DISCUSSION ON SOCIETY AND CULTURE WITH FAMILY PLANNING

According to Paul Gerbrands, Chairman of The Dutch foundation CVTM (the Ten Million
Club), a non-profit organisation, overpopulation is a major cause of most of the world’s
problems. Whether it is a question of food shortage, lack of drinking water or energy shortages,
every country in the world is affected by it – or will be.

With a population of 8 to 10 billion, welfare per person on a world scale will drop to that of a
poor farmer who can scarcely provide sufficient food for himself and knows nothing of welfare.
And thus we will have to share everything fairly in order to avoid disputes or war. The climate is
changing – and it matters little whether this can be blamed on human activity or on changes in
the solar system. The sea level only has to rise slightly in order to cause a great deal of valuable
agricultural land to disappear. At present we seem to think that we can keep ahead of famine
with the use of artificial fertilisers, by the inhumane breeding of animals and other survival
strategies. Human beings have a tendency to want more and more welfare. World-wide the
numbers of cars and refrigerators are increasing before our very eyes. But there will come a time
when population growth and welfare collide. There is a reasonably good chance that floods of
people will trek all over the world searching for more food and welfare. Technicians are only too
happy to point to technology that has solutions to all our problems up its sleeve. Unfortunately
technical solutions have not as yet been able to combat world hunger in any significant way.
Wherever there is no recognition or solving of the problems on a worldwide scale, war and
violence would seem to be inevitable: everyone wants to survive. The only solution is a
population policy applied on a worldwide scale. This site provides you – per language and,
where possible, per country – with articles, films and images from all over the world showing
what overpopulation is and why a population policy is important. Unfortunately too often any
discussion of overpopulation or of population policies is taboo. The business world and the
religions are generally only interested in population growth. Allowing welfare to shrink is often
just as difficult for the rich as fleeing from poverty is for the poor. In addition the growth
scenario continues to dominate worldwide thinking about solutions for the problems set out here.

LINDA GORDON'S "WOMAN'S BODY, WOMAN'S RIGHT"

In 1873, the US Congress passed an “Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of,
Obscene Literature and Articles for Immoral Use.”  The “Articles for Immoral Use” were
devices and potions for contraception or abortion. Commonly called the Comstock Law after
Anthony Comstock, one of the founders of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice
and a major proponent of the legislation, by 1900, over twenty states including Connecticut had
state “Comstock Laws” that made the distribution of birth control illegal. It was decades before
birth control was fully decriminalized. When, in 1965, Justice William O. Douglas wrote the
majority decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, he identified a “right of privacy” implicit in
the Fourth Amendment that guaranteed the right of couples to receive birth control information,
devices, or prescriptions from physicians.  After subsequent decisions extended this right to non-
married people, a woman’s right to prevent pregnancy seemed secure.  Since birth control is in
the news again, a look at one of the best histories of the birth control movement in the U.S. is
timely.

Linda Gordon, the Florence Kelley Professor of History at New York University,
published Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: Birth Control in America in 1976. In 2002, she
published a revised and updated version of that book under a new title: The Moral Property of
Women:  A History of Birth Control Politics in America. Gordon’s analysis of the history of
birth control politics is not an uncritical tale of the heroic triumph of birth control advocates. Her
central argument is that crusades for reproductive rights must be evaluated in their particular
political context: “Reproduction control brings into play not only the gender system but also the
race and class system, the structure of medicine and prescription drug development and
reproduction, the welfare system, the education system, foreign aid, and the question of gay
rights and minors’ rights.” Gordon’s account is a multi-dimensional exploration.

She begins with a discussion of Victorian sexual ideology and the work of late-nineteenth
century birth control entrepreneurs. She then traces a complex history of birth control
movements to demonstrate that “Neo-Malthusianism, voluntary motherhood, Planned
Parenthood, race suicide, birth control, population control, control over one’s own body,… were
not merely different slogans for the same thing but helped construct different activities, purposes,
and meanings.”  The campaign for legal access to birth control included individuals and
organizations with diverse and often contradictory goals.

