On 2 February 1996, Washington Post columnist Judy Mann attacked the U.S. Congress and President Clinton for cutting the U,S, contribution to international population control by one-third. Steven W Mosher; Executive Director of the Population Research Institute, wrote this in response to her attack:
First World nations must not continue financing population control. Having just returned from some of the poorest parts of the world, I read Judy Mann’s claim {“Extracting Their Pound of Flesh,” February 2, 1996) that women and children will suffer as a result of cuts on population control programs with a sense of disbelief. If she believes cutting population control funding will hurt poor women and children, what does she think they are experiencing now? Congress should not have cut the U.S. contribution to their pain by one-third, it should have eliminated it entirely.
Has Mann visited rural clinics in the Philippines where contraceptives — paid for by U.S. taxpayers — are piled to the rafters, but there are no antibiotics or vaccines? Has she talked to doctors in India where poor men and women are bribed or coerced into sterilizations they quickly come to regret, or did not want in the first place? China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Cambodia, South Africa, Indonesia: the roll call of countries where human rights have been abused in the cause of limiting fertility is entirely too long. As murder will indeed out, so must the crimes committed in the name of population control be recognized.
To defend such programs Mann inexplicably turns to the very official whose budget has been cut. Nils Daulaire, deputy assistant administrator for policy at U.S. AID, is desperately unhappy about the 35 percent hit his international population control funds have taken. Poor Daulaire unleashes a flurry of unfounded prophecies (the cutbacks will “lead to 200,000 illegal and unsafe abortions,” “5,000 maternal deaths” etc.). No bureaucrat likes to have his turf trimmed.
Mann’s other source (her only other quoted source) is Population Action International, which describes itself as the “cerebral cortex” of the population control movement. Cerebral or no, ideologically driven movements are notoriously ill equipped to examine their own assumptions. The population control movement, which is based on the conjecture that the world has — or will soon have — more people than it can reasonably sustain, is no exception. It accepts as an article of faith the existence of something called “overpopulation.” It claims that it is the principal cause of hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation. Finally—frightening those of us who are familiar with China’s one-child policy—it zealously urges Third World governments to adopt measures to force down birth rates.
Outside of the “movement” itself all these notions are being called into question. Does “overpopulation” demand population control activism? Listen to Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute:
“[T]here is no workable demographic definition of ‘overpopulation’,” he states flatly. “The term, though often used as if it had a fixed meaning, cannot be described unambiguously through reference to any combination of demographic variables .… Inadequate incomes, poor health, malnutrition, overcrowded housing, unemployment — images such as these are conjured up by the notion of overpopulation, but they are really images of poverty.…”
Does population growth lead to ever increasing hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation? Consider a recent study by Julian Simon and Karl Zinsmeister, which concludes that the success of a country’s development depends largely on its political and economic system, not on the size or rate of growth of its population. As far as the relationship between population and development is concerned, Simon and Zinsmeister maintain, “[it] is the reverse of what population-explosionists argue: it is not that slower population growth brings prosperity, but rather that prosperity brings slower population growth.”
Given that the population controllers may have gotten it all wrong, is it wise for the U.S. to urge Third World governments in no uncertain terms to restrict their peoples’ fertility? Does it make sense to ship massive amounts of contraceptives around the world? Do these programs empower poor people —as their proponents claim — or simply make society’s have-nots vulnerable to yet another form of official exploitation and abuse?
Before we continue to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into population programs, we should first determine whether such programs help or hurt their supposed beneficiaries. And until we can answer this question satisfactorily, we should cut off, not merely cut back, funding.
For if Eberstadt, Simon, Zinsmeister and company are correct, the real danger to men, women and children of the Third World may not be “overpopulation” at all, but rather alarmist visions of overpopulation. The notion that people are somehow social, ecological and economic nuisances is a pernicious one, predisposing governments to treat their own citizens as a form of pestilence. Instead of trying to lift their poor out of poverty, governments instead try to reduce their numbers. Authentic economic development is neglected, and everyone’s freedoms are put at risk.
