Published: February 09, 2009 09:11 am      

Family planning is essential

The right-wing attack machine went into overdrive last week after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dared to defend funds for family planning in the House’s stimulus bill.

Pelosi told ABC’s “This Week” that the promotion of contraceptives and family planning will reduce government costs by preventing unwanted pregnancies.

That should be common sense, but you would’ve thought that she advocated the neutering of all newborn males. Conservative scolds took her to task, mostly based on religious objections to family planning.

Charges of Nazi-style eugenics and China’s one-child policy poisoned the debate with no grounding in reality. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews said, “(W)hy should the federal government have a policy of reducing the number of births?”

CNN’s Jack Cafferty said, “That’s starting to sound a little like Chairman Mao.”

Brian Sussman told KFSO radio in San Francisco: “She’s talking about in-the-womb genocide here.”

Once again, faced with manufactured controversy from ideologues, the Democrats backed down and removed family-planning funds from the bill. It’s a shame to see the Democrats continue to cave in to right-wing thugs’ scare tactics. Wasn’t this cowardice supposed to end with the election of Barack Obama?

Andrea Tantaros, a political commentator on Fox News, said, “Show me an economist that says we are in an economic crisis because of birth-control shortage.”

It’s typical that people who object to family planning (or any other kind of planning) are looking about five minutes down the road instead of decades. In the long run, policies such as the one Pelosi promotes will indeed cut costs, in health care, unemployment and other services needed by people marginalized by unfettered capitalism.

The world cannot sustain unlimited population growth. Where will the food and water come from? Where will the jobs come from with resources in decline?

US News and World Reports quotes Phil Longman in his book “Empty Cradle”: Population growth is a major source of economic growth: More people create more demand for the products capitalists sell and more supply of the labor capitalists buy ... a decline in the number of workers implies a decline in an economy’s potential growth.”

This is nonsense on so many counts. At the current level of population, there is hunger, homelessness, poverty and lack of jobs.

All of these will increase exponentially as population rises.

Companies seek more efficiency and productivity without increasing labor costs. So all those people from the population boom aren’t going to get jobs. Longman doesn’t consider this. His classic economic model discounts the fact that capitalists try to get the most done with the least people.

The only way people can buy from capitalists is if they have living-wage jobs. But it’s more important for capitalists to maintain profits than jobs. Still, all those people who can’t work will need to live.

What happens with increasing demand for resources from an overpopulated world? There will be riots in the streets (remember “Soylent Green”?) just for food and water. Government costs will have to escalate to help those left out by capitalism.

Family planning and a reduction of population is absolutely essential to the survival of the planet. The scare tactics involving eugenics and one-child laws only give people an opportunity to keep their heads in the sand about long-term problems. A national family planning and contraceptive policy only makes sense and serves as a firm rejection of an octuplet mentality that too many people accept.

Stephen Dick writes for The Herald Bulletin in Anderson, Ind., a CNHI newspaper. He can be reached at steve.dick@heraldbulletin.com.