Season 3 Podcast 202 Abortion

“Abortion”Abortion began with the following arguments:·      Outrage against the butchery of dark alley abortions·      Women’s rights·      Health of the mother·      Incest and rape·      Emotional traumaBut it quickly escalated into a political battle mostly buried under rhetoric. The first thing that we can dismiss is the argument that abortion is about women’s health. If abortion were strictly about women’s health, there would be no escalating argument. I cannot imagine anyone condemning a woman to death. Any compassionate person would leave that decision entirely to the mother and to those whom she chose to be her counselors. There may be other extenuating circumstances such as incest or rape which should be determined privately with competent people of her own choosing. The abortion issue, however, quickly escalated and went beyond the issue of a mother’s health or emotional state of mind.In an article “Studies in Family Planning,” a Publication of The Population Council, February 1969, Number Thirty-Eight, the following methods of population control were presented for consideration.  You may access the entire article on the Internet. 1.     Institutionalization of maternal care in rural areas of developing countries…aimed particularly at women of low parity.2.     Liberalization of induced abortion.3.     Mass use of “fertility control agent” by government to regulate births at acceptable level: the “fertility control agent” designed to lower fertility in the society by five per cent to 75 percent less than the present birth rate, as needed. 4.     Marketable licenses to have children”, given to women and perhaps men in “whatever number would ensure a reproduction rate of one”, say 2.2 children per couple: the unit certificate might be the “deci-child’, and if ten of these units by purchase, inheritance or gift, would permit a woman in maturity to have one legal child”.5.     Temporary sterilization of all girls via time-capsule contraceptives, and again after each delivery, with reversibility allowed only upon government approval: certificates of approval distributed according to popular vote on desired population growth for a country, and saleable on open market.6.     Compulsory sterilization of men with three or more living children: requirement of induced abortion for all illegitimate pregnancies.7.     Inclusion of population materials in primary and secondary school systems.8.     Payment for the initiation or the effective practice of contraception: payment or equivalent for sterilization.9.     Payment for periods of non-pregnancy or non-birth: a bonus for child spacing or non-pregnancy…. “Responsibility prizes” for each five years of childless marriage or for vasectomy before the third child, and special lotteries with tickets available to the childless.10.  Withdrawal of maternity benefits after 3 children11.  Reversal of tax benefits to favor the unmarried and the parents of fewer rather than more children.12.  Promotion of “two types of marriage, one of them childless and readily dissolved, and the other licensed for children and designed to be stable. The above was not a movie script for a horror film. The article was written in 1969, over fifty years ago. Of course, none of the proposals are legal in the United States. I merely present the article to illustrate that think tanks regarding population control do exist. It should be clear to everyone that Family Planning, Planned Parenthood, and abortion clinics are more about population control than women’s health.