Life Under Siege - The Global War on the Unborn Continues in 2019

Ecuadorian National Assembly 

Jonathan Abbamonte
Population Research Institute


We are only one week into 2019 and pro-abortion advocates are already hard at work chipping away the right to life for the unborn.

In the U.S., a newly inaugurated House of Representatives on day one began attempting to repeal the Trump administration's Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance policy (PLGHA) (a.k.a. the "Mexico City Policy"). The Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance policy blocks hundreds of millions of federal foreign aid dollars from being spent on foreign pro-abortion NGOs like the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and Marie Stopes International. A provision nullifying PLGHA was included in the House spending bill, which passed the House on January 3 on a vote of 241–190. However, the White House issued an official statement indicating that President Trump will veto the measure if the provision nullifying PLGHA is not removed from the bill. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has also vowed not to consider any legislation that "cannot pass [the Senate] and which the president will not sign."

On the state level, a federal court in Kansas has overturned a state law which would have prohibited webcam abortions.

Overseas, January 1st marked the beginning of legalized abortion on-demand in Ireland up to 12 weeks gestation and up to 6 months gestation in cases of health of the mother and fetal disability. To add insult to injury, abortions in Ireland will be fully taxpayer-funded and there will be no exemption for healthcare workers to conscientiously object from providing abortion referrals under certain circumstances. Furthermore, Catholic hospitals will be denied the institutional right to conscientiously object to providing abortion services.

In the South American nation of Ecuador pro-abortion lawmakers are pushing to change the nation's penal code to allow abortion in cases of rape, incest, and fetal disability.

Last Thursday, the Ecuadorian National Assembly began reviewing a set of recommendations from the "Commission of Justice and Structure of the State" to revise the country's penal code. Among the recommendations offered by the Commission was a proposal to legalize "abortion in cases of rape, malformation of the fetus that makes its life unviable, statutory rape, incest, and nonconsensual insemination."

Read Here: Ecuadorian Legislature Debates Legalizing Abortion in Cases of Rape and Fetal Disability

 

The Population Research Institute is a (501c3) non-profit research organization whose core values hold that people are the world’s greatest resource. PRI’s goals are to educate on this premise, to expose the myth of overpopulation, and to expose human rights abuses committed in population control programs. Our growing, global network of pro-life groups spans over 30 countries. For more information, please use this link.

 

Voices for Life is an e-publication dedicated to informing and educating the public on pro-life and pro-family issues. To read our Mission Statement, use this link.  Follow us on Facebook, Google, Pinterest, and on MeWe.  Help us spread the pro-life message by sharing our articles on your favorite social networks.

Pregnant, need help or know someone who does?  

National Hotline: Call 1-800-712-HELP or Text 'HELPLINE' to 313131.

In Southeast Penna:  Call the Community Women's Center at  215-826-8090

If you or someone you know is suffering after abortion, confidential non-judgmental help is available.  Call Project Rachel's national toll-free number 888-456-HOPE (4673) or visit hopeafterabortion.org.  

Let’s Make All Families Possible!

   

from Steven Mosher, President
Population Research Institute


We are all grateful for the Holy Family as the cradle of salvation and the a model for all families. But there are many around the world who have been denied the blessing of children and a family.

As many of you know, I have seen mothers robbed of their unborn babies, and families that will never come to be, because their children were ripped out of their wombs. My fight against China's forced abortion program began four decades ago and continues today.

Just as heartbreaking are the millions of families right here in the US that will never come to be. Far too many men and women "choose" abortion, rather than accept the new life that God has sent them to cherish. That's why we argue for the sanctity and preciousness of human life, everywhere and always.

U.S.-funded population control programs also deny millions of couples in countries like Peru, India and Nigeria the right to have the number of children they would prefer. We have successfully defunded such programs in the past, and we will continue to do so in the future.

We continue building a Culture of Life in many other ways as well:

• We launched a new website this year to promote the crucial Truths about the sanctity of life, and the sacred role of families in our world, put forth in Humanae Vitae: https://humanaevitaeproject.org/en/

• We do petition drives, including a petition to the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations called: Abortion is NOT a Human Right! https://www.pop.org/tell-un-abortion-not-human-right-2/

• We partner with pro-lifers in Nigeria and elsewhere to help establish Family Care Centers, which provide essential health care to expectant mothers.

And watch your mailbox for our latest efforts as the calendar flips to 2019! (We must keep these secret for now, since we don't want to tip off the opposition.)

Our work is only possible because of thousands of people like you.  On this Solemnity of the Holy Family, won't you join me in this fight to protect all families everywhere?

   

The Population Research Institute is a (501c3) non-profit research organization whose core values hold that people are the world’s greatest resource. PRI’s goals are to educate on this premise, to expose the myth of overpopulation, and to expose human rights abuses committed in population control programs. Our growing, global network of pro-life groups spans over 30 countries. For more information or to make a donation to help them with their work, please use this link.

Kenyan Authorities Ban Marie Stopes from Offering Abortion Services

Jonathan Abbamonte

Population Research Institute 

Kenyan authorities have ordered Marie Stopes Kenya to stop offering abortion services in the African country. Abortion is illegal in Kenya except to save the life of the mother or in cases where the "health of the mother is in danger."

Last Wednesday, on November 14, the Kenyan Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board (KMPDB) issued an statement, banning Marie Stopes Kenya from performing abortion at any of its clinics.

"Marie Stopes Kenya is hereby directed to immediately cease and desist offering any form of abortion services in all its facilities within the Republic of Kenya," Daniel Yumbya, Chief Executive Officer of the KMPDB stated according to the Standard Digital.

