Population Council testimony:
Judith Bruce, a senior associate at the Population Council, offered testimony before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on behalf of increased population control funding. She focused her remarks on “additional avenues the United States might consider to strengthen population policy throughout the world by encouraging relevant planning and investment through its diplomatic, bilateral, and multilateral aid capacities.”
“Relevant planning” regarding population growth should be viewed in relation to the “caring capacity ” of human beings for each other” (emphasis in the original). In that regard, “Even governments gravely concerned about rapid population growth have unnecessarily limited the scope of their activities.”
In order to be effective, U.S. policies must address “people’s desire for more than two children and population momentum.” Previously we have treated “familial negotiations over regulation and the time and monetary costs of children as a matter out of the public domain of public po1icy.”
The U.S. must now move past its former policies and spread our concerns with population policy “throughout all sectors of our bilateral programs and in our collaboration with other donors .… promote initiatives to realign social and economic investments which favor fertility decline .… and assign policy planning and budgetary oversight for this at the highest levels of the [U.S.] State Department and USAID (Testimony of Judith Bruce, House Foreign Affairs Committee, 22 September 1993).
Tokyo Summit economic declaration:
A statement issued by the Group of Seven (G-7) countries at the economic summit addressed the issue of structural adjustment and linked it to population control. The base of the argument was laid in paragraph five of the statement which said, “[I]t is essential to address structural issues which constitute obstacles to strong economic recovery and to longer term potential.” The statement also endorsed a report by the G-7 Finance Ministers which focused on several issues including “the economic impact of aging populations.”
In paragraph fourteen, the section on developing countries, the statement read, “We welcome the initiatives taken by developing countries to establish a more constructive partnership and dialogue on issues of our mutual interest. We will work for the success of the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo next year which is important in addressing the linkages between rapid population growth and the goals of sustainable development” (Tokyo Summit Economic Declaration: A strengthened commitment to jobs and growth, text of a statement issued by the Group of Seven (G-7), Tokyo, Japan, 9 July 1993, in U.S. Department of State Dispatch Supplement, vol. 4, supplement no. 3. August 1993, 4, 6).
USIA pushes environmental propaganda:
Long accused of victimizing developing countries with self-serving propaganda, the United States Information Agency (USIA) has now taken on the promotion of particular views on environmental/population issues. Topping the list of its promotions is Vice President A1 Gore’s book Earth in the Balance which advances arguments for population control, Gore writes, “No goal is more crucial to healing the global environment than stabilizing human population (Al Gore, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, 307-317). USIA reported in March that “[n]early 1000 copies” of the book had been “purchased by USIA posts worldwide.” The Agency’s book division has also chosen the book to be translated into as many as 15 languages, including Chinese, Bangla, and Russian.
“In addition, twelve books on the environment were published in 1992 as part of USIA’s book translation program. So far in 1993, five new titles have been contracted for translation with foreign publishers, including John Berger’s Restoring the Earth and Lester Brown’s The State of the World 1990” (USIA: Environment, published by the Office of Public Liason of the U.S. Information Agency, March 1993, 1).
The cock crows in Mexico:
Populations Communications International (PCI), an affiliate of the United Nations which directs the NGO Population Task Force at U.N. Headquarters, recently distributed a direct mail solicitation. The solicitation was signed by the Chairman of the Board of Scripps-Howard, Jack Howard. Scripps-Howard is a major newspaper publishing corporation in the United States.
Howard noted, “At a recent gathering of heads of state, a host of environmental topics were discussed. Like rain forest destruction — global warming — toxic wastes — wildlife species loss. And other causes for alarm. “But the greatest cause for alarm was this — not one of the presentations contained one word about the tremendous threat to the environment from rapid population growth!”
Promoting the interests of PCI Howard wrote, “We are dedicated to mobilizing the broadcast systems of the developing world — where ninety percent of world population growth takes place. For instance…
“[We’ve had] A dramatic success in Mexico!
“First, the bottom line. The population growth in Mexico has dropped forty percent in ten years! The fastest drop for any country in this century! .… What’s the key to this phenomenal success?
“MOTIVATION — the key to success in anything!
“Motivation through exciting, long-running, family-planning dramas beamed on prime-time radio and TV in Mexico. One U.S./A.I.D. officer said, ‘Throughout Mexico, when people are asked what made them decide to practice family planning, the response was universally the soap operas.’
