The Forgotten Child - Debunking the Population Bomb Myth

It was a day only days after my second daughter had been born. I was sitting at a lab table in my physics teaching Lab at Leeward community college in Hawaii preparing for my next class. In walks the chairman of the science department and greets me with, instead of a congratulatory remark on the birth of my 2nd child, a hostile remark about having another child. I told him that it was my 2nd child and he, guessing that that was okay, stormed out of the room. This was September of 1975.

I wondered how he would have reacted had this been my 3rd child; probably an angry tirade of how irresponsible I was in increasing the population that was headed for disaster involving a scarcity of food and other resources insufficient to accommodate a growing population. At this time in the 60s and 70s there were those who were predicting a population explosion, were nothing done to decrease the number of babies being born. I can only be thankful that I was then not in a country such as China with a one baby policy.

According to population statistics a family having no more than 2.1 children would result in a zero population growth. Of course 2.1 babies is an average of all fertile couples. My daughters have had one and four children respectively averaging 2.5 children per family which to those trying to attain zero population growth was anathema.  Fortunately, unlike China, we did not have abortion forced on a woman having an expected second child;  but we certainly had those like my chairman who would dutifully discourage anyone considering a third, or even a second child.

Today we have agencies such as Planned Parenthood who for decades have been discouraging large families worldwide with such success that many countries, except some countries in Africa, are dealing with, not zero population growth, but negative population growth. It is amazing to see the list of countries having such negative growth. In fact, the expected population explosion never really happened.  However, there are today agencies like Zero Population Growth that can be found on the Internet where families are discouraged from having large families and are encouraged to have abortions to control the number of babies born.

However, demographics (the study of population growth) indicates that the world population growth will stop soon, followed by a worldwide a population decline. Once population starts to decline it is very hard to reverse that trend.  A powerful and well documented book bringing enlightenment about this impending worldwide population decline is described below:

AMAZON
What to Expect When No One's Expecting: America's Coming Demographic Disaster [Hardcover]  Jonathan V. Last (Author) List Price:  $23.99
Price:  $16.14

Book Description  Publication Date: February 5, 2013

Look around you and think for a minute: Is America too crowded?
For years, we have been warned about the looming danger of overpopulation: people jostling for space on a planet that’s busting at the seams and running out of oil and food and land and everything else.

It’s all bunk. The “population bomb” never exploded. Instead, statistics from around the world make clear that since the 1970s, we’ve been facing exactly the opposite problem: people are having too few babies. Population growth has been slowing for two generations. The world’s population will peak, and then begin shrinking, within the next fifty years. In some countries, it’s already started. Japan, for instance, will be half its current size by the end of the century. In Italy, there are already more deaths than births every year. China’s One-Child Policy has left that country without enough women to marry its men, not enough young people to support the country’s elderly, and an impending population contraction that has the ruling class terrified.

And all of this is coming to America, too. In fact, it’s already here. Middle-class Americans have their own, informal one-child policy these days. And an alarming number of upscale professionals don’t even go that far—they have dogs, not kids. In fact, if it weren’t for the wave of immigration we experienced over the last thirty years, the United States would be on the verge of shrinking, too.

What happened? Everything about modern life—from Bugaboo strollers to insane college tuition to government regulations—has pushed Americans in a single direction, making it harder to have children. And making the people who do still want to have children feel like second-class citizens.

What to Expect When No One’s Expecting explains why the population implosion happened and how it is remaking culture, the economy, and politics both at home and around the world.

Because if America wants to continue to lead the world, we need to have more babies.

The Forgotten Child - The Dark Side of Abortion Evolution

The history of abortion in America is described usually in terms of the claimed rights of women to deal with unplanned pregnancy through the surgical destruction of the fetus in  the womb. The justification for such abortion was the fear of over population – “the population bomb”.

High birth rates would cause the population to rise exponentially on an upward bending curve, while an increase in the production of food would increase along a straight line rate, leading to starvation -  this was the propaganda line which turned out to be very effective.

Starting with the cry for birth control, using various contraceptive devices, followed by having laws restricting  contraception declared unconstitutional, followed by having laws restricting abortion (when contraception failed) held unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court, "abortion on demand" became the law of the land.

But this is only the “cover story”; behind this story is a far more sinister story, which, had it been revealed and understood during the time of the justification and legalization of abortion, the result may not have been abortion on demand.

Throughout the history of the world there have always been those who consider themselves to be more important and worthwhile contributors to the human race than others considered less worthwhile contributors to the human race; and such worthless humans should be "bred out" of the race.

