A Modern Horror Story

Lois M. Scheel

1993

Published in:

Social Trends Newsletter May 1993, No. 113

In 1951 Robert C. Cook wrote a book titled, Human Fertility: the modern dilemma, published by William Sloane Associates of New York. At that time he was Director of the Population Research Bureau, Inc. in Washington, D.C. and publisher of the Population Bulletin.

"Uncontrolled Fertility is bringing all humanity to the brink of disaster, warned Mr. Cook. "Unbalanced and unchecked fertility is ravaging many lands like a hurricane or a tidal wave. The scramble for bare subsistence by hordes of hungry people is tearing the fertile earth from the hillsides, destroying forests, and plunging millions of human beings into utter misery."

He explained how the intelligence of our population declines as the most ignorant types of humanity are breeding the fastest, while the superior types are not replacing themselves. He pointed out that there was a time when only thetoughest individuals could survive; now, with our science and our humanitarianism, we make it easy for the unfit to survive and multiply and, thereby, we are bringing all humanity to the brink of disaster.

He used the island of Puerto Rico as a problem example on a small scale of a population that had outbred the means for its survival. He saw it as foreshadowing the eventual fate of the world: ``When landed on Puerto Rico, the island was a 'tropical paradise' inhabited by a few Indians. Some of these were lucky enough to escape into the hills and survive the introduction of Spanish culture that followed; but, for the most part, the island became populated with the dregs of Spain and slaves from Africa. Under the brutality and ruthless exploitation of the Spanish noblemen and a medieval church, the population became stabilized at the saturation point of about one million, living under one of the world's worst tropical slum conditions.

``In the year 1898, the United States wrested Puerto Rico from Spain and proceeded to apply the benefits of health and sanitation and other humanitarian techniques. One of the world's most civilized nations, thus, set out to show the world what it could do for a limited, backward area and its miserable inhabitants. After a net loss of some one billion dollars to the American taxpayers and a half century of benevolent humanitarianism, Puerto Rico had a population of 2.2 million in 1951 3.2 million by 1981 census and 3.7 million by 1992], with most of its inhabitants living in poverty, debasement, and filth; and it was still held in a state of intolerable superstition by the same medieval church, which continued to leach all it could get from the miserable incomes of its people. The area was not self-supporting. The luxuriant vegetation was gone; the birds sang no more; and many thousands of acres of once fertile soil were eroded beyond use.

``Then, the birthrate of Puerto Rico was one of the highest in the world, with birth control fiendishly opposed by the Roman Catholic hierarchy and the American political machine. The only alleviation of this condition came fromPuerto Rico's ability to slop hundreds of thousands of its wretched, unwanted people into the slums of East Harlem, New York, where they added to, and made worse, the congestion and poverty of that already overcrowded and miserable district, and where they added appreciably to the crime problem of the city.''

Today, the dire problems of overpopulation haven't changed except to increase in scope and intensity. Anthony Lewis, writing for the New York Times in February of 1993 said: "Bangladesh has a land area smaller than Wisconsin--and a population of 114 million. Its numbers are growing so fast that by the year 2025 it will outstrip the present U.S. population of 250 million."

The number one worry over what will happen to these people seems to be if science could produce enough food to feed them, where would they find the jobs needed to buy it. Does this make sense? We don't feed people unless they have money, and to have money they must have jobs? When jobs, like the dinosaurs, are becoming extinct due to scientific discoveries and automation and overpopulation? The mayhem and destruction that is bound to happen in the future when enough people are hungry and have nothing left to lose will not be a pretty sight. This violence against society has already begun, only we choose to label it crime.

"Mexico City harbors 20 million Mexicans, many under appalling conditions," writes Anthony Lewis. "Half the country's people live without sewers and a quarter without safe water. Can anyone be surprised that, despite the country's improving economic record, many Mexicans are desperate to get into the United States?

"Rational self-interest, not just humane concern, should make the rich countries do all they can to prevent overpopulation and the suffering and strife it brings. But rationality has not been the mainspring of American population policy lately. Presidents Reagan and Bush shaped their policy to please the anti-abortion movement and the Christian right.

