Underpopulation—The Real Problem | Michael J. Miller | Catholic World Report
Steven W. Mosher on the world’s demographic crisis
Population Research Institute (PRI) is a non-profit research organization with headquarters in Front Royal, Virginia and a global network of affiliated pro-life groups. The president of PRI is Steven W. Mosher. He recently spoke to CWR.
In a weekly online poll called “YouCut”—where US citizens can vote for the wasteful federal program they would most like to discontinue—the United Nations Fund for Population Activities was a candidate in May 2011, and it “won.” Representative Renee Ellmers introduced a bill to terminate contributions to the UNFPA, which has been referred to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Please comment.
Steven Mosher: More and more Americans are waking up to the fact that the UN Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) is involved with some of the most horrific population control programs the world has ever seen. In China, for example, we at the Population Research Institute have documented that the UNFPA’s “model country” program is rife with human rights abuses, including forced abortions and forced sterilizations. Not only that, but couples who have more than one child are hit with crippling fines equivalent to three to five year’s income. These “social compensation fees,” as they are called, are deliberately set high in order to bully mothers into having abortions.
It gets worse. The UNFPA directly supports and helps to manage China’s forced-pace program by supplying computers and sterilization/abortion equipment to China’s family planning police. The computers allow the police to track all women of childbearing age and target those who get pregnant “out-of-plan.” And [the UNFPA] promotes exporting China’s one-child policies to other countries.
I have fought to defund the UNFPA for 30 years, but it has been a seesaw battle all the way. We won the first round when President Reagan and his successor agreed that the UNFPA was illegally supporting forced abortions and forced sterilizations in China, but lost the second when Bill Clinton took office and turned a blind eye to these abuses.
We went on the offensive again with the election of President George W. Bush. Based largely on evidence that we had gathered, on July 21, 2002 Secretary of State Colin Powell dropped the ax: “UNFPA’s support of, and involvement in, China’s population-planning activities allows the Chinese government to implement more effectively its program of coercive abortion. Therefore, it is not permissible to continue funding UNFPA at this time.”
There matters remained until the election of Barack Obama who, ignoring the evidence, once again began funneling money to the UN organization. Meanwhile, the population control agency appears determined to mire itself even more deeply in the muck of China’s program. The agency continues to expand its program in China, and has signed a new agreement with the government there that will run through 2012.
Even if this UN organization were not complicit in human rights abuses, it would still make no sense to fund it. Overpopulation is one of the myths of the century now past. The reality of our present century is the growing problem of underpopulation. As birth rates continue to fall worldwide, we need to abolish the UN Fund for Population Activities before it does any more harm.
Demographers estimate that in late 2011 the world’s population will reach seven billion. It is said to have reached the six billion mark in October of 1999. Doesn’t this rapid increase vindicate the population control movement?
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