“Our experience in working with Mexico’s national broadcast network over many years is being put to use. We are now taking this family planning soap opera approach to developing country broadcast leaders who reach over half of the people in the world! (Mailing from Population Communications International, “Environmental cataclysm will continue to mount… until we correct a glaring omission,” received June 1993).
Abortion pill and blood loss:
An article in Family Planning Perspectives reports blood loss as greater among women who underwent medical termination of pregnancy with mifepristone and a prostaglandin than among women who had a surgical abortion. The study involved 113 Hong Kong women, all over the age of 18, having a first-trimester abortion. Each had a history prior to conception of at least three regular menstrual cycles of 25-35 days each.
Surgical abortion consisted of a vacuum aspiration under general anesthesia; medical abortion was induced by 200 mg, 400 mg or 600 mg of mifepristone, followed by a vaginal prostaglandin suppository two days later. Mean blood loss was about twice as great among the three groups of women who had a medical abortion (115 ml, 137 ml and 131 ml, respectively) as among the surgical abortion patients (67 ml) (Family Planning Perspectives, vol. 25, no. 3, May/June 1993, 98).
Death from infertility treatment:
A third woman has died in Australia from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a rare brain disorder, following treatment for infertility with pituitary hormone taken from dead bodies. The woman, who received the hormone in 1975, died in January 1991, but the link to the fertility treatment has only just been acknowledged by the Australian Department of Health.
Australia is the only country to report deaths from CJD as a result of treatment with human pituitary gonadotrophin (hPG) to induce ovulation, but 36 people worldwide are known to have died as a result of being treated with human growth hormone (hGH) from the pituitary gland (“Fatal link,” New Scientist, 13 February 1993).
Oral contraceptives and HIV:
HIV-positive women who use oral contraceptives (OCs) are more likely than non-users to shed the virus, possibly infecting their partners, according to a recent study. The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, was presented at the Ninth International Conference on AIDS in Berlin, Germany.
The study’s authors said they were unsure if OCs actually increased shedding, or if the hormones in the pill promote the presence of cervical ectopy. Cervical ectopy was described as a normal condition, appearing in various degrees depending upon the presence of reproductive hormones.
Cervical ectopy was a common condition among the HIV-seropositive women studied at the Nairobi City Commission Special Treatment Clinic in Kenya between May 1988 and April 1990. When cervical samples were taken, it was found that 44 out of 83 women had cervical ectopy.
Only eight of the women in the study used OCs, but six of them tested positive for HIV DNA. Upon adjusting for the possibility of confounding effects between pill use and cervical ectopy, the use of the pill still turned up as an independent risk factor for HIV shedding with an odds ratio — a way of measuring those exposed and unexposed and those who got infected and those who did not — of 11.6. The data were interpreted as indicating that women taking the pill are at much greater risk for transmitting HIV; essentially they are about 10 times more likely to shed the virus than are non-pill users (“OCs are implicated in increased HIV transmission risk,” Contraceptive Technology Update, vol. 15, No. 8, August 1993).
UNFPA logic — what’s that? Eh, what?
According to Population Communications International the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) insists that a “slowdown in world population growth is a key requirement ” for reducing the “massive and increasing flow of human migration around the world.” Migration patterns are viewed as a “collective expression of millions of individual and family decisions,” the report said. The “magnitude of urban and international migration” in recent years is evidence of the “expanding gap between rich and poor, rapid population growth, and increasing environmental degradation.” However, the report then concludes “current population growth is not decisive in determining international migration” [emphasis added].
Nevertheless, with a better-safe-than-sorry attitude, UNFPA warns that it takes about a generation for high population growth rates to affect migration patterns. Therefore, “Providing reproductive health and family planning services, especially for women and the rural poor, will “promote economic development and help reduce the need to migrate.” Without such intervention, UNFPA says migration “could become the human crisis of our age” (International Dateline, July/August 1993).
An old song replayed — and replayed — and replayed:
The common money-grabbing message of government agencies and government-associated groups, who munch their oats from the government trough, was replayed at an international research symposium on contraceptives held in Mexico City (March 1993).
Not surprisingly, the conference recommended that governments prioritize funding for research and programs in reproductive and sexual health. Non-governmental institutes and councils, likewise, should also allocate increased funds. The international donor community also must increase its research monies to “address problems of reproductive and sexual health in developing countries.” And then throwing a bone to their victims, the conference concluded that women must be included as “decision-makers” in all agencies and advisory bodies regarding research in all phases of research implementation, including the monitoring of ethical standards.
