• See also "Russian Birth Rate Decline"   or "Underpopulation the Real Problem"

Contact: Larry Jacobs, Don Feder, 815-964-5819, 513-515-3685 cell

MEDIA ADVISORY, Aug. 13 /Christian Newswire/ -- World Congress of Families expressed satisfaction that the British Broadcasting System (BBC) has finally acknowledged something the Congress has been talking about for years – that Europe is being enveloped in demographic winter.

According to a BBC report broadcast earlier this month, "Population levels across many parts of the developed world are declining, but this is particularly noticeable in former Eastern Bloc states, where the number of children being born has plummeted within a generation." The BBC noted that "In 1974, 100,000 babies were born in Slovakia – now barely 50,000 a year."

World Congress of Families International Secretary Allan C. Carlson observed: "Of the 10 nations with the lowest birthrates worldwide, nine are in Europe. According to the European Union, the average birthrate for the continent is 1.37 children per woman – well below replacement level (roughly 2.1)

Eastern European and the former Soviet Union are particularly hard hit. The birthrate for the Czech Republic is 1.18, for Russia 1.26 and for Belarus, 1.21. Russia's population is contracting by three-quarters of a million a year. Absent massive immigration, it's expected to lose half its population by the middle of this century.

But Western Europe is also experiencing serious population decline. In the next 50 years, Germany could lose the equivalent of the population of the former East Germany.

"The media is just beginning to grapple with an impending crisis that the World Congress of Families has been talking about for years," Carlson declared. "At World Congress of Families II, in Geneva in 1999, Francisco Tatad, then a member of the Philippine Senate, warned of Europe's coming population bust."

"Fewer children and a graying population will create a series of crises Europeans are only beginning to discern," Carlson disclosed, "including severe labor shortages, declining tax revenue supporting spiraling social budgets and fewer and fewer active adults to care for more and more elderly."

Carlson called on Europe's leaders to begin exploring pro-family solutions to a looming catastrophe.

World Congress of Families IV (Warsaw, May 11-13) had as its slogan, "Beyond Demographic Winter – The Natural Family as the Springtime of Nations." For a copy of The Warsaw Report on WCF IV, go to www.worldcongress.org.

To schedule an interview with Allan Carlson, contact Larry Jacobs, global coordinator of World Congress of Families, at 1-800-461-3113 or larry@worldcongress.org.

Population Reaches 300M But Overpopulation Concerns Don't Exist

by Jonah Goldberg
October 22, 2006

LifeNews.com Note: Jonah Goldberg is the editor at large of National Review Online.

As I write this, America’s population reportedly has passed the 300 million mark. The most remarkable aspect of this landmark event is how unremarkable it really is.

“If I had my way, I would build a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace, with a military band playing softly, and a Cinematograph working brightly, and then I’d go out in back streets and main streets and bring them all in, all the sick ... the maimed; I would lead them gently, and they would smile me a weary thanks ...”

That was D. H. Lawrence daydreaming about population control. He was hardly alone. During the so-called Progressive Era, “enlightened” social planners were convinced that overpopulation was the gravest problem facing Western society. That’s why Lawrence gave “three cheers for the inventors of poison gas.”

George Bernard Shaw, a thoroughgoing eugenicist, believed that the “the majority of men at present in Europe have no business to be alive.” H. G. Wells smiled at the prospect that the “swarms of black and brown and dirty-white and yellow people” will “have to go.” In America, Wells’s onetime girlfriend, Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, argued that birth control was essential to stem the rising tide of the unfit. Leading feminists, Progressive economists and legal theorists shared a similar vision. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who concluded in the case of Buck v. Bell that the state had the power to forcibly sterilize “defectives,” believed that forced population control was at the very heart of Progressive reform.

The Holocaust diminished the popularity of eugenics, but the panic over overpopulation endured. Paul Ehrlich, author of the scaremongering “The Population Bomb,” predicted in 1970 that between 1980 and 1989, roughly 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would starve or otherwise meet their doom in the “Great Die-Off.” Inspired by such fears, Alan Guttmacher, the former president of Planned Parenthood, was a champion of coerced birth control — i.e. “compulsory sterilization and compulsory abortion” — throughout much of the world.

Today, overpopulation anxieties pale by comparison to years past. But simply because people aren't proposing mass murder and forced sterilizations — or predicting that twice the population of California will starve to death in a country where obesity dwarfs hunger as a health concern — hardly means current anxieties are reasonable.