The KMPDB is a regulatory board authorized by the Kenyan Government to regulate the practice of medicine and dentistry in Kenya. The KMPDB also sets licensing requirements for medical practitioners.

The order issued by the KMPDB also directed Marie Stopes to submit to the Board, within 60 days, a proposal for how the organization plans to bring itself into compliance with the order.

Marie Stopes Kenya is a subsidiary of Marie Stopes International, an international NGO that performs millions of abortions and post-abortion care procedures every year in the developing world.

Learn more here

 

The Population Research Institute is a (501c3) non-profit research organization whose core values hold that people are the world’s greatest resource. PRI’s goals are to educate on this premise, to expose the myth of overpopulation, and to expose human rights abuses committed in population control programs. Our growing, global network of pro-life groups spans over 30 countries. For more information, please use this link.

 

Voices for Life is an e-publication dedicated to informing and educating the public on pro-life and pro-family issues. To read our Mission Statement, use this link.  Follow us on Facebook, Google, and Pinterest.  Help us spread the pro-life message by sharing our articles on your favorite social networks.

Pregnant, need help or know someone who does?  

National Hotline: Call 1-800-712-HELP or Text 'HELPLINE' to 313131.

In Southeast Penna:  Call the Community Women's Center at  215-826-8090

If you or someone you know is suffering after abortion, confidential non-judgmental help is available.  Call Project Rachel's national toll-free number 888-456-HOPE (4673) or visit hopeafterabortion.org.  

Trump Administration Releases New Pro-Life Regulations

Jonathan Abbamonte
Population Research Institute

Last week, immediately following the election, the Trump administration released three new pro-life regulations to help protect the conscience rights of American families and employers when purchasing health insurance. Each is aimed at undoing Obama-era regulations that were put in place in pursuit of implementing the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

The first two regulations seek to provide employers with religious and moral exemptions to the Obama-era "HHS Contraceptive Mandate." If implemented, the new rules would prevent the government from forcing religious employers to pay for abortifacient methods of contraception in their employer-sponsored health plans.

In addition, another rule released by HHS last week would undo a federal regulation that currently allows health insurance companies to collect premiums for abortion coverage and health care coverage together on the same bill. Under the ACA, the government is required to collect a "separate payment" for coverage of elective abortion but under the Obama administration, health plan issuers were permitted to collect both payments on the same bill.

Here is a summary of the new rules released by the Trump administration last week.

 

The Population Research Institute is a (501c3) non-profit research organization whose core values hold that people are the world’s greatest resource. PRI’s goals are to educate on this premise, to expose the myth of overpopulation, and to expose human rights abuses committed in population control programs. Our growing, global network of pro-life groups spans over 30 countries. For more information, please use this link.

63 Million Missing Women...........

Jonathan Abbamonte

Population Research Institute

Millions of women have gone missing from India’s population due to persistent, deep-seated male bias and extreme son preference.

According to a recent report from the Government of India, a staggering 63 million women are now missing from India’s population. The report estimates that nearly 2 million women are lost every year. The report further estimates that an additional 21 million girls are “unwanted” by their parents who would have preferred a boy instead.

The figures were released by the Indian Ministry of Finance in its Economic Survey 2017-2018 this January.

There are a number of reasons why the gender gap between men and women in India is so large.


Read More Here

 

The Population Research Institute is a (501c3) non-profit research organization whose core values hold that people are the world’s greatest resource. PRI’s goals are to educate on this premise, to expose the myth of overpopulation, and to expose human rights abuses committed in population control programs. Our growing, global network of pro-life groups spans over 30 countries. For more information, please use this link.

 

The Phillippines: To Be or Not To Be?

Philippines: No to Population Control, 

Yes to Authentic Development—Part I

by Federico A. Nazar
for Population Research Institute


Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte has vowed to “champion contraception…to reduce poverty by 25 percent in six years.” “I only want three children for every family,” he stated publicly, “I’m a Christian, but I’m a realist so we have to do something with our overpopulation.” Having promoted, as former mayor of Davao, sexual “education,” free contraception and free access to tubal ligation, Duterte now says that “a more aggressive approach” is necessary because “our resources cannot meet the demand.”

Is he right?

Read more here...

    

The Population Research Institute is a (501c3) non-profit research organization whose core values hold that people are the world’s greatest resource. PRI’s goals are to educate on this premise, to expose the myth of overpopulation, and to expose human rights abuses committed in population control programs. Our growing, global network of pro-life groups spans over 30 countries.  Click here for more information.

Voices for the Unborn is an e-publication dedicated to informing and educating the public on pro-life and pro-family issues. To read our Mission Statement, use this link.   Follow us on Facebook, Google, and Pinterest.  Help spread the word by sharing our articles on your favorite social networks.

The New York Times Throws in the Towel on Overpopulation‏

by Steven Mosher and Anne Roback Morse

Population Research Institute

My guess is that you, gentle reader, will be as astonished as we were by the top-of-the-website New York Times article discrediting the population alarmism of the past fifty years. In "The Unrealized Horrors of Population Explosion" the newspaper has finally (several decades too late) thrown population control on the ash heap of discredited ideas.

The article included a video interview with Paul Ehrlich, the author of The Population Bomb. He was the butterfly scientist from Stanford who scared tens of millions with the specter of overpopulation—and the population apocalypse that would supposedly result. He predicted that by the 1970’s the “population bomb” would explode—and hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in India and elsewhere. (India is still there, and doing quite well, thank you.)

