Posted on 07/20/2002 1:27:51 PM PDT by Askel5
Report and Recommendations of the Republican Task Force on Earth Resources and Population. House Republican Research Committee
House Republican Research Committee
Robert Taft, Jr., Ohio, Chairman
July 8, 1970 Congressional Record, pp. 23188 and contining.
(Current excerpts taken from Section II on Population)
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It is almost self-evident that the greater the human population, the greater the demands for natural resources and the greater the danger to ecological balance. The paramount questions deals with an optimum human population.
How many is too many people in relation to available resources?
No one seems to honestly know but many believe that our current environmental problems indicate that the optimum level has been surpassed.
A fair analysis would seem to be that our population and consumption rates have grown more rapidly than our ability to develop and supply the resources being consumed while protecting our environment. […]
Many of our nation's social problems can be attributed to population density and the congestion of our urban areas.
Projections of the Urban Land Institute place 60% of our population in the year 2000 in just four huge megalopolis areas— (1) from Boston to Washingon, D.C., another from Utica, New York, to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a third from San Francisco to the Mexican border, and the fourth from Jacksonville to Miami, across to Tampa and St. Petersburg. Most of the remaining 40% of the population is expected to live in urban areas as well. Metropolitan areas of over 150,000 grew faster than the national average of 9.8%.
This trend toward density creates immense stress on the public services necessary to accommodate the population. Police, fire, sanitation, transportation—all of these and many others, including education, health and housing, have been unable to keep pace with the demands created by this congestion.
Sociologists believe that this density of population has been a prime cause for increased automobile traffic deaths, drug addiction, broken marriage, alcoholism, crime, homosexuality, suicides, venereal disease and heart attacks as a result of the social stresses that man encounters in his struggle to exist in such a congested environment.
In both his Population Message of July, 1968 and his State of the Union message of January, 1970, President Nixon stressed the need for America to begin developing a national growth policy.
In his State of the Union address, the President said:
The role of family planning services as part of an overall medical health care system was covered in the Task Force report on Federal Family Planning Programs—Domestic and International which was released on December 22, 1969. In that report, we stressed that an estimated 5.3 million American women do not have access to information or techniques available to the rest of society about how to limit their fertility.
It was further noted that this inaccessibility of knowledge undermines the morals of our society and was not in keeping with the basic principles of a democratic system.
Family planning is more than simply birth control.
It includes many aspect of maternal and child healthcare which must be made available to all our citizens. Birth control must be kept within the total context of Family Planning and should be considered always as an available option for any individual.
The belief that Family Planning constitutes population control must be rejected. Over 97% of American married couples utilize maternal and child healthcare services and an estimated 90% [2] practice birth control in some form and still the United States experience a population growth of 1%, a doubling every 70 years.
Family Planning constitutes the knowledge base for regulating births and reducing infant mortality. Population control is to limit birth, not to regulate births. It is necessary to understand the difference.
The practice of birth control is an accepted norm for American married couples. There is, however, concern among many demographers over the widespread desire on the part of Americans to produce three and four children in the belief that such family sizes constitute the practice of birth control. Without failsafe contraceptive devices, available to both men and women, that are medically safe and easily administered, it is not realistic to believe that an honest, free choice decision is available to those who prefer to limit their families to two children.
Population control is not a function for federal, state or local governments. However, Family Planning services, within the context of maternal and child healthcare services, must be made more accessible to the poor in providing these services as a proper function of all governments at a sensible level of costs.
As part of Family Planning Services, birth control information as well as devices and techniques to regulate fertility should be available to all those who want them and cannot afford them through private sources. The major problem in providing these specific birth control services has been the availability of trained personnel. Medical doctors and nurses are hard-pressed for services in more specialized areas of medicine. Also, providing family services to the poor has not been considered an appealing avocation of the medical profession.
Ideally, our entire healthcare system should be overhauled to create less reliance on specialized medicine and overburdened hospitals and more dependence on para-medical professionals in providing healthcare services and more reliance on providing proper nutrition for all Americans.
The legality of abortion and of sterilization does not come under the jurisdiction of the federal government, but they are properly within the purview of state governments where medical laws are widely divergent. The most disturbing aspect of the abortion issue that was brought before the Task Force, is the disparity between the availability of professional abortion services to those women who can afford the $500-$700 to obtain a therapeutic abortion and the estimated one million illegitimate abortions performed by the unlicensed practitioners for those women who cannot afford professional service. It is apparent that many women who desire abortions take extreme measures, and subject themselves to dangerous methods in order to obtain an abortion.