Health infrastructure, family planning services and effects of the methods, and controls for their safe, effective and voluntary usage are to be “assured” say the money-makers. Safe male methods and female “post-ovulatory methods” are to be developed to “enhance shared responsibility for fertility regulations.”
Market-based sales interests are to be served through “urgently needed” research “sexuality, gender roles and relationships in various cultural settings,” with emphasis on reasons for “under-utilization and inappropriate usage” of existing services and technologies.
Industry “at home and abroad,” in collaboration with drug and device regulatory agencies, must be made to “expedite the availability of improved and new methods of fertility regulation.”
Additional policies and programs are needed for adolescents who suffer from sexual and reproductive health problems such as unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions and sexually transmitted diseases (IPPF Medical Bulletin, June 1993).
UNICEF’s “tenth proposition”:
In UNICEF’s report on The State of the World’s Children 1992 the U.N. body submitted ten “propositions for the agenda of a new world order.”
Proposition ten, “Planning births,” reads “That the responsible planning of births is one of the most effective and least expensive ways of improving the quality of life on earth — both now and in the future — and that one of the greatest mistakes of our times is the failure to realize that potential.”
The report states that “The range of methods now available means that family planning can now be promoted and practiced in ways which are sensitive to the religious and cultural contours of almost all societies. The benefits of family planning need be denied to no one.
“Those benefits are not widely appreciated. Family planning could bring more benefits to more people at less cost than any other single ‘technology’ now available to the human race. And this would still be true even if there were no such thing as a population problem.”
The report added: “the achievement of the family planning goal [adopted at the World Summit for Children] would also help to resolve two of our most important planetary problems — population growth and environmental degradation”(The State of the World’s Children 1992 — A Summary, 4-5, 12-13).
Entering the era of mutual coercion:
Lindsey Grant, a writer/editor for Negative Population Growth, Inc. (former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environment and Population Affairs) presented his views in a recent article in USA Today .
Lindsey said that views on population growth lie on a “fault zone between two powerful and antithetical world views.” One view is rooted in the “idea of personal freedom” and the concept that mankind is the “possessor and beneficiary of a timeless earth, itself central to the universe — and in the personal communication with an anthropomorphic deity.”
Another view is that mankind is “one recent species in the extraordinarily complex and evolving ecology of one small planet” and that “we are managing the space ship very badly;” now aware of “the profundity of the risks we have set in motion, including toxic air and water, the greenhouse effect, and effects on the denitrifying microbes.”
“Those of us who hear and understand such language,” Grant said, “respond with demands that society regulate human activities so as to bring such threats under control. We must bid farewell to the heroic — the frontier — image of personal freedom as we enter the era of mutual coercion to save ourselves from the mess we have created.
“If the situation is induced in part by population growth, the severity of the mutual restraints will depend on whether we choose to address that as a source of environmental pressures (Lindsey Grant, “In search of optimum population,” USA Today, September 1992, 34-6).
Creative approaches paid for by U.S. taxpayers:
Two carved wooden statues named Pru and Dense are used by the USAH)- funded group Population Services International (PSI) in Cote d’Ivoire, “in the teaching spirit of Pinocchio.”
The anatomically correct model, “Dense”’ is described as having “substantial masculine attributes” which “facilitate condom demonstration.” The female, Pru, carries a package of Prudence condoms in her hand. Prudence condoms are the brand “socially marketed” by PSI.
PSI is the recipient of a $2.5 million contract “over five years from USAID to continue and expand its social marketing work in Cote d’Ivoire in 1990.” PSI expects condom sales of over five million in 1992 (Family Planning World, vol. 3, no. 4, July/August 1993.
Global family planning assistance list:
The United States headed the world’s family planning list with contributions of $352 million for Third World family planning programs during the past fiscal year. Germany followed with $76 million and Japan with $63 million. In so far as per capita contribution however, Norway’s $12 per capita was higher than the U.S. figure of $1.38 per capita. Germany’s per capita contribution was 94 cents while Japan’s was 52 cents.
Sweden, Finland, Denmark and the United States received “fair marks” for allocating more than two percent of overseas aid for family planning. Honorable mention went to the Netherlands. Britain, Germany and Canada (International Dateline, Populations Communications International, September 1993, 7)