Gordon explains that early twentieth-century “birth controllers” were radical reformers—
feminists, socialists, and liberals—who hoped to aid the working class in their struggle with
capitalism by helping women limit family size. Birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger initially
found support for birth control among socialists and sex radicals but by 1915, she abandoned
socialist organizing and focused on the single issue of birth control.  Gordon analyzes the work
of Sanger’s first birth control clinic in New York City, her creation of the American Birth
Control League, her civil disobedience, her strategic cultivation of moneyed and influential
allies, her attraction to eugenic arguments for birth control, her effective consolidation of once-
rival organizations in 1938 into the Birth Control Federation of America, and that organization’s
emergence as the Planned Parenthood Federation of America  (PPFA) in 1942.  But Sanger’s
work is not the only narrative that Gordon provides.  Gordon’s account of the birth control
movement includes nuanced discussions of how the medical profession, the New Deal, the
Roman Catholic Church, and the social conservatism of the 1940s and 1950s influenced birth
control politics. For example, the PPFA and the medicalization of birth control brought needed
attention to women’s health.  At the same time, in its first two decades, the PPFA projected a
defense of traditional marriage and, too often, “isolate[d] sexual and reproductive problems from
women’s overall subordination.”

Gordon’s treatment of birth control politics and the larger issue of reproductive rights in the last
half of the twentieth century lack the comprehensive and critical attention that she provides for
the late 19th century through the early 1960s.  She briefly traces the abortion rights movement
and the rise of antiabortion activism.  She concludes this chapter presciently when she writes that
“No one issue dramatizes the basic cultural/political fissures in the United States at this time
more than abortion does—although there is competition from gay rights, gun control, and
religion in the schools.”

Gordon writes about the Women’s Health Movement and notes that it positively influenced
gynaecological practice.  She also writes about problems with the first generation of oral
contraceptives, the notorious Dalkon Shield IUD, the salutary changes among “population
control” advocates, and the scandal of sterilization abuse among women of color.  Gordon
suspects a racial subtext to the 1980s alarm about the rising rate of teenage pregnancies; and she
makes the common sense observation that while the U.S. has a higher teenage pregnancy rate
than twenty-seven other industrialized countries, it is also the case that U.S. teenagers are less
likely to use contraception that those in comparable countries.

She notes, but does not investigate, the conflicts between women’s rights activists.  Mainstream,
white and middle-class feminists were slow to recognize the particular concerns of women of
color—concerns about forced sterilization, the availability of pre-natal care, and the persistent
racism that motivated some birth control activists.  In addition, Black Nationalists condemned
birth control as a genocide plot.  Black women who hoped for a larger understanding of
reproductive rights as well as access to birth control and abortion struggled both within their
communities and with white women’s organizations. Gordon’s comprehensive and astute
analyses of the first many decades of birth control advocacy encourage the reader to want more
of the same about the last several decades. Still, Gordon’s book remains a superb examination of
birth control politics.

BONNIE MASS'S "POPULATION TARGET"

