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 |
I was totally unprepared for the "predetermination of sex" to be thrown in ever so casually in the final paragraphs of their Recommendation. I'd kept my cool throughout the transcribing of the "optimum population" bit as well as the abortion and persistent attempts to draw some distinction between Family Planning and population control but I'll admit that caught me by surprise and made me cry. I'm such a freakin' wuss about this stuff. I should know better.
Still, I wish they'd made the relationship between the State's moral control of population and the predetermination of sex more clear.
Maybe China's got a task force finding that'll spell it out for me.
Abortion and the English Language (Joe Sobran)
Language is important.
Agreed.
the Body Politic
Vol. 01, No. 06 - June 1991, Page 8
Copyright © 1991, 1998 by the Body Politic Inc.
Title X - Quotable Quotes
Read My Lips!
We need to make population and family planning household words. We need to take the sensationalism out of this topic so that it can no longer be usedby militants who have no real knowledge of the voluntary nature of the program but, rather, are using it as a political stepping stone. If family planning is anything, it is a public health matter.
Rep. George Bush, 1969
Most important is that legislation be recognized as ... a health-care service mechanism and not a population control mechanism.
Rep. George Bush, 1970
As we amended the Social Security Act in 1967, I was impressed by the sensible approach of Alan Guttmacher, the obstetrician who served as president of Planned Parenthood. It was ridiculous, he told the committee, to blame mothers on welfare for having too many children when the clinics and hospitals they used were absolutely prohibited from saying a word about birth control. So we took the lead in Congress in providing money and urging -- in fact requiring -- that in the United States family planning services be available for every woman, not just the private patient with her own gynecologist.
George Bush (Foreword to World Population Crisis by Phyllis Piotrow), 1973
I don't get it.
Shocked, shocked, that gambling is happening at this establishment(to all lurkers rent "Casablanca" and listen for that line, and you will get the gist of Askel's disingenuousness).
Naturally, this studied silence where a person's Personal Convictions are concerned seems odd for a "democractic" society where all opinions should be heard.
A true departure from the valiant fight against the State as waged by individual Catholics for the first half of the century who were opposed to eugenics, scientific racism, the genocide that is birth control and state-enforced population control (through Clean Hands methods of education, funding, provision of implements and "data" to ease a person's Choice in the matter).
... runs a poor second to that of our "Pro-Life" establishment.
No doubt, more thread of hair wide linked conspiracy theories are in our future. That's your forte and you are practising it with relish today.
Well, that of the Democrats sure did. Many of them needed a certain regrooving from their liberal recognition of the War on Poverty as targeted genocide of the poor and attempt to maintain certain "population differentials".
Plus, the sound and fury of Democrats and their "litmus tests" worked wonders to obfuscate the FACT that abortion and population control (much less "environmentalism" at th expense of human life) are GOP policies and always have been.
I think it's important to remember always that on key issues such as this or China, for example, the message they're sending is essentially the same.
George Bush tried to establish a fetal tissue bank long before Clinton took a stab at it. It was George W. Bush who nailed open the most profitable window of Non-Personhood in his first televised address to the nation.
If you get past appearances, you'll find not a lot changes. It's merely the Fashion (as circumstances dictate) for one party or the other to assume the mantle of morality and oppose in part State-sanctioned manufacture, destruction and control of human life.
But essentially, they're one. As evidenced by their agreeing -- and setting in stone -- just this week that Personhood Begins at Birth.
Just a nugget of Republican Research and Task Force Recommendations from 1970.
If I were to theorize, I guess I'd say the Democrats steal all their best Talking Points from Republicans where population control and the Environment are concerned.
(I'm tempted to post their findings on Resources just to rub your nose in it.)
Perhaps that a Leopard doesn't change it's spots, and a Rockefeller Republican can't either?
I like things to make sense.
Now that I realize for certain that it was Republicans who handed the Dems their talking points for overpopulation, abortion, birth control and depopulation sufficient to achieve an Optimum number of people for Ecological purposes, it makes a hell of a lot more sense that we sorta "let" the Democrats win for the last 32 years on these very issues.
