For the Record …

The Latin American director of the
Population Research Institute, Carlos
Polo, recently charged that the United
Nations’ donation of 20,000 “female
condoms” given to Peru’s “family planning”
programs are part of a “huge business”
that involves more than $33 billion
worldwide.

Polo clarified on Dec. 13 that the
20,000 female condoms were given free-of-
charge to Peru, but that once they are
included officially as part of the government’s
family planning program, “the
Peruvian State will have to pay for them
with tax-payer money.”

“This is the same thing that has
happened with other contraceptive methods,”
he explained.

According to a report from the U.N.
Population Fund, $33 billion was spent
on population control in 2008, with $10
billion coming from international corporations.
The other $23 billion came from
the governments of poor countries and
from consumer sales of contraceptives,
Polo said.

“Contrary to what the international
organizations—who portray themselves
as ‘the good guys’—say,” Polo continued,
they only contributed a little more than
“three percent of the total cost.”

Turner’s comments have attracted
attention from religious groups and from
those who see the desire to manage the
population question as an abuse of human
rights. The Population Research Institute
has drawn analogies to Mr. Turner’s comments
and the approaches taken by China
to address the problem.

“The Chinese population control
police don’t merely ‘encourage people to
have one child,’ as Turner says, they arrest
women for the crime of being pregnant
with an illegal child, they subject them
to detention without trial, and they forcibly
abort them if they don’t ‘voluntarily
consent’ to an abortion,” PRI’s Steven
Mosher wrote.

But the Population Research Institute
goes one step further—claiming that
the overpopulation challenge is a myth,
in their aptly named web property: overpopulationisamyth.com.
Visitors to this
site can view a number of animated videos
that cite numerous sources and that
claim the planet is fully able to sustain
the undulating global population growth.
One memorable segment suggests that
the entire human population—nearly 7
billion of us—could fit snugly in townhouses
throughout the state of Texas.

I recently attended a talk by Stephen
Mosher of the Population Research
Institute, a courageous pro-life organization
that fights the prevailing myths of
overpopulation not just with refreshing
facts but with a much more solid social
theory, that is, the idea that babies are
a blessing and not a curse in the world.
Mr. Mosher asked the probing question,
“What are the economic consequences
of imposing contraception and sterilization
upon third world women?” The U.S.
Secretary of State has gone on record as
saying that the only way to improve the
status of women in the third world is
through “reproductive freedom.” In other
words, says Mr. Mosher, “our message to
these countries is we do not want you to
have children, and we will not help you
if you do.” He suggests that we call this
what it is: cultural imperialism.

We go now to Peru, where the Ministry
of Health this week announced the
donation of 20,000 female condoms from
the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) as
part of a campaign in the fight against
AIDS. Speaking to Aciprensa, Director
of the Population Research Institute’s
Latin American office, Carlos Polo, reported
that the incorporation of those
20,000 female condoms donated by the
United Nations program in Peru is only
part of the big business that is family planning,
one that moves 33 billion dollars
worldwide. Polo said that 20,000 female
condoms are just a “free sample,” and
once they become established as a more
common method of family planning, “the
Peruvian State will begin paying for family
planning with the money of all.”