhausted.
So the question arises: If we have this much
food, why are people starving?
The sad answer was provided in the UN’s
Concise Report on World Population
Monitoring, 2001, which indicated that
“‘over the period 1961-1998, world per
capita food available for direct consumption
increased by 24 percent, and there is enough
being produced for everyone on the planet to
be adequately nourished.’ When famines do
occur, the report adds, it is because
‘people have inadequate physical and/or
economic access to food as a result of
poverty, political instability, economic
inefficiency, and social inequity.’” The
International Red Cross adds that “the loss
of access to food resources [during famines]
is generally the result of intentional
acts.”
Stephen Moore, president of the Club for
Growth and a senior fellow at the Cato
Institute, offered an additional
interpretation:
The greatest threat to the planet is not too
many people, but too much statism. The
Communists, after all, were the greatest
polluters in history…market-based economies
are about two to three times more energy
efficient than Communist, socialist, Maoist,
or “Third Way” economies. Capitalist South
Korea has three times the population density
of socialist North Korea, but South Koreans
are well fed while 250,000 North Koreans
have starved to death in the last decade.
It is also alleged that greater population
hurts the environment. However, Mosher
makes himself very clear when he says “The
birth of a baby does not mean that an animal
will die…the birth of a million babies does
not mean that one species will go extinct.”
In other words, there is no nexus between
human births and animal deaths.
Furthermore, Mosher goes on to state that a
thriving economy, which depends upon a
sufficiently large population, produces “a
higher standard of living and the
willingness to protect the environment.”
The only countries with comprehensive
environmental legislation are those that
have healthy economies and the leisure time
to concentrate on saving the rainforests and
spotted owls. “People don’t cause
environmental degradation, poverty does.
And it is prosperity that provides the
financial and human resources to deal with
it. A depopulated world is likely to be a
poorer world, and a poorer world is likely
to be a dirtier world.”
How Population Control Affects the World
A core tenant of the population control
ideology is that forcible reduction of a
nation’s birth rate is needed to grant that
society stability and prosperity. However,
this view stands in stark contrast to what
is currently going on in Europe, where that
continent’s “birth dearth” has created a
modern-day crisis.
European depopulation is a sad reality.
While its total TFR stood at 2.6 in 1965,
that number has dropped by 42% to 1.5 in
2001. No European country has a sufficient
TFR to replace its population, with the
exception of tiny Albania. Regionally,
Northern Europe’s TFR is 1.4, Western
Europe’s is 1.6, Eastern and Southern
Europe’s is a shocking 1.3, and that of the
former Soviet countries is 1.6. Europe’s
overall growth rate is 0.1%. While
Europeans constituted 22% of world
population in 1950, they are expected to
make up just 7% of that number in 2050. As
of 2001, there were eighteen countries in
the world whose population was declining;
fifteen are in Europe. Those who are under
15 just barely outnumber those over the age
of 65. It is a land that is slowly dying.
Indeed, as of 1997, if all European borders
were closed, the continent’s last inhabitant
would die in the year 2285.
Let us take Italy as a case study. In 1965,
Italy had a TFR of 2.8; by 2002 that rate
had fallen to 1.3. It had the second oldest
population in the world, with a median age
in 2000 of 40.2 and in 2002, its death rate
of 10.3/1,000 outnumbered its birth rate of
9.3/1,000 – in other words it had a
population “growth” of -1.0/1,000. At
this rate its population will fall from the
current 57 million to 43 million by 2050.
Nicholas Eberstadt of the American
Enterprise Institute has said that “barely 2
percent of the [Italian] population in 2050
would be under five years old, but more than
40 percent would be 65 or older.”
While we in America may well be worrying
about the eventual loss of so many of the
treats and treasures contained in the
Italian peninsula, this depopulation
threatens far worse consequences for
Europeans. According to Dr. Joseph Chamie,
Director of the UN Population Division:
A growing number of countries view their low
birth rates with the resulting population
decline and ageing to be a serious crisis,
jeopardizing the basic foundations of the
nation and threatening its survival.