But America’s “newspaper of record,” as it styles itself, failed to record the horrors themselves. It was woefully incomplete. There was no mention of the human costs when governments made population control a priority. No mention of the savage forced abortions and forced sterilizations that followed. No mention of the killing of baby girls through female infanticide and sex-selective abortion. No mention of the wasted money, the age and gender imbalances that continue to unfold and will take effect for years to come. No mention of how the overpopulation panic helped to fuel the rise of birth control use and abortion.

Instead, when citing reasons why birth rates have dropped world-wide, the article offered more benign explanations. First, improved health standards mean that couples no longer need to have 5 children in the hope that 3 survive. Second, large families are not necessary in post-agricultural society since they are not needed to work the land, and therefore only make a population dense city increasingly crowded. Third—and direct from New York City—comes the motherhood slam: “Women in many societies are ever more independent, socially and economically; they no longer accept that their fate is to be endlessly pregnant.”

In other words, the New York Times does not even begin to tell the whole story. The horrors of anti-human population control campaigns continue today.

Take India, for example. Over 60% of India’s women state they have been exposed to “family planning messaging” in the past few months; an impressive statistic considering only 64% of India’s women are literate. And the less educated are sterilized in much higher numbers. While 47% of Indian women with less than five years of education have been sterilized, only 20% of women with twelve or more years of education have accepted sterilization. Lack of consent, painful and pervasive injuries, and death from negligence disproportionately affect India’s most vulnerable. Indian women are not having fewer children because they are becoming “more independent,” but because they are being coerced into undergoing sterilization by abusive population control programs, with their saturation propaganda and sterilization camps.

“The core message of [Ehrlich’s book]—population growth outstripping food supply—resonated quite a bit with India's elites-with the middle classes,” economist Gita Sen told the Times. “They much preferred to believe that the poor were poor because of too many children rather than being poor because of an unfair and unequal economic system.”

In China—which now has below-replacement fertility—the Planned Birth Policy allows the state to control childbearing. Anyone pregnant without a valid birth permit falls afoul of the Family Planning police, and abortion and sterilization usually follow.

Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng states: “In ancient Chinese culture we had a saying that your home is your castle, and that even the king will not be allowed to come in without your permission. But now in today’s China under Communist rule, they even put their hand into your body and grab your babies out of your womb, and they kill your babies in your face.”

In Myanmar—another country where fertility levels have fallen below replacement—President Thein Sein just signed a “Population Control” bill into law. The law implicitly authorizes the use of coercion and discrimination, especially against the persecuted Rohingya minority—who are already subject to a two-child policy.

In dying Uzbekistan, the authoritarian government is coercing tens of thousands of women into sterilization.

The former president of Peru is currently on trial for crimes against humanity for a population control campaign in the 1990’s that sterilized over 300,000 indigenous women against their will.

The list goes on and on.

These are the true “unrealized horrors” of Ehrlich’s mad tale. The past half century has seen tens of millions of men and women sterilized without their consent and tens of millions of women forcibly aborted. These men and women are owed more than a one-off article from The New York Times saying, “Oh, oops. I guess we were all wrong.”

The New York Times conveniently fails to mention that it helped to fan the flames of the overpopulation panic. It advocated setting up population control programs, and editorialized on behalf of the billions of dollars in funding that continues to fuel the anti-people movement down to the present day. A mea culpa would be nice, but we aren't holding our breath.

And lest we forget, the grim game of controlling human numbers continues, albeit under a different name. Today, efforts to disable women’s reproductive systems are called "reproductive health" programs. Orwellian, isn’t it?

The pro-life Population Research Institute is dedicated to ending human rights abuses committed in the name of "family planning," and to ending counter-productive social and economic paradigms premised on the myth of "overpopulation." Find us at pop.org.

Help Stop Abortion Funding from Your Tax Dollars‏

From Steven W. Mosher, President
Population Research Institute

Will you please sign our Petition to your Senators? Your Petition calls on them to act now to pass the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act”.

The Population Research Institute is enthusiastically supported by Church and lay leaders including Cardinal Raymond Burke.

“ . . . the Population Research Institute is providing an essential service to the Gospel of Life . . . (PRI) is well-respected for it’s investigations, also among lawmakers and policymakers, and continues to expand its important research throughout the world.” — Cardinal Burke
Planned Parenthood’s worst nightmare!

Population Research Institute has a long and successful track record of causing major financial havoc for Planned Parenthood. Through our investigation and education efforts we helped strip Planned Parenthood of $195 million in annual funding. We’re now leading this campaign to strip Planned Parenthood and other baby killers of all U.S. taxpayer funding.
An urgent project: No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion

The House has passed the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. Now we have to put intense heat on the Senate to do the same, making your petitions to your U.S. Senators even more important. So, right now, please sign this petition.

Sign the Petition Here 

Your petition is just one part of our campaign, so we need your financial support as well! It will include targeted, paid advertising and the circulation of another 250,000 petitions.

After you sign this petition, consider a gift to help with this effort.

Will the New U.S. Congress Protect Life Once Harry Reid’s “Roach Motel” Goes Out of Business?

Prospects for Pro-life Legislation Brighten, But Obama Stands in the Way

by Steven W. Mosher

Population Research Institute

For the last four years, the U.S. Senate has been the place where pro-life legislation went to die. Of more than a dozen pieces of pro-life legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives during the last two Congresses, not a single one was taken up by the Senate. Violating the Senate’s century-long tradition of deliberation and debate, outgoing Majority Leader Harry Reid (D), simply refused to bring them to the floor for a vote. Former Governor Mike Huckabee described Reid’s obstruction in these colorful words: “Harry Reid has created the roach motel of legislation. The bills come in, but they never come out.”