Save for the really tricky stuff -- like nailing open the most profitable window of Human Non-Personhood -- which we still reserve for ourselves and the Word of God where the winning over of Americans at large is concerned. The A-Team, as it were.
For, as you know, the Democrats are somewhat dimwitted sorts accustomed to perceiving the right to off their own as the ultimate in Empowerment. Very doubtful they'd have pulled off the ESCR thing.
Besides, if they'd suggested it, Republicans would have been up in arms against it.
Yep 1970, the age of Aqaurius, when LBJ liberalism was still en vogue, before the Ronald Reagan Presidency.
Yep that 1970. BTW, Margaret Sanger(the founder of Planned Parenthood), was at her penultimate in the 1920's, but that does not matter as you go about your witch hunt with the same kind of relish and ignorance of history and circumstances as the present day demo's do.
Have fun Askel as you morph into Tom Daschle for all to see on FR.
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.
In society today, a vision of life prevails permeated with secularism, in which the sense of God, and hence a sense of sin, is lacking. Therefore the meaning of life itself is no longer grasped. In such an environment, the so-called "anti-life" mentality has been able to develop, that is a mentality set against human life. The ultimate reason for this mentality is "the absence in people's hearts of God, whose love alone is stronger than all the world's fears and can conquer them". (Familiaris Consortio, n. 30).The serious loss of hope which characterizes today's widespread "culture of death", should arouse deep disquiet in consciences, which, however, seem dulled to the point of suffocating in each soul that inborn instinct to love and serve human life. It is evident that forces, structures and programs exist -- supported by centers of ideological, political and economic power -- which feed a culture of death. But no one wants to be considered a member of this culture.
The commitment required to oppose this dramatic human condition must be expressed in a broad and organic strategy of education.To further this end, it is useful to promote a courageous effort to discern what elements still survive in consciences in favor of the human person, expressed in the form of deep concerns. This educative strategy could lead to an authentic civilization of love, where the human person will be respected in his psycho-physical and spiritual unity, in truth, through a renewed commitment to the New Evangelization and through working for a culture of life, to which we are called by the Holy Father (cf. Christifideles Laici, n. 38; Centesimus Annus, n. 39).
Guided by the word of God and listening to the authentic aspirations of the heart, the Church, as defender of the human person and "expert in humanity", will know how to find ways to speak to reason and conscience. Each person is aware that the life of every human being is certainly a biological reality, but it is not reduced to that. It is of much greater value.
A deep yearning for a better "quality of life" is present in our society. Often this desire does not only concern peripheral aspects of health or well-being, but genuine states of physical or psychological difficulty. Now, if the parameters of the value of human life remain at the level of physical efficiency or consumerist criteria, one could easily draw conclusions concerning the uselessness of some human lives, or at least of those who have reached a completely irreversible situation. But the central criterion for the value of life is of the spiritual, moral and religious order, that is of the very dignity of the person.
In spite of the fact that the value of human life and its inviolability may be evident through right reason and conscience, unfortunately in our day it is the object of many attacks, above all at the beginning and at the end of life itself or in situations of weakness and suffering. We understand the difficulty in which people who suffer in these situations find themselves and the temptation which perhaps they undergo. But one cannot forget that life belongs to God alone and that the mystery of suffering confronts us with the mystery of the person, which in turn reflects the very mystery of God.
On the other hand, while the desire for motherhood or fatherhood in itself arouses a spontaneous solidarity, it should not open the door to research for the "child at any cost". With the practices of artificial procreation and genetic manipulation or alteration, with the "waste" and the destruction of embryos or experiments on them, the unborn child is reduced to a "product" of technology, and his or her life and personal dignity are harmed. Thus ever wider openings are made for man's domination over man and for his desire to become his own "creator" (cf. Donum Vitae, Part 1, n. 5, Part 11, premise).
