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
Mr. BUSH. Mr. Speaker, the weeks before recess our Republican Task Force on Earth Resources and Population held three hearings.
The subjects discussed at these hearings were: the hereditary aspects of human quality, that activities of the Earth Resources Survey Program Review Committee, and the environmental problems created by our rapid rate of population growth.
So that all Members of the House can share the information we heard, I offer our hearing highlights for the RECORD:
Dr. Williams Shockley, Professor, Stanford University.
Dr. Arthur Jensen, Professor, University of California at Berkeley.
Dr. Shockley stated that he feels the National Academy of Sciences has an intellectual obligation to make a clear and relevant presentation of the facts about hereditary aspects of human quality. Furthermore, he claimed our well-intentioned social welfare programs may be unwittingly producing a down breeding of the quality of the U.S. population.
Specifically, Dr. Shockley feels the National Academy of Sciences should answer the following question: "Is or is not your 1967 statement on Human Genetics and Urban Slums now clearly out of date and unsound as a result of the analysis published in the Winter, 1969 issue of the Harvard Educational Review by Dr. Jensen and its subsequent review by Dr. Crow?"
Dr. Shockley believes that such a question is partially justified on the basis that one of 3 authors of that 1967 statement, Dr. James Crow, now seems to feel that the statements fails to adequately consider new theories of genetic quality.
On the basis of studies completed by Dr. Arthur Jensen, Dr. Shockley claimed: "I believe that the voting citizens of the United States can and should endeavor to make their government seek objectivity to formulate programs so that every baby born has high probability of leading a dignified, rewarding and satisfying life. Letters from government organizations show that hereditary factors are essentially excluded from present studies of our social problems.