Among the pro-life bills that the pro-abortion Reid killed in this way were:

The Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act: bans nearly all abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy—the point at which it is generally acknowledged that the unborn child can feel pain—and would save at least 18,000 lives a year. It would be an important step towards banning all abortions.

The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act: prohibits the federal government, in the words of Cardinal Sean O’Malley, from “us its funding power to support and promote elective abortion, and … forc taxpayers to subsidize this violence.” The bill would also force Obamacare plans that include a secret elective abortion surcharge to reveal this to consumers.

The Health Care Conscience Rights Act: protects the First Amendment rights of Americans by exempting them from the Obama Administration’s Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate. It also offers conscience protection for individuals and health care entities that refuse to provide, pay for, or refer patients to abortion providers because of their deeply-held, reasoned beliefs.

The Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act: bans abortions for reasons of sex- and race-selection. This bill would save the lives of several thousand baby girls, who are currently being aborted for no other reason than that they are girls.

The Fiscal Year 2015 Appropriations Bill: The House version cuts funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which is a strong supporter of China’s coercive population control program, reinstitutes the Mexico City Policy (MCP), denying federal funding to foreign nongovernmental organizations that perform or promote abortion as a method of family planning, and cuts funding for population control programs down to $461 million.

These and other sensible pieces of pro-life legislation that died in the Senate were merely a small part of a much larger batch of House-passed bills—over three hundred (300!) in all—that met the same fate. Many of these bills passed the House with bi-partisan support and would have, presumably, easily won passage in the Senate. Yet the Democrat Majority Leader, in a cynical political ploy that violated the longstanding traditions that body, simply bottled them up in committee.

He was, apparently, trying to protect vulnerable members of his Democrat Party who were up for re-election in conservative states from being forced to vote on embarrassing amendments. On the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, for example. (“Explain to the good people of Arkansas again, Senator Pryor, why you think that Americans should allow little girls to be killed by abortion simply because their parents wanted a boy?”)

Despite Senator Reid’s underhanded efforts, all of the vulnerable Democrat senators—every last one of them—are now gone:

In Arkansas, pro-life Rep. (and now Senator-elect) Tom Cotton (R) clobbered his pro-abortion opponent, Sen. Mark Pryor (D), winning by almost 20 percentage points.

In North Carolina, pro-life Republican Thom Tillis, with strong support from North Carolina RTL and other pro-life groups, narrowly beat pro-abortion Sen. Kay Hagan (D), despite being outspent two-to-one.

In Colorado, Rep. (and now Senator-elect) Cory Gardner (R) was hammered on the abortion issue by his opponent, pro-abortion Sen. Mark Udall (D), but gradually pulled ahead in the polls and won the race easily. Gardner was a supporter of Colorado's Personhood Amendment.

In Alaska the ballot counting continues, but pro-life Republican Dan Sullivan has led every poll for weeks and is expected to knock off pro-abortion Sen. Mark Begich (D).

Louisiana will hold a special run-off election on December 6, in which pro-life Rep. Bill Cassidy (R) is widely expected to trounce pro-abortion Sen. Mary Landrieu (D). The Democratic National Committee (DNC) announced Thursday night that the DNC was cancelling ad buys to support Landrieu in the run-off election. After having lost control of the Senate, the Dems must have felt that she was no longer worth the money, despite having loyally served her party for 18 years in the U.S. Senate.

Pro-life candidates swept the open seats as well, and held their own elsewhere.

In Georgia, pro-life Republican David Perdue cruised to a surprisingly easy victory over pro-abortion Democrat Michelle Nunn.

In Kentucky, pro-life Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell kept his seat after battling pro-abortion Alison Lundergan Grimes (D).

In Kansas, pro-life Sen. Pat Roberts (R) took out pro-abortion independent Greg Orman, winning by 15 percentage points a race that many thought Orman had in the bag.

In West Virginia, Rep. (and now Senator-elect) Shelley Moore Capito (R) buried her pro-abortion opponent, Natalie Tennant, who was supported by Emily’s List. Rep. Capito has a mixed pro-life record (NARAL rated her 30% pro-abortion; National Right to Life rated her 55% pro-life).

In South Dakota, pro-life Republican former governor Mike Rounds (R) hammered pro-abortion Rick Weiland

In Iowa, pro-life state Sen. Joni Ernst (R) mocked the phony "war on women" tactics used by pro-abortion Rep. Bruce Braley (D), and easily won the open Senate seat.

Now that the American people have, in effect, fired the obstructionist Senator Reid, and elected a Republican majority, what will happen to all of the pending pro-life legislation in the new Congress? I think the prospects are very, very good that it will all be passed.

Remember here that each and every one of the new Republican Senators is strongly pro-life, members of the only political party in America that declares in its party platform that it opposes abortion. This means that come January, pro-lifers will once again have control of both houses of Congress.

Nor should the pro-life commitment of the new Senate Majority Leader be in doubt. Among other things, Senator McConnell has specificallypromised to bring the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act to the floor of the Senate for a vote. In fact, I fully expect that all of the pro-life bills mentioned above will be voted on—and passed—by the U.S. Senate. (Indeed, there is considerable sentiment in the Senate to return to the traditions of the Senate, debating and voting on each and every one of the more than three hundred bills passed by the House.)

Facing this tsunami of pro-life legislation, the President will probably be tempted to stand against the tide and shout “Stop!” And by wielding his veto, he can slow down America’s return to sanity when it comes to ensuring that the right to life of all Americans is protected.