Today, tens of thousands of Third World people are "targets" of population control strategies
aimed at reducing their consumption of public services and precious resources. Population
Target exposes the fraudulent myth that the "population explosion" is a threat to human survival.
Bonnie Mass examines why miserable social conditions and spiralling trade deficits in nations
struggling to develop will not end by implementing "family planning" or "responsible
parenthood" programs. Poverty, political unrest and other manifestations of social ills are a direct
result of inequitable distribution and production of wealth, stratification of classes of people and
pillage of resources. Unemployment and slow economic growth in underdeveloped regions are
not. Mass proves, created by "too many people".
And yet, the U.S. Population Control Establishment composed of government elites, top-ranking
military and billionaire industrialists, persist in sponsoring multi-million dollar campaigns
advocating sterilization and birth control as a means of averting the "population explosion".
Financial giants such as Rockefeller, Ford,Carnegie, Mellon and Hugh Moore for over two
decades have lobbied governments to rally behind demographic programs which will ostensibly
resolve the social and economic problems of the Third World. The powerful influence of the
Population Establishment has brought about multilateral support from the United Nations,
convincing much of the world that Latin America, Africa and Asia can escape their famine and
debt by reducing their food and commodity consumption. Population control programs, they
insist, can achieve this end by reducing the numbers of hungry people and non-producers. In
1975, the United States took the unprecedented step earmarking 67 percent of its foreign health
allocations for population planning.
Population Target provides a penetrating analysis of the historical development of today's birth
and population control theories and programs. An in-depth chapter on the history of the birth
control and eugenics movements highlights the work of Reverend Thomas Malthus and Margaret
Sanger. The evolution of modern day population programs is traced through its private, bilateral
and multilateral phases. Mass' strong evidence of monopoly capitalist control over food
production and distribution, and her critical evaluation of common demographic arguments,
exposes the overpopulation myth. In contrast to coercive means of planning families, the Cuban
and Chinese methods of birth planning are studied. Case studies of population control in Puerto
Rico, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Guatemala and Colombia present cogent portraits of the vast
array of birth control programs now implemented in Latin America, aimed specifically at
eliminating the marginal and unemployed in these countries, and deployed as a method of
controlling the exploited and oppressed everywhere.
Population Target convincingly argues that the wealthy industrialists of the Population Control
Establishment represent the same imperialist interests which invest in all types of lucrative cash
crops, livestock, resource extraction, low cost industrial production and speculative financial
enterprises. Ignoring the needs of the surrounding population, high-level technology,
agribusiness and industrialization have forced thousands of Latin Americans out of work and off
their lands. In order to camouflage their own role in creating poverty and unemployment, the
corporate investors resort to blaming the poor for their marginal and non-productive position in
society. Their response to social needs is: "Keep your numbers down; there are no jobs".
In exploding the population myth and analyzing the economic and political motivations behind
population control, Bonnie Mass has provided a very good study of how population control is
used to oppress women. The detailed and well documented facts and figures (e.g. funding
sources of population control agencies, money allocated for population control by governments
and agencies etc.) make this book a valuable instrument for exposing and fighting the oppressive
use of population control. This book does have a serious defect, however; it lacks an analysis of
the specific oppression of women as women. It does not analyze the factor of male domination
and control of women which is an integral part of the economic and political motivations for
population control and the denial of reproductive freedom and self-determination of women. To
ignore this is to arrive at distorted conclusions. Perhaps in this case, it is foregone conclusions
which have led Bonnie Mass implicitly to deny the existence of the oppression of women as
women.
By now, we are all too familiar with the foregone conclusions of the traditional male-dominated
left which asserts that their version of socialism is the answer and that women should stop
"dividing" the class struggle. According to them, women's liberation will be an automatic result
of a socialist revolution. Women, therefore, must work within their organizations and on their
terms. In contrast, there are a growing number of women around the world who are asserting that
while a socialist revolution is a necessary condition for women's liberation, it will not guarantee
it. They note the serious lack of analysis within most of the left of patriarchy, male-dominion and
women's specific oppression. In order to achieve a true socialist revolution which will liberate
women and men, this analysis must be made now and incorporated into the struggle now. True
unity within the working class can never be achieved if it is based on the oppression of women
and Marxists will have to stop demanding their kind of false unity.
In contrast, Bonnie Mass asserts that the women's movement has failed to see the economic and
political bases of women oppression. She identifies the women's movement with "bourgeois
feminism" and makes statements such as: many women's organizations are geared to the interest;
privileged women and yet speak on behalf of all women It is a very typical ploy of Marxists’
rejection of feminism to disparage and dismiss the women's movement by label it "bourgeois"
and identifying it with a small elite of women who have tried to co-opt the movement for their
own advantage. It is also false and an insult to the masses of women everywhere struggling for
basic change in society. It is different from a legitimate criticism of feminists’ industrialized
countries for not being quick enough perceived the oppressive nature of population control for
not denouncing it loudly enough. This kind of criticism and self-criticism is going on in the
women's movement Europe and North America and analyses are being mad their relationship
between the forces which would impose population control on Third World women while
denying access to safe and effective birth control and abortion First and Second World women.
Unfortunately, Bonnie Mass does not analyze this connection nor limit herself to a legitimate
criticism of the women's movement. Instead of unmasking the perverted use of women's issues
by the forces of imperialism and the attempt by an elite to coopt the women's movement, she
uses these attempts to distort the women's movement by association (see her chapter on "Iran:
Royalty and Feminism"), male-controlled western-dominated mass media has already done an
excellent job of giving a distorted and false picture of feminism. It is really unfortunate that
Bonnie Mass other leftists feel compelled to do the same. The destructive for the over-all
struggle for liberation for Linda Gordon points out, "feminism and anti-imperialism have an
objective basis for unity, in opposition to all of domination." When the traditional left begins to
seriously the specific oppression of women and cease demand that women join in a false unity
based on i subordination and oppression, men and women will be to work together "in the
struggle for a better world".

ACTIVITY 1:

Direction: Write in the corresponded box your general understanding about the different
ideas being presented in our discussion above. In lower box write the implication of either
Linda Gordon or Bonnie Mass idea about in population control. Your answer must be in a
form of sentence that contains 5-7 sentences per box only.

LINDA GORDON'S "WOMAN'S BODY, BONNIE MASS'S "POPULATION

WOMAN'S RIGHT" TARGET"
ACTIVITY 2: Cite one effect of overpopulation in our country either positive or negative
aspect of it. Your answer must be in a form of sentence that contains 5-7 sentences only.

______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________.

Prepared by:

JAYZEL REY J. ABA-A

Instructor