It therefore seems that the main objective of abortion law revision should be to eradicate the increasing number of unlicensed and unqualified practitioners who jeopardize the health and safety of these women and to establish a system that eliminates discrimination resulting from present pricing structures.
The Task Force is committed to the development of a national population policy. We believe education, family planning services, contraceptive research and development as well as transportation, and community planning and development should be important components of such policy.
Before we can begin to remedy a problem, we must first realize that we have one.
Despite the increased interest regarding this problem, there is still a vast number of Americans who are unfamiliar with even the most essential understanding of this potentially dangerous population growth rate.
The Task Force feels that one of the most important functions of the federal government is to supply the public with the latest and most accurate data. This should be done in a non-judgmental fashion that will enable the citizens to be well-informed and to influence their own remedial action.
It is expected that the Council on Environmental Quality and the recently established President's Commission on Population Growth and the American Future will provide the public with this necessary information and ensure continuing data regarding the latest developments.
Death tolls have been reduced in every country to negligible rates from epidemics and diseases such as malaria, measles, smallpox, cholera, polio and tuberculosis; major advances have been made against heart disease and cancer, artificial organs can now prolong life.
Since we accept these intrusions into nature's control of population as morally justified, are we not unwise to consider birth control with equal moral justificiation?
If we continue to support government activities to reduce disease and improve health in order to prolong life under the auspices of what is good for society, then should we not consider birth control as a government activity for similar reasons?
In the Task Force report on "Federal Government Family Planning Program" it was recommended that Congress increase appropriations for contraceptive research in the amount of $380,000,000.00 over the next five years.
In conjunction with this research, the Task Force now feels research in the methodologies of pre-determining sex before insemination must be considered and pursued.
For birth limitation and regulation to be an honest free choice goal of Americans to undertake, pre-determination of the sex of children and failsafe contraception must be available to everyone.
The Task Force believes that much more knowledge is needed by the public in general about fertility control, contraception techniques and sex determination, as well as the social and material consequences resulting from increase population, in order that the broadest number of options are available to everyone in making personal decisions that affect the use of natural resources, family size and ultimately our environment. There must exist a greater sensitivity to these problems which cannot be provided by the federal government. The government can provide leadership and direction but should never be put into a position of having to enact controls on population as a result of public ignorance and indifference.
[2] Charles F. Westoff and Norman B. Ryder, Recent Trends and Attitudes Toward Fertility Control and in the Practice of Contraception in the U.S. University of Michigan, November, 1967, p. 10,2 Ibid |
This was a posting of something that was printed 30+ years ago.
What's the angle?
So do I, but in your reply here, you're bouncing around like a pinball.
Can you rephrase this, please?
(After all, It's the Economy, Stupid.)
But I still wonder whether that's just a way to appeal to human nature (being made in God's image and prizing the first born son) or whether it also is part and parcel of the State's interest in males over females.
For if the State were interested in some parity, it would seem China would force folks to keep a certain amount of girls rather than look the other way as folks abort, abandon or kill their female children to obtain a boy. They don't seem to have any problems with an excruciatingly, overwhelmingly male population.
For exactly what purposes it's hard to say. Fewer female definitely puts the brakes on procreation, beefs up the military with real muscle and encourages the homosexuality that is the State's ideal in many respects. I don't know. Still thinking about that one.
If I manage to dig up anything resembing Chicom encouragement of females, we'll see if there's a clue there.
I'm getting to the Source (which happens to be GOP) of why that is, that's all.
For instance, the line about "predetermination of sex" would seem to be the foundation on which Bush could argue that -- having "Excess" human embryos for just such a reason, wanting a Male instead of a Female child -- our State was somehow obliged to make best use of same rather than just throw the unimplanted ones in the trash where they belonged.
Don't expect me to fall for all the Potemkin pro-life stuff that is anti-abortion license plates (get a bumper sticker already) or "Parental Consent" legislation that only obtains a properly defined Square One, fasttracks minor abortions and ends up the basis for court-ordered minor abortions sans parental knowledge, much less consent.
That's just so much sound and fury geared toward making us chase our tails as we wonder how it is the State steadily progresses along "leftist" lines with regard to Human Life and the Environment.
I look at what the results are, not what their "moving lips" say...unlike some (R) kool-aide swallowers on FR.
If Barney Frank put an (R) after his name to get elected, Karl Rove, and some here would be saying "Never mind what he stands for...VOTE (R) ALWAYS! We NEED to retake (X)!".