In England during the 1800s men of rank and education started promoting the idea that only people of intelligence, education, rank and importance should be encouraged to breed others of similar quality since it was thought, at the time, that better quality human beings result when the parents are of desirable quality.  The theory of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin proposed that “the survival of the fittest” was a dominating factor in the evolution of all animal species including man.

Therefore, through proper breeding lesser quality humans should not survive. This was taken to mean that in the good breeding process those who are the least fit should be either forcibly or through persuasion not allowed to breed. This policy or belief was given the name of eugenics (a combination of eu- meaning good and -genics meaning “breeding”, that is good breeding).  Positive eugenics was practiced by those who wanted to limit the breeding of "unfit" humans through persuasion, by advocating the use of contraception or abortion. Negative eugenics was practiced by those who wanted to force "unfit" humans to be sterilized so they could not breed.

In America, Margaret Sanger was an ardent supporter of birth control and negative eugenics in the late years of the 1800s and into the 1920s, who wanted to eliminate the Negro race, since she viewed them as inferior human beings.   She was ultimately persuaded by other eugenicists, who convinced her that going into the Negro areas and convincing the pastors of their churches to promote birth control as a means of “helping” Negro families from burdening themselves with too many children, was a better way to get these people to agree with limiting their children.

That this “ruse” worked very successfully is seen by a sharp decline in the percentage of Negroes (or currently blacks) making up the entire population of the United States. Other measures of how effective Sanger's program has been is to consider that the numbers and percentages of blacks having abortions compared to other races are in terms of multiples of 2 or 3 in many cases; also, the largest percentages of Planned Parenthood clinics (which evolved from Sanger's birth-control clinics) are located in minority areas of cities.

In the Supreme Court decision of 1973, Roe versus Wade, justice Blackmun, who wrote the majority opinion, bases his justification for legalizing abortion on all kinds of policies, legal opinions, statements of individuals and laws which relate to and justify eugenics. Thus Roe vs Wade justifies abortion as legal and constitutional based on eugenics - the desire to make a more perfect quality of population rather than simply limiting population of all kinds and races based on the so-called population explosion.

My comments above are based largely on an essay *The History of Abortion"  which is well documented and has many details of interest not included here and is well worth reading.

The Forgotten Child - The Making of Women into Men

The history of abortion is described usually in terms of the need of a woman to deal with an unwanted pregnancy through its termination. Prior to the late 20th century in which procedures  for terminating an abortion were developed to significantly reduce the risk to the woman of serious medical complications or death, the risk was great and we hear of "back alley abortions" where the person performing the abortion had little experience in performing such a surgery.

In the early part of the 20th century advocates for birth control arose because of the fear of over population. Hospitals were developing policies of general cleanliness and sterilization of instruments used in surgery. New medications to control diseases and infections were produced. The death rates of women giving birth and their babies were declining as a result.

Birth control, using contraceptives like the condom, the IUD, and the "pill", was widely preached to counter the rise in birth rates.   Since the use of contraceptives  many times resulted in a pregnancy in spite of their use, abortion was suggested to terminate unwanted pregnancies that were the result of contraceptive failure.

However, many states had laws against contraception and all states had laws against abortion. Supreme Court decisions declared all such laws unconstitutional.  Abortion became legal "on demand"

Concurrently with the growth of the legalization of abortion was the feminist movement which promoted equal rights for women that matched men in wages, jobs, education and just about anything a man did or had; in other words men and women were equal in every respect.

In terms of abortion, the ultimate in the feminist movement was to look upon abortion as the equalizer with men.  No longer could men say they could have any amount of sex without  having to worry about having a baby; now women could have as much sex as men without having a baby since the pill and abortion would take care of any "problems".  There are some women who have multiple abortions in their quest to be as free as men.

Thus today ardent feminists see abortion as the ultimate gift to womanhood in making men and women truly equal.  Thus women have been made into Men.  This is a feminist perspective that, fortunately, is not held by most women.  But this feminist ideal has made too many women take risks they otherwise would not take were this attitude not linger in their minds should they take risks.  It is surprising that many women become single moms rather than abort their child.

But there is a darker side to the evolution of abortion in America and this will be the next topic on The Forgotten Child.

The Forgotten Child - My perspective

Looking back on my life I cannot recall a single instance of not thinking of a human baby as anything but lovable; never have I felt that a human baby or child was in some way worthless and should be disposed of. Historical accounts of ancient Greeks disposing of an unwanted child by abandonment to the elements, the massacre of the holy innocents by Herod because he wanted to kill the Christ child, astound me that such little value is put on an innocent child. The massacre of so many little children at a school in Connecticut so recently, disturbs me and makes me wonder at the depravity of a person doing such a thing.