Economic growth and vitality, defense, and
pensions and health care for the elderly,
for example, are all areas of major
concern.
As Steven Mosher has commented, “Economic growth and
population have always been closely linked.
If you take away a significant portion of
the population, the economy – retail sales,
housing starts, investment, the stock
market, you name it – is almost certainly
going to go into a tailspin.” Europe’s
problem is especially acute given its highly
developed system of welfare capitalism.
While immigration has been suggested as a possible solution
to Europe’s demographic difficulties, a
report released by the United Nations
indicates that this is not a tenable
strategy: “The annual number of migrants
necessary to keep the potential support
ratio [the ration of workers to non-workers]
constant at its 1995 level would be 15 times
greater than the net migration level in the
1990s. Towards the end of the period, i.e.
by 2040-2050, the net annual number of
migrants required by the European Union
would be equivalent to half the world's
annual population growth."
In the words of Chamie, “the current and
foreseeable efforts of most governments to
raise their current low fertility rates to
replacement levels seem highly unlikely.”
Former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan
has further opined that “the Death of the
West is not a prediction of what is going to
happen, it is a depiction of what is
happening now. First World nations are
dying. They face a mortal crisis, not
because of something happening in the Third
World, but because of what is not happening
at home and in the homes of the First
World….There is no sign of a turnaround.”
The European experience stands for the
proposition that massive reductions in
population have a clearly detrimental effect
upon society. The reality is that an
economy needs more people, not less. To
attain success, the third world requires the
tools necessary to harness their greatest
asset, people, into a thriving economy; it
decidedly does not need the mechanisms to
decimate their population. Inexplicably,
however, this is precisely what the
population controllers continue to provide.
Fr. Schall agrees with this proposition,
stating “To help the poor and starving,
access to free markets, plus a generosity
with the abundance this system makes
possible, still seems the most efficient and
least politically dangerous option.”
Furthermore, according to no less an
authority than Mahatma Gandhi:
If it is contended that birth control is
necessary for the nation because of over
population, I dispute the proposition. It
has never been proved. In my opinion, by a
proper land system, better agriculture, and
a supplementary industry, this country
[India] is capable of supporting twice as
many people as there are in it today.
An obsession with population control has
hamstrung affluent nations in their quest to
grant true aid to those countries in need.
Consider that “[i]n many countries, the
shelves of clinics and hospitals are crammed
with complete lines of contraceptives and
abortifacients, and their doctors and health
workers are trained in the very latest
abortion and sterilization methods.
However, antibiotics, vitamins, anesthetics,
and other basic health care supplies are in
desperately short supply.” The UNFPA is
proud that its efforts have guaranteed that
more than 80 percent of the women in Haiti
have access to contraceptives, despite the
fact that more than 50% of Haitians do not
have access to clean water.
One comical anecdote captures the essence of
the UN’s march of folly. According to
Crisis, “among UN secretariat staff, the
story is told that when a high-ranking UNFPA
staffer paid an inspection visit to a UNFPA-stocked
‘basic health clinic’ in a Vietnamese
village, she had the bad luck to break her
leg. UNFPA’s ‘basic health clinic’ had no
aspirin, no bandages, and no splints, just
shelf upon shelf of condoms and
contraceptives. UNFPA had to airlift the
lady out of the village.”
Indeed, far from being the solution to
poverty and other developmental woes,
population control is part of the problem.
Ethical Analysis
There are moral problems with population
control both in theory and in fact. Often
times, whether for religious or other
reasons, a Third World country does not want
the contraceptives and abortion techniques
thrust upon it. However, under a policy
that is critically described as
“contraceptive imperialism,” “Developing
nations cannot voice their objections to
these [practices], even at major world
conferences, because Western nations
threaten them with suspension of vital aid
projects, immediate recall of loans or
increased interest rates on past debts…The
World Bank and other international
organizations refuse to aid needy countries’
projects unless their governments accept
population control quotas….At the June 1996
U.N. Conference on Human Settlements in
Istanbul, for example, a Tanzanian delegate
confided that she could not speak out
against the anti-family agenda of the West
because, ‘If I don’t conform, my people will
suffer.’”
