The Oct. 10 commentary, "6 Billion People should give us pause," by Rep. Mark Udall and Gloria Feldt, CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, left out some rather vital information about the UNPFA and the US Agency for International Development. While waking poetic over the services these agencies may provide, the authors neglected to inform readers of certain other actions that are just as deserving of publicity.
The Population Fund, having acquired the strange notion that hurricane victims in Honduras and Earthquake victims in Turkey need contraceptives and abortion equipment more than shelter, food, and clean water, dispatched precious aid accordingly. This agency also rewarded Vietnam for implementing a program similar to the totalitarian one-child policy of China. Oh, and there is that unfortunate collaboration with Slobodan Milosovic in promoting "reproductive health services" to reduce the population of Kosovar refugees.
USAID fares little better. Its compassionate, taxpayer-funded actions in Peru include assisting the coercive sterilization programs forced upon Indian peasant women.
It seems Udall and Feldt's goal of lives "filled with possibility, not poverty" cannot include the possibility of children.
When Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood on eugenic premises, similar theories were all the rage in Weimar Germany. In her book, The Pivot of Civilization, she laid out her ideals of a New Society:
"We want fewer and better children who can be reared up to their full possibilites in unencumbered homes, and we cannot make the social life and the world peace we are determined to make, with the ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens that you inflict upon us."There's that word again, "possibility." If Feld rejects her predecessor's obvious prejudices, why does she use the same language? And why does she target the same demographic group that Sanger would obviously despise? Somehow, I cannot shake the feeling that all these possibilities for population control mean little more than the control of the populace.
K.J. Jones
Arvada