By working together, however, pro-lifers in the House and Senate can still win. They can incorporate these common-sense, pro-life protections into other legislation that Obama wants to see passed. In this way, Obama would virtually be forced to sign such bills into law or risk losing funding for other programs that he values. Or they can repeatedly send the same legislation to the president, educating Americans in the importance of protecting the unborn in the process, building population pressure for a change.

None of this will be easy. It will require determination on the part of Congressional leaders, and persistence on the part of pro-life members to advance the cause of family, life, and faith. Abortion can be set on the road to gradual extinction.

After all, having lost control of both houses of Congress, and with his popularity plummeting, the occupant of the White House is now the lamest of lame ducks.

The pro-life Population Research Institute is dedicated to ending human rights abuses committed in the name of "family planning," and to ending counter-productive social and economic paradigms premised on the myth of "overpopulation." Find us at pop.org.

Population Research institute Releases New Video!

PRI has a new video! Our new video addresses a form of fertility management that is cost-free, pill-free, and free of coercion. The new video is titled: "Natural Family Planning: the Best Worst Thing Ever."

Watch the video. Get the facts. Share with friends.

Watch the video by clicking the image below: 

 

Article continues at http://pop.org/content/natural-family-planning


The pro-life Population Research Institute is dedicated to ending human rights abuses committed in the name of "family planning," and to ending counter-productive social and economic paradigms premised on the myth of "overpopulation." Find us at pop.org.

Population Control Movement Contains the Seeds of its Own Destruction (and Ours)

by Paul Wilson

Population Research Institute

One of the favorite claims of the population control movement is that the world is running out of resources: food, energy, and space. “There is plenty of evidence to suggest that humanity is already exceeding the planet’s limits and that we are reducing the earth’s capacity to support life, including human life,” purported Robert Walker, the president of the Population Institute, in a recent debate with our own Steven Mosher.

These—and similar dire predictions—have been bandied about for over two hundred years. The overpopulation drum-beaters repeatedly claim the imminent end of humanity, perpetually predicting earth-ending disaster just around the corner. These predictions, unsurprisingly, have not come to pass.

One, of course, might be tempted to dismiss the claims of population alarmists as the warnings of well-funded but harmless cranks. One might be tempted to wave them away with a rather cynical sort of amusement if government officials did not take their claims as dark gospel—and if their vision of population control was not exported to poorer countries, often by force.

It is therefore important to understand why their relentless claims of impending disaster never come to fruition. Population controllers falsely assume an arbitrarily static model of technological growth, coupled with an endlessly growing population—a “population bomb” without any advances to sustain ever-growing hordes.

In a certain sense, they are correct—if society did not advance technologically, and the population grew indefinitely, then the human race would not be able to provide enough necessities for its continued survival.

But that has never happened. The pace of technological advance has grown faster over time, making larger populations possible. In fact, the pace of advance has grown faster than the pace of population growth. Today, the world population is the largest it has ever been, yet the proportion of humans living in absolute poverty is the lowest it has ever been. This remarkable reality derives from the fact that human beings produce, as well as consume.

Because humans alone have the beautiful capacity to innovate, population control policies harm the very people they claim to help. Technological advance always comes from humans; it can never spring up from any other form of economic capital other than human capital. Alas, many in the corridors of power have bought into the claims that undesirable people (by which they often mean poor people in developing countries) must be reduced, or else the world will end in a sea of asphalt.

In short, the population control movement will create the very future it fears if its policies are adopted: a society stuck in economic stagnation, relying on the ever-diminishing resource of human ingenuity. By thinning the human population, you destroy the future. Humans are the world’s greatest resource.

The pro-life Population Research Institute is dedicated to ending human rights abuses committed in the name of "family planning," and to ending counter-productive social and economic paradigms premised on the myth of "overpopulation." Find us at pop.org.

Why Population Control is Bad Foreign Policy

A Defense of the Mexico City Policy

by Steven W. Mosher and Anne Roback Morse

The language of the e-mails is hyperbolic and hate-filled. They come from population control groups that are indignant about theHouse of Representatives Bill which would re-institute the Mexico City Policy.

They call it a “Mean-spirited, anti-women agenda.” And they say it’s “Playing ping-pong politics with women’s lives,” “Out of touch,” and “Inconsistent with U.S. policy.”

And that’s just in the headlines!

So just what is this “mean-spirited” Mexico City Policy? Put simply, it prohibits US taxpayer dollars from going to organizations which “promote or perform abortions” as a part of “population planning activities or other population assistance.”

What could be wrong with that? It’s a sensible policy, first put in place in 1986 under President Reagan, and which is supported by a majority of Americans. The fact is a substantial majority of Americans oppose using taxpayer money to fund abortions at home and certainly do not want to export it abroad.

Not so the population control lobbyists, however. They believe that they have a duty, no less than a right, to promote abortion everywhere in the world, especially where it is illegal. This is why they call the Mexico City Policy a “Global Gag Rule.” It “gags” them, preventing them from using U.S. taxpayer dollars to try and overturn existing pro-life laws in Africa and Latin America.

It also bars them from using U.S. taxpayer dollars to actually perform illegal abortions overseas. This infuriates them because they believe that abortion is a “woman’s right” regardless of what the local laws say.

Finally, they are convinced that abortion is necessary to control population growth and to save women from dying in childbirth. That is why they accuse pro-lifers of “killing women in the name of partisan politics.” (Never mind that the actual legislation contains a “life of the mother” exception; these people are not troubled by mere facts.)

