This month we present an article by Steven Mosher, President of the Population Research Institute. This organization is dedicated to stopping human rights abuses committed in the name of “family planning,” and to dispel the myth of overpopulation argued by many in our society since the 1960’s.
Do you recall seeing those posters of the planet earth with people falling off the sides? The inference is that there are too many humans on the planet, so we need to not only stop the population from growing but also decrease it. Such images, although without merit, are powerful and have a lasting impact.
Mosher’s writings demonstrate that overpopulation is false, and that the efforts of population controllers to reduce the number of humans have led to massive human rights abuses and undermined the health of women and children. We had the opportunity to hear Mr. Mosher’s powerful talk about his experiences in China and how that nation enforces its one child per family law through forced sterilization and abortion injustices. Please take some time to review his website at www.pop.org.
Before you read his article, consider how the population myth may have crept into our state. How has it affected our attitudes towards having children? A review of the South Dakota Department of Health’s Vital Statistics Report shows that there has been a significant decrease in the number of resident live births.
Here is the number of live births in South Dakota over the past 40 years:
1960 17,594
1965 13,692
1970 11,717
1975 11,294
1980 13,256
1985 12,129
1990 10,987
1995 10,470
1997 10,168
1998 10,281
1999 10,516
2000 10,346
2001 10,475
2002 10,698

Thankfully, 1997 was the rock bottom, and we are now seeing the birth rate slowly increase. However, this decrease in the births by almost one third since 1960 has, without a doubt, been influenced by the overpopulation myth. This harmful attitude, along with the contraception mentality found in our culture today, and the total number of abortions in South Dakota (826 in 2002 alone), has had a detrimental affect on our state in many areas, one being the decreasing enrollment found in our schools.

USAID unleashes more population control

Steven Mosher
President
Population Research Institute
Front Royal, VA

Even though the rate of world population growth is in rapid decline, and mortality rates throughout the developing world are at an all-time high, USAID’s contribution to a new report on global population is this: send more family planning.
The rate of the world’s overall population growth peaked in 1989-90, with the world’s population growing by 87 million people, then began to decline. In 2002, the world’s overall population grew by 74 million, 13 million less than the peak year. It is expected that this slowdown in the world’s overall population growth will continue into the foreseeable future.(1)
According to a new report by the U.S. Census Bureau, “The slowdown in the growth of the world’s population can be traced primarily to declines in fertility.” In 2002, the bureau points out, “the world’s women, on average, were giving birth to 2.6 children over their lifetime,” (2) or roughly half of the world’s total fertility rate in 1950. (3)
Alarmingly, the bureau predicts that “the level of fertility for the world as a whole will drop below replacement level by 2050.”(4)
The report notes that the HIV/AIDS pandemic has contributed to the decline in world’s population growth. Twenty million people worldwide have died of
AIDS. “Barring some major breakthrough,” the forty million people worldwide who are now living with HIV are expected to die within the next 10 years. Over 30 percent of all children born to HIV infected mothers in
Sub-Saharan Africa will be HIV positive.(5) High rates of mortality, combined with lower levels of fertility, will lower the average life expectancy at birth to around 30 years by 2010, a level not seen since the beginning of the 20th century.
Despite this coming demise of the human species, the bureau claims that over 100 million women in the world today have an “unmet need” for contraception.(6) How can the U.S. Census Bureau make this claim, given
the greater unmet need for HIV/AIDS prevention and basic life-saving aid? The answer to this is that the Bureau for Global Health of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has contributed
largely to this report, one quarter of which includes an assessment of contraceptive prevalence in the developing world.
Many developed countries in the world today are already facing severe economic and societal challenges because of under-population. And many developing nations will likely never develop before absolute population decline strikes hard, due to pressures to increase contraceptive use and lower fertility in the face of record-high mortality rates. By 2050, the bureau predicts, the global fertility rate will be below replacement.(7)
When this happens, population collapse is imminent. Social and economic collapse will follow.
As birth rates fall into the cellar, it’s important for the U.S.
government to stop spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars each year on programs designed to lower the number of babies born even further. The U.S. government must abandon its thirty-year effort to contracept and sterilize the world. USAID’s Office of Population must be shut down. And all population monies must be shifted to pro-natal programs. Otherwise the looming threat of global depopulation will become a devastating reality.
It’s time for the population control movement to call off the dogs. The population explosion it predicted never happened. The anti-natalists should pack up their tents and go home.

ENDNOTES
1. U.S. Census Bureau, “Global Population Profile: 2002,” March 2004.
2. Ibid.
3. U.N. Population Division, World Population Prospects, The 2000 Revision.
4. U.S. Census Bureau.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
© 2001 Population Research Institute. Reprinted with permission.

More information available from the Population
Research Institute

You can reach the Population Research Institute (PRI) at 1190 Progress Drive, Suite 2D, P.O. Box 1559, Front Royal, VA 22630 or by telephone at 540-622-5240 or on line at www.pop.org.
The Population Research Institute offers two FREE pamphlets.
The first pamphlet is called “Room For More…Population and the Environment–Setting the Record Straight” which debunks the top five overpopulation myths.
The second pamphlet is called “Ten Great Reasons to Have Another Child” which briefly lists ten reasons why children are a blessing (not a burden), photos of babies or families, and provides a quote from scripture or a saint.