These days, overpopulation is primarily a hang-up for environmentalists, though suburbanites and feminists occasionally whine about it, too. And an important part of the argument has changed. While before, Progressives were worried about the “muck” at the low end of the global population, they're now vexed by the fat cats at the top.

by Matt C. Abbott
June 2, 2005

LifeNews.com Note: Matt C. Abbott is the former executive director of the Illinois Right to Life Committee and the former director of public affairs for the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League. He is a Catholic journalist and commentator.

During the last three decades, the issue of overpopulation -- or perceived overpopulation --has been discussed in various capacities. The primary instigators of these discussions have been the radical environmentalists, the radical animal rights activists, and certain wealthy elites in our Western society. All of these groups more or less assert that human beings are destroying the planet. There are too many of us, they say. Hence, we must utilize "family planning" (read: abortion, contraception, sterilization), even in a coercive manner, to limit the number of people born into the world.

As a result of this elitist, anti-life mentality, also known as the "contraceptive mentality," several countries, including the U.S., are steeped in what the late Pope John Paul II called a culture of death. In third world countries, abortion, contraception and sterilization seemingly abound; yet the most basic needs of food, clean water and medicine are often lacking. Why is this so? It would seem that international organizations such as the United Nations and Planned Parenthood are more interested in reducing the population of those less fortunate than in working to promote authentic economic development in underdeveloped countries.

The main questions involving this matter, I submit, are these: Is the world indeed overpopulated? What can be done to promote economic development and responsible parenthood in a way that is morally acceptable to virtually everyone?

The assertion that the world is overpopulated is essentially a myth. In a January 29, 2005 address given by Cesare Bonivento, Roman Catholic bishop of Papua New Guinea, at the Family Life International Symposium held in Papua New Guinea, Bishop Bonivento cited a 2003 report issued by the United Nations Population Division warning that "future fertility levels in most developing countries will likely fall below 2.1 children per woman, the level needed to ensure the long-term replacement of the population. By 2050, the UN document says, three out of every four countries in the less developed regions will be experiencing below-replacement fertility, with all developed countries far below replacement level as well."

Bishop Bonivento continued: "The deeper reductions in fertility will have as a consequence a faster aging of the population of developing countries, and this aging will stress social security systems. Globally, the number of older persons (60 years or over) will nearly triple, increasing from 606 million in 2000 to nearly 1.9 billion by 2050."

Interestingly, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) released a report in 2004 predicting "that the world's population will increase by almost 40% by 2050, to 8.9 billion inhabitants" and that "such a demographic increase is an obstacle for development and for the environment."

Bishop Bonivento gave the following observation for the aforementioned contradictory report: "Why such an evidently contradictory evaluation? Because the warnings of the other UN agencies and of the demographers are jeopardizing UNFPA's effort to curb the population with any means, including legal abortion. UNFPA is the agency supporting the Chinese one-child policy, which includes forced abortion for women having a second child."

Now, what can be done to foster economic development in third world countries? According to Dr. Brian Clowes, author and researcher for Human Life International (www.hli.org), such a program would: "provide basic health care and prenatal care to women and children, thereby dramatically reducing infant mortality rates; build road systems and bridges to remote areas, thus promoting regional economic self-sufficiency; help break down artificial economic barriers, such as family-run utility monopolies and overly complicated procedures for securing permits in order to start small businesses, thereby stimulating healthy competition; improve agricultural production with rural electrification, mechanization and adequate grain storage, thereby improving nutrition; provide clean running water to villages, reducing endemic diseases; and provide basic education to those who are not receiving it." (The Facts of Life, 1997, p. 311 – 312)

Census Bureau: World Population Slowing to Dangerous Levels

By Paul Nowak
LifeNews.com Staff Writer
March 24, 2004

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A report released Monday by the Census Bureau shows that world population growth is slowing to dangerous levels.

In its report, "Global Population Profile: 2002," the Census Bureau notes that the 74 million people added to the world's population in 2002 were significantly fewer than the high of 87 million people added in 1989-1990. The growth rate was a meager 1.2 percent, down from the high of 2.2 percent in 1963-64.

"Census Bureau projections show this slow-down in population growth continuing into the foreseeable future," states the Bureau's brief on the findings. "Census Bureau projections suggest that the level of fertility for the world as a whole will drop below replacement level before 2050."

