“The Question of Overpopulation Behind the Millennial Goals”
by The Most Reverend John C. Nienstedt
This past
The official
agenda for the gathering, however, which did not gain much media notice, was
the evaluation of the millennial goals, adopted by 189 world heads of state in
the year 2000 and which proposed to end extreme poverty world wide by the year
2015. The September gathering was meant
to evaluate progress made on the goals and to determine how to move forward on
the attainment of those goals.[2] There are eight millennial goals:
1. To eradicate
extreme poverty and hunger;
2. To achieve
universal primary education;
3. To promote gender
equality and empower women;
4. To reduce child
mortality;
5. To improve
maternal health;
6. To combat
HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases;
7. To ensure
environmental sustainability;
8. To develop a
global partnership for development.
The first seven
goals concentrate on the specific techniques for eliminating poverty. The eighth goal implies that the
accomplishment of those previous goals will be achieved by the investment of
wealthy countries in delivering aid, providing debt relief and establishing free
trade policies.
One of the
underlying concerns behind the Millennial Goals, not explicitly mentioned but
never far from the surface, is the question of overpopulation.
Following
President Bush to the podium was the
“. . . we cannot offer an ambiguous,
reductive or even ideological vision of health.
For example, would it not be better to speak clearly of the “health of
women and children” instead of using the term “reproductive health”? Could there be a desire to return to the
language of a “right to abortion”?[3]
In point of fact
in late August of 2005, the Vatican Holy See had to issue a warning that a
document entitled, “Religious Declaration on the MDG’s, Women’s Rights and
Reproductive Health,” was being circulated prior to the September UN meeting
for the purpose of broadening the terms, “reproductive health” and
“reproductive rights” to include abortion, contraception, and other illicit
means of family planning.[4] The Holy See raised public awareness of this
initiative because it knew that, if adopted, these resolutions would render
useless the Church’s efforts to defend the value of human life.
The vigilance
displayed by the
The Cardinal
acknowledged that proponents of the “New Paradigm” do accept some notion of a
divinity, but this is only a “poetic and aesthetic god” that each individual
makes up for him or herself. This is
definitely not the God of the Bible.[6]
A new global
ethic seeks to replace all previously known religions with a spirituality that
is concerned with the objective global well-being of all human persons within a
world order of “sustainable development.”
“By sustainable development is meant a
development where the different factors involved (food, health, education,
technology, population, environment, etc.) are brought into harmony so as to
avoid imbalanced growth and the waste of resources.”[7]
As the Pontifical
Council for the Family points out, however, it is the developed
countries of the world that determine for other nations what the criteria for
“sustainable development” will be. Thus
certain rich countries and major international organizations are willing to
help developing nations, but on the condition that they accept public programs
that systematically control birth rates.[8]
In the New
Paradigm, Cardinal Lozano asserts, “sustainable development” becomes the
supreme ecological value. He said,
“It is a spirituality without God, at the
secular level. Its ultimate objective is
the viability of the present world, and man’s well-being in it. Practically speaking, it is a new secularist
religion, a religion without God, or, if one wishes a new god, that would be
the earth itself, to which the name Gaia is given. This divinity would have man as a subordinate
element.”[9]
The Cardinal went
on to say,
“The series of values upheld by the New
Paradigm are values subordinated to this diversity, which is translated into
the supreme ecological value that it calls sustainable development. And within this sustainable development is
the supreme ethical objective of well-being.”[10]
According to the
Cardinal, the grave danger of this New Paradigm is its lack of an objective
standard for truth. Consensus on what to
do or not to do rests on subjective opinions, which in turn gives rise
to an ethic or bioethics that has no consistency.
Christianity, on
the other hand, offers a “True Paradigm,” based on an objective and universal
ethics. The first principle of this
ethics is that human life is created by God.
And from this is derived the second principle, that human life is received,
not as property, but as something to be cared for.
The Cardinal
concluded,
“The human person
is the synthesis of the universe and is the reason for everything that
exists. Present-day biomedical sciences
and technologies must be at the service of human life and not vice-versa. They are to construct man, not to destroy
man.”[11]
The major forces
behind the “New Paradigm” with its secular ethic, said the Cardinal, are the
United Nations’ World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
These two institutions have allies in various Non-
Governmental Organizations (referred to as NGO’s), which are
prominent promoters of an anti-natalist global ideology, among whose number
are: the Women’s Environment and
Development Organization, Earth Council Green Peace and the International
Planned Parenthood Association. The
efforts of these organizations have had far reaching effects.[12]
The question of
the world’s overpopulation has been a concern for the United Nations since its
inception. Two years after its being
chartered in 1945, the Population Commission of the Economic and Social Council
was established for the following purposes:
1) to gather data concerning populations, 2) to analyze the influence of population
policies; and 3) to study the interplay
of demographics on social and economic factors.[13] This Commission helped formulate a World
Population Plan of Action at its conference in Bucharest in 1974, continued to
monitor its progress at the 1984 International Conference on Population in
Mexico City, then again to render an update in Cairo at the 1994 International
Conference on Population and Development and ultimately to review its overall
progress at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing.[14]
At first the
Population Commission was only involved in the gathering and analyzing
demographic statistics, their estimates and projections. By the mid-1960’s, however, its emphasis had
shifted to a more aggressive agenda in providing governments with advisory
services, as well as training and action programs,[15]
including fertility and family planning.
