Here’s a quote…

Strictly enforced population control

Forced abortions in China are not a thing of the past. Under the one child policy, many women in late term pregnancy are still forced to abort their children. Chinese provincial authorities are responsible for mass forced sterilizations, and abortions are often performed by people with inadequate training in unsterile conditions.

[…]

China Daily, a state-controlled newspaper, recently published annual abortion figures of 13 million and a live birth rate of 20 million, as recorded by China’s National Family Planning Commission.

The recent China Daily article, echoed by a BBC report, attributes the high number of abortions to lack of education on contraception. However, experts say that most of the abortions are due to the one child policy.

“[We are] fairly certain most of [the 13 million] are forced abortions,” says Colin Mason, who conducted field work in Guangdong and Guangxi Provinces in March this year for the nonprofit Virginia-based Population Research Institute. The two provinces are “models” in China, where the one child policy is strictly enforced and all birth quotas are met. Based on his experience in China, he said most people would have more than one child if they could.

[…]

Under China’s one child policy, couples must apply for a birth permit before having a child. Single women are forbidden to bear children, married women with one child are given an Intra-Uterine Device (IUD), and women with two or more children or a single son are sometimes forcibly sterilized.

[…]

Punitive measures taken to enforce the one child policy include exorbitant fines, coerced abortions and sterilizations, arbitrary detention, torture, and sometimes child abduction. A social compensation fee is the most common method; those who have unplanned pregnancies can be fined from one half to ten times their annual salary, according to Littlejohn.

[…]

The one child policy is enforced at a local, province-by-province level. The policy at the national level extends to every level of government. Local officials in Gansu Province were reportedly promised promotions and monetary rewards for performing a target number of sterilizations in their area, according to the 2008 annual report by the U.S. State Department’s Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC).

[…]

If one person in a family is accused of an unplanned pregnancy, the rest of family is also liable—neighbors, parents, grandparents can all be caught and put in jail or pressured economically.

[…]

The number of abandoned children is also mounting. Parents who get divorced sometimes abandon their child because policy prevents parents from having another child in a new marriage. Abandoned children become destitute and illegal, with no access to health care or education. The same happens to children whose parents did not obtain a birth permit.

I haven’t yet read the John P. Holdren’s book, “Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions”, that a number of people are talking about. (It’s the book that he co-authored with Paul Ralph Ehrlich and Paul’s wife Anne Howland Ehrlich (born Anne Fitzhugh Howland).) So I’m still reserving judgment, until I have more facts. But here’s someone’s opinion of it all.

On BBC right now there is a group of people talking about “over population”. Seems like there’s people trying to push this more and more as a mainstream issue. Perhaps in an attempt to try to make the idea of forced population control palatable.

Is Kelvin Thompson, Australian Labor Member for Wills, advocating (forced) population control? In the quote below you can see that he’s yet another person trying to conflate being “Green” with Population Control.

Labor Member for Wills Kelvin Thompson has told Parliament that global warming, water shortages and even terrorism and wars can be traced back to overpopulation.

[…]

He says there is a strong case for population control if world governments are to deal effectively with environmental, economic and social problems.

“It is time for governments and policy makers around the world to come to their senses and take steps to stabilise the world’s population,” he said.

“It needs to happen in every country, including here in Australia - especially here in dry, arid Australia.”

(Link)

There’s so many things wrong with what he said, so much B.S. in there, that I’m not sure where to start with a rebuttal. Perhaps I’ll just say this seems to be pretty illustrative of his views.

Wir stehen nicht allein: “We do not stand alone”. Nazi propaganda poster from 1936. The woman is holding a baby and the man is holding a shield inscribed with the title of Nazi Germany’s 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (their compulsory sterilization law). The couple is in front of a map of Germany, surrounded by the flags of nations which had enacted (to the left) or were considering (bottom and to the right) similar legislation.

The countries which had enacted compulsory sterilization laws (and the date shown) were:

• United States (date illegible; Indiana enacted first laws in 1907)
• Denmark (1929)
• Norway (1934)
• Sweden (1935)
• Finland (1935?)

The countries where they were considering compulsory sterilization laws were:

• Hungary
• United Kingdom
• Switzerland
• Poland
• Japan
• Latvia
• Lithuania

Scan taken from Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), page 96. Originally from Neues Volk, March 1, 1936, p.37.

A poster from a 1921 eugenics conference displays which U.S. states had by then implemented sterilization legislation.

Scan taken from:

Harry H. Laughlin, The Second International Exhibition of Eugenics held September 22 to October 22, 1921, in connection with the Second International Congress of Eugenics in the American Museum of Natural History, New York (Baltimore: William & Wilkins Co., 1923).

There’s a report of forced sterilization taking place in the Czech Republic…

At least 100 women may have been sterilized against their will in the Czech Republic with many of the victims fearful of publicizing their cases.

Most of the procedures took place in the 1970s and ’80s, but the most recent probably occurred in 2007.

[…]

The majority of cases took place in Moravia and happened mostly to women of Roma ethnicity [also known as Gypsies] between the 1970s and early 1990s. But the last case the group knows about allegedly happened in 2007 to a mother of four in Frýdek-Místek.

I found an article written by Bryan Caplan which talks about the forced sterilization that took place in India in the 1970s, under Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi, in the name of population control.