There are multiple problems with the Obama administration’s policy of promoting and performing abortions everywhere in the developing world. Firstly, this undermines our efforts to promote democracy and human rights.  While the Senate version of the billcontains a pro forma prohibition on lobbying (“none of the funds made available under this act may be used to lobby for or against abortion”), the efforts of International Planned parenthood Federation and other U.S.-funded population control groups to legalize abortion in country after country are well-known and will continue--prohibition or no prohibition.  

Such efforts not only violate local laws, they undermine our foreign relations. It creates a very bad impression when the United States, in conjunction with the major colonial powers, tells countries only recently freed from colonial domination that they should abort a good percentage of the next generation. Pushing abortion on underdeveloped nations through “population planning” programs only serves to remind their citizens of their not-so-distant past as conquered peoples.

Last year, a young Nigerian woman wrote a passionate plea to U.S. pro-lifers complaining about the programs of our government:

“We are thirsty and they give us condoms! We are hungry and they offer us contraceptive pills! We are sick and they offer us the most modern techniques of abortion! We are naked and they lead us into the arms of sexual hedonism! We are imprisoned by poverty and they offer us sexual liberation!!! Silent tears roll down for Africa in a modern world that can neither see our pain nor hear our cry for help.”

She was spot on. The Obama administration is more interested in aborting the thirsty, sterilizing the hungry, and contracepting the naked than engaging in true charity. It is more interested in funding its abortion-minded U.S. partners (in return for votes and campaign contributions) than in actually helping people on foreign shores.

Reinstituting the Mexico City Policy would not stop all of this abuse and corruption, but it would be a start. It would protect women from the worst excesses of population control efforts and help to salvage our country’s image around the world.

Let your Congressman and Senator know that you support the Mexico City Policy. It will save lives.

* The House version of the bill, H.R. 5013, can be found here: https://beta.congress.gov/113/bills/hr5013/BILLS-113hr5013rh.pdf

* The Senate version of the bill, S 2499 can be found here: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-113s2499pcs/pdf/BILLS-113s2499pcs.pdf

The pro-life Population Research Institute is dedicated to ending human rights abuses committed in the name of "family planning," and to ending counter-productive social and economic paradigms premised on the myth of "overpopulation." Find us at pop.org.

Why Normal People Should Care About “Baby Busts”

by Anne Morse
Population Research Institute

Long, long ago, when Anne’s parents were in college (sorry, mom and dad), demographers made an observation: they saw that for most of human history, even though couples were having far more than two children, mortality was also very high. The result was that populations either stayed the same or grew very slowly.

Then, with the advent of modern medicine, our life expectancy doubled, and then doubled again. And, not unexpectedly, our population doubled, and then doubled again, as well.

Population alarmists saw this doubling as the harbinger of catastrophe: “The world is ending!” “We’ll breed ourselves to death!” “Famine!” “No more personal space!”

But demographers developed a theory: since fertility and mortality had complimented each other for most of human history, and demographers predicted that they would one day soon do so again. Mortality would fall first, and then fertility would follow. After a while, things would be back in balance.

For a while, this theory of the “demographic transition” seemed to work just fine. Countries modernized, mortality fell, and fertility, after a lag, followed the same downward path.
But instead of stabilizing at 2.1 children per couple or so—zero population growth—as the demographers expected, fertility continued to fall.

A growing number countries—Romania, Greece, Japan, Taiwan, and the Ukraine among them—now have fertility rates hovering between 1.1 and 1.4 children per woman.
For the first time in human history, otherwise prosperous and secure societies see their numbers shrinking: Russia is losing 750 people per day. Germany is losing over 600 people per day. Japan is losing 450 per day.

Demographers call this “lowest low” fertility, but they have no idea how “low” it will actually go. Nobody does.

Among the factors driving fertility downward is the radical redefining of human sexuality that has occurred over the past half-century. Don’t blame the demographers for failing to see this coming: it is something new in human history.

Over the last half century, the pill and the sexual revolution have changed the sexual dynamic so dramatically that previous paradigms no longer apply. Economic security and mortality, which once dominated reproductive decisions, now only play small, tertiary roles.

Once upon a time sex produced children—unless you acted to prevent conception. Now, intercourse is expected to be sterile, unless you choose to deviate from the norm and stop contracepting. As Ron Lesthaeghe wrote in the 2010  Population and Development Review “during the first transition, couples chose to adopt contraception in order to avoid pregnancies; during the second, the basic decision is [whether or not] to stop contraception in order to start a pregnancy.”

Sterile sex is the new baseline. In countries going through this second demographic transition, having children is increasingly viewed as aberrant social behavior. This is especially true if a couple is having their second or third child.

The reasoning behind when to have children and how many children to have has changed as well. Couples once asked themselves: “Do we need to space our children right now?” or “How many children can we care for right now?”

This concern about the well-being of one’s present and future children has been replaced by an emphasis on self. As Lesthaeghe wrote, reproduction mainly occurs after, “a prolonged ‘process of self-questioning and self-confrontation by prospective parents. . .in which the pair will weigh a great many issues, including direct costs and opportunity costs, but their guiding light will be the outcome of self-confrontation. Would a conception and having a child be self-fulfilling?”’

The population controllers—who are still obsessed with the numbers—are now attempting to impose this indubitably flawed model of sex onto the women of less-developed countries. Perhaps if they looked gave an honest look at another set of numbers (namely, that half of the world lives in a society with below-replacement fertility) they would acknowledge it as a serious symptom of a larger social change. Instead, they continue to force this flawed part of our culture on less developed countries. They are undermining marriage, harming children, and compromising the long-term health of society as a result.

Don’t get us wrong.  We are not concerned with imploding fertility because we are obsessed with population numbers. In fact, we are bemused as governments attempt to bribe women into having children without realizing that the whole calculus of having children has changed.