Charles E.
Rice, Professor Emeritus of Law at the
University of Notre Dame Law School, has
asserted that “‘Contraceptive imperialism’
is a utilitarian attack on rising Third
World populations by Western peoples who
have lost the will even to reproduce
themselves….Facing demographic suicide, the
developed nations choose to suppress
populations in developing countries rather
than turn from the contraceptive ethic.”
Furthermore, for all that pro-abortion
forces purport to stand for the female
“right to choose,” the reduction of woman’s
fertility rate is often anything but
voluntary or humane. Consider the horrors
of China’s “one-child” policy; the fact that
forced sterilization is perpetrated “by
governments not only in China but also other
developing countries, such as Peru”; and
that “Western interests test Norplant and
other abortifacients on the women of
developing countries, many of whom die or
are crippled.”
Indeed, the history of Norplant illustrates
well the barbaric nature of international
population control:
Norplant was the final product of 24 years
of Population Council research. In 1990,
the United States became the 17th country to
accept it for distribution. The
abortifacient had been tested continuously
since 1972 on women in several developing
countries, including Haiti, Indonesia,
Brazil, and Bangladesh, by the U.S. Agency
for International Development (USAID), which
provided most of the $20 million in research
costs.
At a 1990 meeting of the American Public
Health Association (APHA), Dr. Shayam Thapa
claimed that, although doctors were eager to
implant the drug, only one-fourth of
Bangladeshi women who wanted the capsules
removed could find a doctor willing or
trained to do so.
In 1990, the Hai News, a Korean
newspaper, reported that UBINIG, a
Bangladeshi health advocacy group, had
uncovered “gross violations of medical
ethics” in the testing and distribution of
Norplant under the auspices of the USAID and
Family Health International (FHI). Medical
personnel did not inform Bangladeshi women
that the drug was experimental and that it
had possible side effects. They bribed many
women to use the drug, and instructed them
not to report side effects so the test
program results would be skewed to “show”
lower rates of health problems. When women
became too sick to avoid seeking medical
attention, the medics withheld proper care
from them, and told them that they would
have to refund the cost of the Norplant if
it was removed, an impossibility since this
sum was more than a year’s wage. Many women
suffered severe eye problems and even
blindness, yet the summary reports on the
effectiveness of Norplant contained no
mention of these side effects.
Beyond these abuses, however, lie
fundamental flaws in population control
ideology. To advocate population quotas,
contraception, abortion and the like is to
play God. It is to say to the prospective
child that he or she doesn’t deserve the
chance to be created or to live a full life
– a power that self-evidently does not
belong to humans. Rather, it is our
obligation to use the wonderful resources
the Lord has bestowed upon us to provide the
best life possible for whoever He sees fit
to endow with the cosmic gift of life.
What’s more, much of the population control
programs are directed towards the third
world countries, home to mostly
non-Caucasians and poor people. It seems
little more than genocide to spend money on
consciously depleting the number of people
belonging to a certain race or ethnic
background. Hitler himself was only able to
kill twelve million “inferiors.” Many more
than that are killed every year by abortion
worldwide, and still more are denied the
chance to live by contraception.
Conclusion
I close on a positive note. Since I first
gave this speech, some four years ago, slow
but steady progress has been made. The Bush
administration drew heavy criticism for
denying some 34 million dollars in aid to
the United Nations Population Fund, for its
oppressive stance on abortion. Pat
Buchanan’s Death of the West brought
the ideas I have discussed to the shelves of
many mainstream bookstores in 2002. The
truth concerning under and overpopulation is
even starting to be accepted by major media
outlets, such as the New York Times, the
Washington Post, and most recently
Newsweek. Take heart my friends, for in the
end, truth conquers all. God bless you.
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