Nevermind HOW they vote, or what they support...or even who they vote WITH...that (R) is ALL that certain starry-eyed folk see.
Does THIS answer your question?
Ummm... No, it doesn't.
What's your angle?
I'm sick to death of being pinned as some "Bush Hater" by the Cult of Personality around here simply because members of the Bush family have been charged with the most critical points of convergence on these issues.
I'll thank you not to take a page from Howlin analyze me as having a problem with the Bush family.
As for most of the posters on this forum's agreeing with "The Bush Family" (as well as the Republican Research Task Force and the Task Force on Earth Resources and Population) ... I suspect that's part and parcel of their stated intent to EDUCATE folks in this regard lest the State be forced to implement these policies for an ignorant populace's failure to Choose same.
Did you read the article? Are you clear on the proposals here for the State to decide where we live and how many children we have by using coercion masquerading as Education and Information to condition our Choices?
They're quite clear about the fact the State has some obligation to enforce these "moral" principles should the population at large remain ignorant of their "nonjudgmental" data.
I particularly like the part where -- because human ingenuity and respect for life has resulted in the eradication of disease and longer lives -- it is ALSO our "moral" obligation to take steps to intervene and reduce birth rates so as to keep to what the Experts have decided is our Optimum Population.
This is wicked stuff. The only reason it's so namby-pamby rambling is because it's being spouted by Well-Intentioned useful idiots who have not the abject clarity of the militant atheist communists with whom they have share certain ultimate objectives regarding Humans and Resources as well as an essential disregard for the sanctity of human life or the liberty of the individual.
The truth of our self-destruction is out there. Here's but a portion of it. The illustrious GOP Task Forces spouting forth the Talking Points of gramscian-marxists who've destroyed us from within.
Gore wasn't even trusted to carry off our moral war in Serbia.
You think he'd have managed to double the NIH's budget overnight, approve ESCR, obtain special new veils of privacy for the Executive Branch or proceed with some unsettling PATRIOT Act style war-time provisions without extreme scrutiny and criticism from the GOP?
We're foxed.
But rdb4 will be coming shortly.
I have my own doubts about some of the Bushes; but I still think that they're better than the Gores.
Here's my own thinking on the subject:
You can't fight the pro-choice crowd by merely talking about abortion. Support for abortion is the consequence of a series errors which have to be addressed before you can realistically expect to move opinion on the abortion or population control issues.
I will see if I can drop in a link here which I think addresses the heart of the matter.
This is the beginning of a "one child per family" plan. In the US however, they're going to allow you to chose what sex your child will be. Isn't that big of them?
By the way, small families make for ultimately controlable subjects. Big, strong families fight back.
But I bet you can't find any anti-abortion stuff from Daddy Bush.
Abortion is NOT the key issue of this piece. They merely lay the groundwork for legal abortion (as they do the manufacture of Excess or Unwanted human embryos).
I thought this was a very nice COMPREHENSIVE treatment of the essentially materialistic view which jibes perfectly with the militant atheist (or communist) model of Resources and Human Life.
Goes a long way toward buttressing my repeated notion that communist totalitarians and soulless capitalists have elected to split the baby the eugenicists are birthing for them.
I look forward to your link.
And, in light of our Declaration, are citizens created or born?
Sure you can.
I can even quote George W. Bush on his belief that life begins at conception.
Whoop-tee-doo.
I guess the life must first pass the test of Implantation (for purposes of damages should a pregnant wife want to sue for unlawful death or collect from her OBgyn for failure to abort), and then be born before that life is properly a Person and possessed of Almighty Citizenship.
Thank God we have an Enlightened populace that understands the compromises with "Personal Convictions" necessary for a just democracy and freedom for all ... full-person Citizen.
This is aparently lost on government as well since they steadfastly refuse to close our borders.
This whole thing pisses me off actually.. I am tired of the self appointed ruling class of the universe speaking about us like an angry parent or something.
"What! What are you doing in there? Do you have a girl in there? Are you two breeding? Stop it this instant and come unlock the door!"
Constantly concerned that someone, somewhere JUST MIGHT be breeding and that they JUST MIGHT want to keep and raise their child as opposed to killing it or preventing conception in the first place.
I am convinced, the elder Bush is a globalist nutcase who get's off on other peoples breeding habbits.
It's one of the great misfortunes of our time that the parentalism of our "socialism with a human face" government manages yet to deride the just authority that is patriarchy.
Way too many folks confuse the two.
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