The world population today is estimated at around six billion inhabitants. The facts indicate there are world demographic problems, such as distribution of food resources, of agricultural know-how, of hygiene, the natural regulation of birth, as well as the added factors of consumerism and corruption. Current concern around the world about overpopulation came to public notice about 1970 when there was a renewed interest in the 1798 publication of Rev. Thomas Maltus’ “Essay on the Principles of World Population”. He believed that the power of population was indefinitely greater than the power of the earth to produce subsistence for mankind. His equation became obsolete due to the great advances in agricultural and food storage, and processing technological innovations.
World overpopulation is a myth that has been promoted by the wealthy who insist that their future is threatened by the numerical mass of the poor. “Rich countries perceive population numbers in the third world as a threat to their security” (The New World Order and Demographic Security, Msgr. Michel Schooyans, 1995). They maintain that people are poor because they are too numerous. In actuality, the reverse is what can happen: “People can become too numerous because they are poor”. Population is relative to a given situation, which can be changed by man’s intervention, providing he has the moral and political desire to do so. The wealthy countries promote the doctrine of living space for their own profit, intending to preserve their well-being, claiming pre-emptive rights over natural resources, knowledge and know-how. They wish to prevent the emergence of potential rivals (e.g.: population of China: 1,225,400,000; population of India: 969,963,000).
Their propaganda is often accompanied by a warning to people about the deterioration of the environment and exhaustion of natural resources. Reason asserts, however, that it is not possible to determine the limits of the sustaining capacity of the earth, for one cannot determine the limit of man’s ability to intervene in the world. Man can change situations by organization, teaching, and supplying equipment. Intervention must always have respect for the principle of subsidiarity and the fundamental rights of man, which are the basis of democracy. Public authority should not use any means, at any price. The fact is that limiting population at any cost is a priority for many United Nations organizations (e.g.: World Bank, UNFPA, UNICEF, USAID, CIDA, World Health Organization, and International Planned Parenthood Federation). They promote inhuman Malthusian policies in massive, scandalous campaigns, usually involving compulsory measures of fertility control, advocating contraception, sterilization, and abortion as their solution. The mass male and female sterilization campaign in India in 1954 and 1976 led to the downfall of Mrs. Gandhi’s government. She and her son wanted to impose obligatory sterilization. In Brazil and Mexico, 40% of the women using fertility control methods had been sterilized. In Peru, in 1997, a governmental sterilization campaign, which involved over 100,000 women, was carried out by the public health department, thereby violating their human rights.
Pope John Paul II has stated that human rights transcend every constitutional order. These rights are inherent in every person. They do not result from a conscience which is open to negotiation depending upon the forces or self-interest that may be present. The very existence of these rights, recognized and solemnly declared in 1948, does not depend on the relative quality of the formulation, which exists in constitutions and laws. Every constitution, every law, which would attempt to limit the possession of these declared rights, or to modify their meaning, should immediately be denounced as discriminatory, and as suggested by the preamble of the declaration, as suspect of totalitarian ferments (excerpt: from Declaration of the Pontifical Council for the Family on Decrease of Fertility in the World, Feb. 27, 1998).
We are witnessing, today, the execution of a program of social engineering by death-peddlers - death-managers whose object is to execute a scientific program for the destruction of future eventual enemies. The great harm being done now by the organizations that attack human life, such as Planned Parenthood, has surpassed the combined deeds of Hitler and Stalin. The powerful people of the world, put to work for their own profit, the doctrine of living space, which their precursors invoked in favour of race. Nazi Germany regulated abortion, facilitated it for the so-called impure races, but opposed it for the Aryan race. Hitler's Germany organized sterili-zation, abortion, and euthanasia as well, as their “final solution” (i.e.: gas chambers). Society today imitates them with our “death clinics”.
The Church has never claimed that it is easy to reach a regulation of birth, in a given population, by honourable methods. She considers responsible paternity and maternity as written in God’s design. She encourages natural methods of birth regulation (i.e.: Natural Family Panning - W.O.O.M.B.). She rejects contraception, sterilization, and abortion, as dishonourable and inhuman methods, which lead to chaos and catastrophe. Human sexuality is in the domain of freedom and human responsibility and cannot be delegated to technicians or abandoned to technique. Her social doctrine teaches it is not man who is made for the market but the market for man. She teaches that the problems of development and population result from egoism, materialism, injustice, incompetence, laziness, corruption, imbalance in distribution of wealth, and poor organization. She says that demographic problems must be examined, but affirms above all that the problems, occasioned as much by demographic growth as by implosion, are first of all of a moral nature. Their solution is made difficult by reason of the structures of sin, which brings about innumerable distortions in the process of development. The answers to these problems are the rights of man - respect, justice, peace, solidarity, and love. The tragedy is that many refuse to put their life style on trial, refuse to convert, and are led to call into question the rights of the most destitute to live.
The fact is that world growth has slowed as evidenced in the drop in fertility in numerous developing countries* (i.e.: in 133 developing countries with a total population of 4,845,697,000, the fertility rate has decreased from 6.2 in 1965 to 3.4 in 1997 - a decrease of 46%). The apparent main reason given for this demographic collapse was that for the sake of credibility, the rich developed countries had to ‘give the example’ of accepting, adopting and legalizing contraception, sterilization and abortion, before they could indoctrinate the Third World countries to imitate them (i.e.: in 58 developing countries where the population totals 1,052,813,000, fertility rates decreased from 2.5 in 1965 to 1.9 in 1997, a 24% decrease). The irony is that in spreading these anti-life practices in an attempt to keep control over the Third World countries, there was a boomerang effect and developed countries became the first victims of their own anti-life propaganda. +
*The available fertility index reports vary but give some indication of the problem: United Kingdom: 1.9; Belgium: 1.62; Germany: 1.5; Spain: 1.2; Italy: 1.1; Poland: 2.1; France: 1.7; Ireland: 1.8; U.S.A: 2.1; Canada: 1.8; Japan: 1.5; Russia: 1.56; Brazil: 1.8; China: 1.8; India: 3.6; Iran: 5.9; Mexico: 2.7; Ethiopia: 7.1; Pakistan: 6.0; Nigeria: 6.3; Philippines: 3.6; Bangladesh: 4.3; Rwanda: 8.6; Uganda: 7.4; Afghanistan: 6.9; Saudi Arabia: 6.2; Australia: 1.8; etc. (National Demographics Summary, 1997, The Facts of Life, HLI, pp. 356-375).