The Bureau attributes the dropping growth rate to two major phenomena – the AIDS epidemic and declining fertility rates, including increased contraceptive use.  "In 1990 the world's women, on average, were giving birth to 3.3 children over their lifetimes," says the Census Bureau. "By 2002 the average was 2.6 – less than one-half of a child more than the level needed to assure the replacement of the population."

"It's time for the population control movement to call off the dogs," responded Steven Mosher, president of Population Research Institute (PRI). "The population explosion it predicted never happened, and the anti-natalists should pack up their tents and go home."  "As birth rates fall into the cellar, it's time 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," said Mosher.

"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. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) 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," Mosher explained.  In December, the United Nations Population Division (UNPD) released a report including a projection that showed the population of the world spiraling downward from the current 6.3 billion to 2.3 billion by 2300.  In some areas, the report found, fertility rates have dropped to incredible lows – a fact that U.N. population groups, such as the UNPD, ignore or downplay in their projections.

"[In Italy] fertility has declined, and only declined, from 2.3 in 1950 to 1.2 today," said Scott Weinberg of PRI. "The UNPD rewrites history, by increasing the high variant fertility rate in 2000 to 1.23, then arbitrarily pulls it upwards to 2.1 in 2050."  "Our long-term problem is not too many children, but too few children," concludes PRI. "And population control organizations are only making this problem worse, much worse."

By Anthony LoBaido

It is perhaps the single greatest disinformation campaign in human history: The planet is grossly overpopulated, and unless something is done to limit human population growth, calamity will ensue.

 Hunger, famine and resource depletion are often mentioned as the major reasons to justify limiting human reproduction. Unfortunately, few can summon the facts to repudiate this erroneous, non-scientific assumption.

Paul Ehrlich, mentor of U.S. Vice President Al Gore, wrote a landmark book in 1968 called "The Population Bomb." He predicted, "We will breed ourselves into oblivion."

Based on this assumption, American taxpayers are spending billions of
dollars on population control programs around the world -- most of them in Third World countries populated by people with brown, yellow, red and black skin.

Going down? Yet, while the one-billionth citizen of India was born last year, Japan, if it continues its current abortion policies and fails to
raise its average birth rate of 1.4 children per married couple, will have fewer than 500 people by the year 3000. This is not a prophecy of the mad Aum Shinrikyo cult, but rather a pronouncement of Japan's Ministry of Health and Welfare.

There are now 6 billion people on Earth. The planet's population will most likely continue to climb until 2050, when it will peak at 9 billion. Other predictions have the world's population peaking at 7.5 billion in 2040. In either case, it will then go into a sharp decline. The world may soon be facing an under-population crisis -- a prospect that has all but escaped media scrutiny.

Thomas Malthus is a British historical figure of great note. His most studied work, "An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the
Future Improvements of Society, with Remarks on the Speculations of M.  Godwin, M. Condorcet and Other Writers," was first published in 1798. Its thesis -- that overpopulation would destroy the world unless war, famine and disease rose to check human growth -- has proven to be dead wrong.

Malthus reasoned that, since people increase exponentially and food production only increases arithmetically, food production could not
possibly hope to keep up with more and more empty stomachs. Ironically, he predicted mass starvation on the eve of one of the biggest farming expansions the world has ever seen. For free countries, hunger has effectively been eliminated.

Rather than booming, as one might expect in the face of such plenty, the world's population is aging and in decline. As fertility rates fall and
abortion, contraception and life spans increase, the world will soon enter a new paradigm in which the elderly outnumber the young. In 1975, the mean global age was 22. In 2050, it will be 38. Europe, South Korea and Japan will be particularly hard hit by this phenomenon.

With fertility rates low and anti-foreigner sentiment rising in Europe, the United Nations recently released a study that suggests Europe will
need mass migration from the Third World to populate it. The report, written by the United Nations Population Division, states that South
Korea, Japan, Europe and Russia are facing population crunches.

By 2050, the population of Russia will be down to 150 million. In the 1970s, Russia's population rivaled America's, at more than 225 million
people.

Europe's population plummets.  In 1950, 32 percent of the world's population lived in developed countries in the West, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Today that figure has shrunk to 12 percent. Europe had 25 percent of the world's population in 1900. By 2050, Europe will have only seven percent. In 1900, Europe had three times the population of Africa. By 2050, Africa will have three times the population of Europe.