We are concerned because imploding fertility has consequences far beyond the number of workers a country may or may not have in a certain year. It reflects a revolutionary sexual and social dynamic that changes everything, not just the number of children borne.

This new dynamic changes the age at which we have kids, whom we have them with, and our relationships with them. It changes the calculus of the long-term monogamous relationships that we call marriage; it means that ever greater percentages of children will grow up without one or more of their biological parents in the house; it isolates more and more people in one-person households; and it leads to more and more divorce.

We have not just lowered our birth rate or changed the way we view sex, we have, in a very real sense, dissolved the glue that holds society together.

That is to say, the family.


The pro-life Population Research Institute is dedicated to ending human rights abuses committed in the name of "family planning," and to ending counter-productive social and economic paradigms premised on the myth of "overpopulation." Find us at pop.org.

A Call to Action

One Woman’s Story Calls Readers to Confront the “Brutal Reality” of Chinese Life

by Walter Lohman and Olivia Enos

In the most recent edition of his book, A Mother's Ordeal, Steven Mosher presents a riveting account of one woman's journey through motherhood in China under the one child policy. A Mother's Ordeal gives faces to the repressive population control policies of the People’s Republic of China and helps an outsider understand the excruciating dilemma it presents couples in China.

The book chronicles the life of a young and talented nurse, Chi-An, as she struggles to mesh the lofty promises of the Chinese Communist Party with the shocking realities of their policies. As a loyal member of the party and a medical professional, Chi-An initially did not question the logic and moral correctness of the one child policy. When her patients came in begging her not to terminate their pregnancy, Chi-An viewed them as traitors to the Communist party rather than as mothers.

It wasn't until Chi-An married her loving husband, Wei Xin, and she became pregnant with their first child that she began to question the merits of the policy. After being forced to abort her second child, Chi-An was devastated, but in need of a job, she took a position as a member of the population control unit at a factory. There she took out her anger and bitterness over the loss of her own child by coercing other young women to abort.

Chi-An’s decision to work as a population control officer, while shocking to many Americans, is understandable when seen in the context of Chi-An’s tenuous role as a lower class member of Chinese society. Having grown up during Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, Chi-An knew that disagreement with the one child policy would not be permitted. The book provides a broader context for understanding the impact of communism on the individual and the expansive nature of control that such a regime possesses.

Through Chi-An’s story, Mosher sheds light on how the Chinese have engineered a system and maintained such tight control over the size of its population. In fact, it is through the use of average Chinese citizens like Chi-An, that the government has enforced compliance with the one child policy and aborted an estimated 336 million boys and girls.

Chi-An forced countless women to abort their babies. Making nightly calls to their home, isolating them from family and friends to force a decision, and ultimately leading them to end their pregnancies and be sterilized, all in the name of the Communist party. She too, had been solicited nightly by population control workers, and disdained their very presence. But now, due to societal pressure and necessity, she had become one of them.

Throughout the book, the reader is not just a bystander, but a participant in Chi-An's struggle to rationalize the policies of the Chinese government. The reader is asked to understand Chi-An's challenges as a mother grieving the loss of her unborn child, while simultaneously asked to comprehend the pressures that Chi-An faces to enforce the stringent quotas of the one child policy.

Chi-An's account of life in China, arguably has greater credence, because she was an insider. She bore witness to the newly aborted babies born fully alive and left to die in trash cans. She saw doctors crush the skulls of newborns before they exited the birth canal. Chi-An was, in many ways, an accomplice in all these acts. And yet, Chi-An was also a victim of the one child policy, having been pestered by population control workers and eventually forced to abort her own baby.

After Wei Xin secured a prestigious position to study abroad in the U.S., Chi-An was left as a single mother caring for her only child until she was afforded the opportunity to join her husband at the university. Upon her arrival in the States, she unexpectedly became pregnant with their third child. Much to Chi-An's chagrin, the Chinese government deemed that the one child policy applied to Chinese couples abroad and began pressuring her from China to abort her child.

Chi-An and her family were eventually granted asylum in America and allowed to keep their third child due to the persecution they faced from Chinese officials to abort. While Chi-An escaped the menace of the one child policy, not all Chinese women are so lucky.

A Mother's Ordeal encourages the reader to confront the brutal and raw reality of Chinese communism and forces the reader to ask themselves how family matters ever became such an integral part of the government’s business.  Short of China’s authoritarian context, the story provides a framework for discussion of government, and leads one to the conclusion that that a government’s role is to protect people’s liberties, not to create, define, or restrict them.

Most importantly, Chi-An's story is not a relic of the past, but a story of the present. Countless Chinese women, daily face the pressure of the one child policy forcing them to abort their children and get sterilized.

A Mother’s Ordeal is as much a story as it is a call to action—a call to protect the rights of the unborn, to reflect on the proper role of government, and to be reminded of the suffering faced by modern women in China. While Chi-An’s story is a landmark case, the fight against the one child policy is far from over.

You can purchase A Mother’s Ordeal here.

Walter Lohman is the Director of The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center. Olivia Enos is a Research Assistant at the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center.

The pro-life Population Research Institute is dedicated to ending human rights abuses committed in the name of "family planning," and to ending counter-productive social and economic paradigms premised on the myth of "overpopulation." Find us at pop.org.