The tragedy of abortion was present in the United States even before the supreme court decision in Roe V Wade in 1973. But the number of these abortions were few in comparison with the number of abortions that followed this Supreme Court decision. It is sad that abortion is taken by many to be the only solution to the problem of a pregnancy that is undesirable for a host of reasons.  There has to be a better way of coping with this problem which can only be found with better understanding of the true value of womanhood and the gift of childhood.

The abuse and killing of animals causes many, including myself, to feel so sad and yet many of such people cannot bring themselves to understand that the killing of a child in the womb should likewise bring great sadness. Maybe my experience of attending Catholic schools where we were taught that human beings are created in the likeness and image of God Himself who is perfect love and loves all His creatures had the effect of my wanting to love all of God's creatures;  however many of my fellow Catholics have not had the same feeling.

In 1984 I was given the opportunity to lead an organization in my home in Hawaii, Hawaii Right To Life. This gave me an opportunity to speak out for the right to life of the unborn in speeches, interviews, and in testimony in the state legislature. We were not able to get bills through the legislature that would somehow minimize abortion so we counted on trying to educate people to honor the life of a child in or out of the womb and in this way we were able to do some good. We were more successful in defeating bills that were geared towards ending the life of people who were old and sick. We were able to stop issues  such as assisted suicide, which happens to be coming up again this session in the legislature.

My experience in the Right to Life movement has led me to realize that it is not enough to just embark on a legislative program to overturn laws and policy that allow abortion but to first understand what has made the Abortion Lobby so influential in convincing women to resort to abortion in the first place; and to change the approach to eliminating abortion by making abortion far less of a necessary choice for women than it now is.  Through education, alternative problem solving and caring about the lives of women who have a "problem pregnancy" must precede legislation whose purpose is to successfully eliminate policy and legislation allowing for unbridled "free choice".

Next I would like to address how to deal with the connection between abortion and feminism.

IS SARAH PALIN FINISHED?

Yesterday I encountered a post on Yahoo which addressed a separation with Fox News and Sarah Palin as a paid contributor. This post gave a rather bleak appraisal of Sarah Palin's future in contrast to the substantial contribution she has made to bring new conservative candidates into the Republican Party.

She had run as vice president with John McCain who had picked her, a very successful Alaska Governor who fought Democrats and Republicans alike who fostered schemes to increase their power and wealth rather than help the people of Alaska. She won her battles, making government work for the people; her favorable ratings near 90% testified to her popularity.

Unfortunately there were influential leaders in the Republican Party who did not give her their 100% support and clearly criticized her; these were the same kinds of politicians she battled in Alaska. She espoused a need to reform and even eliminate many of the institutions that were handing too much control to an ever increasing size and power of the Federal government.   There was too much money, taxpayer money, that was going to the EPA, the Education Department, the Energy Department and all kinds of bureaucratic agencies which increase the power of the government by diminishing the power given to ordinary citizens through the Constitution.

Unfortunately the 2008 election brought to the presidency Barack Obama who called for change but in his various speeches during the campaign did not really explain what he meant by change. It was clear to conservatives that he wanted to create what seemed to be a socialist state, a goal in total opposition to what Sarah Palin believed.

After the election she returned to Alaska and took up her job as governor. But politicians on the left feared her and hated her with a vengeance heretofore never seen in the history of American politics. She was not attacked on the basis of her political beliefs; because the left doesn't work that way. The left, through lies, distortions, and attacks on the personal character of the person can literally destroy their enemies; it is the method used by any tyrannical regime. It was a method used by the Communists, and the Nazis.

These leftists even assaulted her womanhood in the most vicious terms and even her family members were reviled in the same way. So thorough was this character assassination that even though many wanted Sarah to run for president in the 2012 election it was not possible. Even those same Republican leaders who attacked her in the 2008 election were there to make sure she didn't run for president in the 2012 election.

I was hoping to hear some good news that she was not quitting her fight against those who are trying to destroy America and sure enough, I spotted an article written by her for Breitbart News (link) declaring "We have not yet begun to fight" the famous quote of John Paul Jones:

On September 23, 1779, Jones fought one of the bloodiest engagements in naval history.(link) Jones struggled with the 44-gun Royal Navy frigate Serapis, and although his own vessel was burning and sinking, Jones would not accept the British demand for surrender, replying, “I have not yet begun to fight.” More than three hours later, Serapis surrendered and Jones took command.

This statement of Sarah Palin's could not be more appropriate. She, like Jones has been hammered mercilessly, unjustly to a point where, were she to give up, no one could blame her; but also like Jones she will not give up; she will do everything to save her nation, America, just as Jones fought tooth and nail even though his ship had been pummeled by Serapis and was near sinking - he eventually won against all odds!.

Go get 'em girl!