Trotsky once wrote that:

In a country where the sole employer is the state… [t]he old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced with a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.

Well, during Indira Gandhi’s dictatorship, the new socialist principle became “Who refuses sterilization shall not eat”:

Sterilization became a condition not just for land allotments, but for irrigation water, electricity, ration cards, rickshaw licenses, medical care, pay raises, and promotions. Everyone, from senior government officials to train conductors to policemen, was given a sterilization quota…

Altogether, in the course of one year, the government would record more than 8 million sterilizations: 6.2 million vasectomies and 2.05 tubectomies.

According to wikipedia, [o]fficially, men with two children or more had to submit to sterilization, but many unmarried young men, political opponents and ignorant men were also believed to have been sterilized.

Roger Martin, chairman of the Optimum Population Trust, wants being “Green” to be conflated with Population Control too.

Here’s a quote…

… our first target is simply to get the environmental movement to recognize that population growth is a driver of every problem they face…

Except population growth (and thus population control) really has nothing to do with a number of “green” issues. What does bicycle lanes have anything to do with population growth?! What does low flow toilets have anything to do with population growth? What does bans on clubbing baby seals have anything to do with population growth?! Etc?! I guess no need in letting things such as facts or logic get in the way of an agenda.

The (forced) population control agenda hits Utah…

A Salt Lake Tribune editorial says three or more children should be taxed extra to pay for school funding. Oregon State University statisticians say limiting a family to two kids keeps down your carbon footprint.

From what I’ve been told of China, initially they finned you too if you had more than 1 child. But later they changed that to throwing you in jail.

(H/T Connor Boyack.)

As a follow up to my previous post on it seeming to be become the case that being “green” now meaning you support Population Control, here’s more on the (forced) population control agenda that popped up again about 4 months ago…

UK population must fall to 30m, says [Jonathon] Porritt

JONATHON PORRITT, one of Gordon Brown’s leading green advisers, is to warn that Britain must drastically reduce its population if it is to build a sustainable society.

Porritt’s call will come at this week’s annual conference of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), of which he is patron.

The trust will release research suggesting UK population must be cut to 30m if the country wants to feed itself sustainably.

You can read the rest of the article here.

A key phrase that might have stood out to you is “sustainable society”.  It sounds pretty.  But it’s just lipstick on a pig, in that part of what I suspect it entails is (forced) population control.

Every now and then, the (forced) population control agenda pops up. (It happened many times in the past, and) it happened when the somewhat recent food crisis was happening, despite the food crisis having absolutely nothing to do with the population size. In fact there was more than enough food. But instead it had to do with the food becoming too expensive for some people. Well, the forced population control agenda popped up again about 6 months ago.  Here’s a quote…

Two children should be limit, says green guru

COUPLES who have more than two children are being “irresponsible” by creating an unbearable burden on the environment, the government’s green adviser has warned.

You can read the rest of the article here.

In this day and age a common moral fashion is that “green” equals “good”.  And using argumentum ad verecundiam or argumentum ad nauseam to brand anything with the “green” label will bring you the obedience and faith of the greenists.  As some say, never let a “crisis” go to waste.  And the perceived “green” crisis presents an opportunity for those with a (forced) population control agenda that they seem to be trying to take advantage of.

The sad thing is, I suspect the majority of the “green” faithful will just accept this new forced population control commandment.  And that this will become a mainstream “green” issue.

That video I just posted titled “Overpopulation: The Making of a Myth” mentioned the UNFPA.  I did a little Google searching, and came across this on the LRC blog by Anthony Gregory from back in October 31st, 2004…

Regardless of one’s views on abortion, forced abortion is obviously neither “pro-choice” nor “pro-life.” This didn’t stop 211 Congresscritters, including 31 members of the “pro-life” Republican Party, from voting to fund “population control” programs in China, which include forced abortion. Of course, the Republicans have good reason:

When Tom Davis (R-VA), one of 31 Republicans voting against the bill amendment (i.e. in favor of funding the UNFPA), came to town, I asked him why he voted that way. He didn’t understand the question, and thought I was talking about the Mexico City policy. I got a call later from his office to “clarify” his answer. The answer, it turns out, was just that he felt population control was very important and that’s why he voted that way.

(I replaced the link, in the quote, with a link to archive.org, since the website being linked to is no longer up.)

Here’s an excerpt from the article linked to from that post…

Report of the China UNFPA Independent Assessment Team

[…] Dear Secretary Powell,

We have just completed an intensive 14 day visit (May 13-26) to the People’s Republic of China. […]

First Finding

We find no evidence that UNFPA has knowingly supported or participated in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization in the PRC.

First Recommendation

We therefore recommend that not more than $34 million which has already been appropriated be released to UNFPA.

Second Finding

We find that notwithstanding some relaxation in the 32 counties in which UNFPA is involved the population programs of the PRC retain coercive elements in law and in practice.

Second Recommendation

We therefore recommend that unless and until all forms of coercion in the PRC law and in practice are eliminated, no U.S. Government funds be allocated for population programs in the PRC.

[1] The full name of the “UNFPA” is currently the “United Nations Population Fund”, which doesn’t actually fit the initialization. However, the initialization makes sense if you know tht the old name of this organization was the “United Nations Fund for Population Activities”.

Overpopulation: The Making of a Myth

from OverPopulationIsAMyth.com

H/T thediamondage