Exposing Population Control: Tanzania

by Steven W. Mosher and Anne Roback Morse The East African country of Tanzania suffers from many challenges, but overpopulation is not one of them. The subtropical country has a land area larger than California, Michigan, Arizona, and Virginia combined, and a population only about the size of California’s and Virginia’s combined. But if you look at the website of USAID, the United States federal agency responsible for foreign aid, you might think that Tanzania was dangerously overpopulated. That’s how it justifies ignoring real health needs in favor of funding mostly drugs and devices to stop people from having children. 16% of children under five in Tanzania are underweight[1] yet USAID only spends 20 cents on nutrition for every dollar they spend on contraception.[2] One in nine Tanzanian children will die before their fifth birthday[3] and Tanzanian women have a one out of 23 lifetime risk of maternal death.[4] Yet USAID only spend 36 cents on maternal and child health for every dollar they spend on contraception.[5] Only 12% of the entire country has use of improved sanitation facilities (a flushable toilet or a ventilated improved pit latrine)[6] and fewer than half of children with diarrhea receive rehydration salts.[7] Yet USAID only spends 23 cents on water and sanitation for every dollar it spends on contraception.[8] USAID might justify their statistics if the Tanzanian people were desperately pleading for more contraception. But they are not. Maybe the United States government could justify spending more on contraception than it spends on maternal health, child health, water, sanitation, nutrition, and tuberculosis combined  in one of the poorest countries in the world (GDP per capita is $1,700 per year[9]) Yes, maybe it could justify its funding discrepancies if Tanzanian women wanted, more than anything, to stop having children. But they don’t. Those who say that the women of Tanzania want boatloads of U.S. contraceptives point to the fact that the average Tanzanian woman has 5.4 children.[10] They are shocked that, despite this reproductive profligacy, the contraceptive prevalence rate is only 34%.[11] But what do the women of Tanzania (as opposed to the women who work in the Obama administration) want? It turns out that they want children. According to surveys, ⅔ of Tanzanian women who have four living children don’t desire to stop childbearing.[12] Half of Tanzanian women who have five children don’t want to limit childbearing, and ⅓ of women with six or more living children don’t want to limit childbearing.[13] These desires accurately reflect the 5.4 fertility rate observed in the country. The *low* contraceptive prevalence rate of 34% is misleading as well. Over 60% of unmarried women and over 50% of married women in their twenties have used modern contraceptives at some point.[14] But they stopped using them. Can you guess why? Population control advocates would have you believe that women only stop using contraception because of issues of cost or access. Wrong. In fact, fewer than 1% of Tanzanian women stopped using contraception because of cost. And more Tanzanian women stop using contraception because of “infrequent sex” than issues of access.[15] The primary reason that the women of Tanzania discontinue the use of contraception is to become pregnant. The second most common reason is that they dislike the way that contraceptive drugs and devices affect their bodies and their health. The third most common reason for discontinuing is that they are currently pregnant. Together, these three reasons total 70% of the reasons that Tanzanian women give for discontinuing the contraceptives provided by unwitting U.S. taxpayers.[16] And the population controllers at USAID don’t like it one bit! How dare these women make their own reproductive choices, they seem to say. Why can’t they all be like Sandra Fluke, swallowing their free contraceptives without a qualm and demanding more? Well, perhaps it’s because they value all family sizes, large and small alike. Perhaps they also understand that Tanzania is not overpopulated. Perhaps they understand that their children are not dying from lack of contraception, but from water-borne diseases and lack of medical care. The inability of USAID to shed its outdated notions of overpopulation would almost be funny if so many Tanzanian children weren’t dying in consequence. You would think that Obama, who styles himself an anti-imperialist, would be more sympathetic to the desires of the African people. Instead he has doubled down on reproductive imperialism, spending more money to abort, sterilize and contracept the African (and Asian and Latin American) people than ever before. The next time he goes on an “apology tour” overseas, we suggest that he apologize for pushing abortion, sterilization and contraception on people who are crying out for clean drinking water, food, and basic health care. (Image is a screen shot from the USAID website [1] "Central Intelligence Agency." The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency, n.d. Web. 9, April, 2014. <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/tz.html>. [2] "Health in Tanzania." Dollars to Results. USAID, n.d. Web. 09 Apr. 2014. <http://results.usaid.gov/tanzania/health#fy2012>. [3] "Trends." Tanzania. World Health Organization, n.d. Web. 09 Apr. 2014. <http://www.who.int/pmnch/activities/countries/tanzania/en/index1.html>. [4] "Lifetime Risk of Maternal Death." Data Finder. Population Reference Bureau, n.d. Web. 09 Apr. 2014. <http://www.prb.org/DataFinder/Topic/Rankings.aspx?ind=247>. [5] "Health in Tanzania." Dollars to Results. USAID. [6] "Central Intelligence Agency." The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency, n.d. Web. 9, April, 2014. <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/tz.html>. [7] "Tanzania, United Republic of." UNICEF. UNICEF, 31 Dec. 2013. Web. 09 Apr. 2014. <http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/tanzania_statistics.html>. [8] "Health in Tanzania." Dollars to Results. USAID. [9] "Central Intelligence Agency." The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency, n.d. Web. 9, April, 2014. <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/tz.html>. [10] "Tanzania." Data Finder. Population Reference Bureau, n.d. Web. 09 Apr. 2014. <http://www.prb.org/DataFinder/Geography/Data.aspx?loc=289>. [11] Ibid. [12] "STATcompiler." STATcompiler. Demographic and Health Surveys, 09 Apr. 2014. <http://www.statcompiler.com/>. [13] Ibid. [14] Ibid. [15] Ibid. [16] Ibid.     The pro-life Population Research Institute is dedicated to ending human rights abuses committed in the name of "family planning," and to ending counter-productive social and economic paradigms premised on the myth of "overpopulation." Find us at pop.org.