When it comes to the overpopulation lie, Spain serves as a prime example.  Abortion is rampant in that nation, one that in relatively recent history helped to spread the Catholic faith to the four corners of the Earth. Today, however, Spain is caught in a moral decline. It is legal, for example, for grown men to have homosexual sex with children as young as 12 years of age.

While in the past generation, Spain "blossomed" from a right-wing dictatorship to a liberal democracy, it has also plunged to the bottom on the United Nations report of worldwide birth and replacement rates.

"Spain is in last place," says Florentina Alvarez, a demographer at the National Statistics Institute. Spanish woman have on average 1.07 children, far below the 2.1 needed to maintain the population. Spain has today 39.4 million people, a figure that will begin to drop in coming decades. As recently as 1976, under the much-maligned reign of Francisco Franco, Spain had a fertility rate of 2.6.

'Gendercide' in Asia The major cities in Asia -- Bangkok, Seoul, Singapore, Tokyo and Hong Kong -- are overpopulated, but prosperous nevertheless. Overpopulation does not lead to poverty.

For example, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan are very densely populated and are some of the richest nations in Asia, if not the world. Taiwan has a population density of 1,460 per square mile, while China has a population density of 360 per square mile. Yet, according to the CIA's "World Factbook 1999," Taiwan's per capita gross domestic product is $16,500, while China's is $3,600.

The communist government of China has had a one-child policy for much of its history, but even now the Chinese government is beginning to question that policy. As most Chinese want sons, they abort the females on a massive scale. It is not uncommon for a Chinese family to murder its two- or three-year-old daughter if the mother becomes pregnant again with a boy. Within 100 years, China will have far more boys than girls. Will the men then decide to become homosexuals, or will they march out of China, as did the Mongol horde, in search of wives?

South Korea faces a similar problem. Because of abortion of females, kindergartens in Seoul today have around 60 percent boys. In the future,
South Korean boys may well have to marry North Korean girls to perpetuate their race.

The overpopulation lie The U.S. State Department and the United Nations are major players in this population game. Their measures are funded in large part by top U.S. foundations like Ford and Rockefeller. Ted Turner, founder of CNN, is also a major population-control sugar daddy for the United Nations, having cut a $1 billion check to the world body when conservatives in the U.S. Congress threatened not to pay off America's back dues to the U.N. if those dues would be used to set up abortion clinics overseas.

Make no mistake: Abortion and depopulation are a top priority for the powers-that-be in the West.   And it's not just about women's sexual freedom and independence, as many claim. ...

--
The preceding excerpt is the first third of an in-depth analysis featured in the May edition of WorldNet Magazine. In the balance of the article,
WorldNet's roving international reporter Anthony LoBaido details attempts by the U.S., U.N. and other entities to foster the overpopulation myth and explores the economic, political and spiritual reasons why so many powerful forces are pushing for depopulation.

You can support the Pro-Life Infonet with a donation to Women and Children First, PO Box 4433, Helena, MT 59604-4433. We appreciate those of you who have helped us with our pro-life outreach.  

Source:  WorldNet Daily, May 2, 2000

Population Control Numbers Favor the Pro-Life Side

John Stossel on ABC's Program "20/20" broadcast on 1/30/04

Wesley Atkinson, from Richardson, Texas, wrote asking us to address the myth of overpopulation, that "the world is getting too crowded."

We've heard protests about this for decades: News articles warn of "the population bomb," "a tidal wave of humanity," and plead, "No more babies."

The world population today is more than 6 billion. It seems like so many people. But who says it's too many?

There are lots of problems all over the world caused by too many people, says media mogul Ted Turner.

But there's no space problem. Our planet is huge.

In fact, we could take the entire world population and move everyone to the state of Texas, and the population density there would still be less than that of New York City.

But, you might wonder, won't we run out of resources, like food?

Paul Ehrlich, author of Population Bomb, warned 65 million Americans would starve in a "Great Die Off" in the 1980s. That didn't happen.

The 1973 movie Soylent Green predicted food riots would erupt in the year 2022 but it doesn't look like this will happen.

Turner says population growth is "a time bomb waiting to happen." If it continues, at the current rate, according to Turner, "Eventually you stand around in a desert with nothing to eat."

But that too is a myth. We see the pictures of starving masses in populous places, but the starvation is caused by things like civil war and government corruption that interfere with the distribution of food.

The good news is with more people, we also have more smart ideas. Every year we learn how to grow more food on less land. Thanks to improved technology, the United Nations now says the world overproduces food.