While not the
U.N.’s first International Conference on Population and Development (commonly
referred to as ICPD),[16]
the Cairo Conference in 1994 has been described by most commentators as a
watershed moment for the advancement by secular forces to stem population
growth in
At the Cairo
Conference, 11,000 registered participants representing some 180 governments
and over 1,000 non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) agreed that population
issues must be addressed more forcefully if development policies are to
succeed.[17] A great emphasis was placed on
the concepts of women’s empowerment and gender equality as the
primary building blocks for population and development policies.
One begins to
appreciate from the language used in the formulation of the
The 1994 ICPD
in
“At the
In such a
political context, it was also no surprise that the Beijing Conference also
pushed for greater expansion of legalized abortion as a legitimate method of
family planning.
This past
February 2005, the so-called “
The
Since the
February meeting of the Beijing +10, pro-life, non-government organizations
(NGO’s) were barred by U.N. officials from speaking to or lobbying member
states at the preparatory sessions for the Millennium Summit +5 Conference that
was just held in September. At the same
time,
International Planned Parenthood Federation, the National
Youth Network for Reproductive Rights, and Family Care International (all
abortion proponents) were invited to speak to the participants. It is believed that this change of approach
reflects the discomfort on the part of U.N. officials to the interventions of
the
Speaking to the
General Secretary of the World Conference on Population in 1974, Pope Paul VI
said,
“All population policies and strategies,
in the judgment of the Holy See, must be evaluated in light of the sacredness
of human life, the dignity of every human being, the inviolability of all human
rights, the value of marriage and the need for economic and social justice.
Surely each person and couple has a
responsibility to the local and world community; but to see all progress as
dependent on the decline and population growth betokens of shortness of vision
and a failure of nerve. Economic aid for
the advancement of people should never be conditioned on a decline in birth
rates or in participation in family planning programs.”[21]
Given such a
moralistic rationale, it is easy to understand why the
In its 1994
reflection entitled, Ethical and
The Council goes
on to list a number of specific practices that should be challenged by the
Church and her members, namely:
1) The many attempts on the part of the
“population crises ideology” to influence international agencies and
governments.
2) Invoking
so-called new “women’s rights” while underestimating the woman’s vocation to
give life.
3) Invoking
environmental questions in an excessive or improper way to justify coercive
population control.
4) Attempts
to spread abortifacient products such as RU-486 in the developed countries and,
above all, in poor countries.
5) Spreading
sterilizations everywhere.
6) Making
devices against life such as the intra-uterine device commonplace and
distributing them.
7) Violating
the absolute and inalienable rights of individuals and families.
8) Abusing
moral, intellectual and political power.
9) Promotion
of drugs, pornography, violence and the like.”[24]
The Council urges
Christians and all people of good will toward further education in the way many
population control movements use the media to project economic and demographic
information that is both simplistic and inexact. Professionals should be encouraged to provide
correct knowledge that rejects a fear of life and the future and, on the other
hand, respects the human person and the family.
Governments must reject false concepts of reproductive health, which
promote different methods of contraceptives or abortion and they should instead
promote respect for a woman as wife and mother.
The “anti-baby”
mentality, so characteristic of population control programs, refuses to
acknowledge God as the sole Creator of life, thus contributing to a “culture of
death.” As Cardinal Lozano affirms, this
is the “New Paradigm” that rejects the notion of Transcendent God and thus
reduces moral decision-making to the realm of subjectivism. As Pope Benedict XVI has proclaimed, this
kind of relativism is the challenge to the Gospel in the twenty-first
century and it will require the efforts of every Christian believer to
overcome.
The message to
the nations of the world, represented at the United Nations’ Organization,
needs to reflect the sentiments of Pope Paul VI, who said:
“You must strive to multiply bread so that
it suffices for the tables of mankind, and not favor an artificial control of
birth . . . in order to diminish the number of guests at the banquet of life.”[25]
[1]
See Colum Lynch, “U.N. Members Undercut Annan’s Quest for Reform,” The
Washington Post, no. 282 (
[2]
See “World Summit Comments to Universal Access to Reproductive Health by 2015,”
at www.milleniumcampaign.org (
[3]
Angelo Cardinal Sodano, “Address to the 60th Session of the General Assembly of
the United Nations,” at www.holyseemission.org
(
[4]
See Memorandum from Msgr. William Fay, General Secretary, to the Bishops of the
USCCB on “U.N. Millennium +5
[5]
See “Bioethics Challenged by a ‘New Paradigm,’ Says Papal Envoy: Cardinal
Sounds a Warning for World Day of the Sick,” in Zenit.org (
[6] Ibid.
[7]
Pontifical Council for the Family, Ethical and
[8] Ibid.
[9] “Bioethics Challenged . . .,” 2 of 3.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Edward J. Gratsch, The Holy See and the United Nations 1945-1995 (New York: Vantage Press, 1997), 249.
[14]
See Basic Facts About the United Nations (
[15] Everyone’s United Nations, ninth edition (New York: United Nations, 1979), 174.
[16]
Other significant conferences:
[17] See Lindsay Grant, “The Cairo Conference: Feminists vs. the Pope,” NPG Forum Series at www.npg.org (July 1994), 11 of 17.
[18]
Robert H. Bork, Slouching Towards
[19]
See Shena Muldoon, “Win Some, Lose Some,” Inside the
[20] See United Nations Press Release, “UN OK’s Abortion and Population Control Proposals (July, 1999), 1 of 1.
[21] Ibid.
[22]
See Stephen Vincent, “U.N. Catholics On the Front Lines,” in the National
Catholic Register, vol. 81, no 39 (
[23] See Pontifical Council for the Family, 1-32.
[24] Ibid., 23 of 32.
[25] Pope Paul VI, Address to the United Nations, 6.