One outstanding aspect of the "quality of life" concerns the instrumentalized and depersonalized way of understanding sexuality and corporality. Some of the effects of an illusory sexual "freedom" are the break up of the family, adultery and divorce, the spread of abortion, contraception and sterilization. Pornography, in is various forms, is another powerful factor spreading morally irresponsible behavior and also various forms of sexual perversion.
The contraceptive mentality causes the will to become detached from its tendency towards the good and therefore towards true love. Thus sexuality and corporality become trivialized; their links with transcendence and the mystery at the origin of human life are overlooked or rejected. In consequence, human values such as chastity, fidelity, fertility, the gift of self, come to be despised and are not rightly understood. The unborn child itself comes to be thought of in an instrumental way as only the "inconvenient and unwanted fruit of sexual activity". The unborn is not welcomed in his truth, dignity and value as a human person destined to love and be loved. All this opens the way to the tragedy of abortion.
It is certainly no accident that the forces which promote abortion are the same as those spreading contraception. In fact, the connection between the two phenomena, at first above all psychological and sociological, is always effected and made concrete through so-called contraceptives that also have an abortifacient effect.
This mentality also strikes at a woman's dignity, often entailing her being used as an instrument, conditioning her to live in situations which are not fully in accord with her will and which contradict her deep yearning for motherhood (cf. Mulieris Dignitatem, n. 18).
To overcome the culture of death a change of mentality is necessary and urgent. We need to rediscover the deep meaning and value of each human being and to teach respect for his or her right to life, from conception until natural death -- that is, to find once more the significance of each human person.
Furthermore, there is an urgent need to put forward a healthy conception of sexuality, of self-respect as a person (so as also to teach respect for others), of chastity before marriage and conjugal fidelity, as well as educating the conscience in the deeper value of fertility. Teaching the methods for the natural regulation of fertility should be included in this context.
Some of the fields in which such educative work is most urgently needed are: first of all the family, because of its primary task of education; the school in collaboration with the family; Christian communities, above all the parish and youth associations; areas of social work and health care; the mass media.
The irreplaceable contribution of women should be recognized and emphasized much more in education for life and in the formation of a culture of acceptance and love, whether in civil society or in the Church herself (cf. Familiaris Consortio, n. 23
The declaration doesn't say one way or the other. It says that our Creator endowed us with certain rights.
The 14th says that you can't be afforded protection until you are a citizen. Actually it was Justice Taney who said that, in contradiction to every sensible common law edict prior to his racist nonsense, and it was the Congress that passed along his "wisdom."
That's why you find alot of folks under the delusion that one's human rights are dependent upon geography.
At any rate, nobody has a right to be born. It's a crapshoot. Life isn't fair and any attempt to make it fair results in widespread suffering.
Have you read the entry with Arthur Jensen and William Shockley yet? Pioneer Fund connected race scientists. Kinda makes one wonder why, of all people to choose from, G. Bush II's HHS pick was someone to whom Charles Murray was a consultant.
Over 50% of the replies are from malcontnents ignorant of the times(1970) and the circumstances of the times and the politcal thought after the time, 1970.
Do you(Askel) see a pattern here?
My guess is no. You are so wound up with your agenda that you bring up a 32 year old report that nobody read and was forgotten 32 years ago.
But you go ahead with your vendetta, it was what you and the other malcontents are known for.
The fact that it is 32 years old gives me pause..
It would appear to outline an "agenda" and it would appear that this "agenda" was successfully implemented.
Get out your ancient history of Sparta. Aristotle notes it at some length in the Politics; I think Thucydides gives it a whirl too, but I don't know him. Xenophon has something to say on it (calling them the Persians) in the Cyropaedia, and I think in the Anabasis, but I don't know that one either.
My two cents:
Merely diminishes the value of the child and thwarts the notion of a child as a child.
You are supposed to view procreation in a manner very much like buying a car, or some other object that you posess and have the right to do with as you please.
Don't like the color? that dent in the hood?
Then let that one go and try some more. After all, this is potentially your car we are talking about here and you have every right to be pleased with it.
It says they're created.
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