"The Reagan administration sabotaged the world population conference in Mexico City in 1984 by taking the position that rapid growth was a 'neutral' phenomenon. Since then the United States has drastically reduced aid to population-control efforts abroad at a time when underdeveloped countries were recognizing the need for restraint. Michael S. Teitelbaum, writing about the policy in an earlier issue of Foreign Affairs, calls it 'self- inflicted blindness.'"

Adhering to the Bible for guidance regarding today's social problems is like dragging out a medieval geography book to use in a current events class today. We can no longer "be fruitful and multiply" nor can we continue to "subdue the earth." Yet we are doing both at an alarming rate. We find parents, who aren't satisfied with one or two children, taking fertility pills and coming up with multiple births, even quintuplets; people stand outside family planning clinics carryingplacards against family planning; anti-abortionists continue to terrorize abortion clinics, their staff and their patients, and now murder can be added to their unsavory deeds. In February a doctor was shot to death outside an abortion clinic in Pensacola,Florida by a fanatical pro-life supporter, a strange paradox; he takes a life to prove his support of life. If these ugly, moronic acts are allowed to continue unabated, surely the ignorant and superstitious shall inherit the earth.

Once that fetus has been saved and grows into a person, to heck with it. If this fully developed person is eligible for war with its devastation and slaughter, the pro-life people are nowhere in sight. Nor do they offer any solutions for taking care of thousands of unwanted children. Adoption agencies are, for the most part, more interested in how many bedrooms the adoptive parents have than if they can give children love and understanding, food and clothing and a roof over their heads. In the meantime, biological children can sleep in the streets with their homeless parents. (Since they are no longer fetuses, they have been saved already.)

Anthony Lewis further writes: "The Earth's population was around 1 billion in the year 1800, 2 billion in 1920, 3 billion in 1960. Today it is 5 billion. By 2025 it is expected to be more than 8 billion, and 95 percent of the increase will be in the Third World."

Is North America on its way to joining the Third World? It's forests are being denuded faster than they can be replaced by people desperate for money, for jobs, for power. Not only is it becoming over-populated by its own citizens, but the influx of immigrants threatens to overwhelm what resources are left. All immigrants need to do to get into the U.S. is claim political asylum. Once they get past the immigration checkpoint, they can become absorbed by the masses and disappear. The U.S. Government will go to any lengths to convert aliens to the cause of democracy, which it doesn't practice itself. And if the aliens are rich, or if they can provide cheap labor, all the better.

"Only four years ago the Census Bureau projected that the U.S. population would peak at 304 million in 2038 and then decline. But that was before the Census Bureau recognized that fertility rates are likely to rise, before the Immigration Law of 1990 was passed, and before life expectancy projections were increased. Even if the Census Bureau's middle projection is correct, America's population will probablygrow by at least another 150 million people within the next 60 years.

"Some demographers remain critical of the Bureau's projections, such as Dennis Ahlburg and James Vaupel, authors of Alternative Projections of U.S. Population. They believe that future baby boom/bust cycles are more probable, life expectancy and fertility rates are likely to rise even higher, and pressure to accept more immigrants as world population grows could be greater than the Census Bureau has estimated and that therefore the Bureau's projections may still be too low. Their research supports the conclusion that if we allow current demographic trends to continue, we will likely have approximately 500 million Americans by 2050. Anyone concerned about the future of this country should consider what the optimum population size of the United States might be, since population growth affects every public policy issue, including what the Center for Immigration Studies calls 'the three E's--economy, education, and the environment.'"

(The above two paragraphs were excerpted from Carrying Capacity Network, March, 1993 issue.)

Robert C. Cook thought that if the people became conscious of the need for birth control, they would override tradition and church opposition. That was over 40 years ago. We can see what happenswhen we leave serious social problems up to the people to vote on; these problems grow more intense. The intelligent are recognizing the over-population catastrophe. The ignorant and superstitious are not, a truly formidable outlook for future generations.

As one sage remarked: "If we fail to recognize the problem, it may happen, there will one day be none of us left, not even any to bury the dead."