Hicks, Nathaniel W.

English

epublications@Marquette

The Linacre QuarterlyVolume 11 | Number 3 Article 8July 1943By "Planned Parenthood" the People May PerishNathaniel W. HicksFollow this and additional works at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/lnqRecommended CitationHicks, Nathaniel W. (1943) "By "Planned Parenthood" the People May Perish," The Linacre Quarterly: Vol. 11: No. 3, Article 8.Available at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/lnq/vol11/iss3/8THE LINAORE QUARTERLY ay "PLANNED PARENTHOOD" THE PEOPLE MAY PERISH By NATHANIt:L W. HICKS facing the greatest crisis in its history, tris nation finds , itself str~ining every resource to solve the gigantic problem of man-shortage without serious upset to f,+mily life ~pd the whole pattern of -A-merican living. While the vaOlJum of need in our armed forc~s ~nd ip essential wa~ occu-patipns must now siphon millions of JlUsbnnds and fathers, and may dr~w up to 6,000,000 women from their present jobs or their homes into war inqustries, there thrives in our midst a well organized, strongly eptrenched and shrewdly guiqed movement which, under the guise of science, patriotism and social welfare, will-if left un-checked--depopulate and destroy oUI' cQuntry - unwittingly, we grant, put lJlore surely than any war against us from sky and ~ea anq lan~l. The planned-parenthood move-ment fpr birth prevention and birtp spacing, which can only lead to birth-rate depression, may clothe 1\ very old evil in the ha-biliments of sociology, but it must stand condemned as furthering, not u wisely planned, high-qual-ity population, but the ultimate destruction of this nation, to pre-serve wpich the parents of today are pfl'el·ingthe lives of their sons. ~mergency, but for like ones which may arise in the future. Strong as may be our faith and hopes in the Atlantic Charter, it is a de-mand of intelligent patriotism and practical foresight that even the most optimistic give due regard to the worst propensities of hu-man nature, the fallibility of the , best inclined nations and races, and to the strife-filled history of mankind. I The month the Japs struck 'j fear! Harbor, the Planned Par- , llnthood Federation of America, Inc., then less deceptively named the Birth Control Federation of America, published in its pse~ldo­scientific bi-monthly organ the following statement: The United States is over-populated rather than under- ' populated, in the sense that her resources will permit a higher standard of living in the future for a somewhat smaller population than for It larger one, regardless of the technological progress which may occur. It appeared in an article in Hu-man Fertility (formerly the Jour-'ttal of Contraception). An obvious comment on this pnfounded and unpl'ovable asser-tion, which indicates the position of the birth controllers on the 111atter of population, is to recall r In establishing a case for our nation IlgaiJlst the Planned Pal'-enthood Feqeration and its affili-ates, let us return to the problem of manpower, not for the present that this vast, rich country's pop- 1 ulation densit,V is onl," 44.2 per- , ~1 1; ~ ./J r ,.. ,.. , -THE LINAORE QUARTERLY sons for ~Ilch square mile. Ger-JIlany proper has a density of 381.5 or, jf we include Austria and the 5judetenland, of 352.3. England's flverage square-mile in-habitation is 742.2 persons. We still find in these United States tremendou~ possibilities for growth without sacrifice either of our self-sufficiency or our constantly rising peacetime standard of liv-ing. Since 1880 our density has increased py only 27.3 persons. :\leanwhile, our living standard has ascended with giant strides. In no way is it our problem to provide a pigher standard for a lower numb~r of people, but rather to raise the lower half of our na-tion to a just participation in what we I),ow can offer and to raise the ~tandard, as national 'progress ;eqUJres, for all the people and for 7nore people. However improbable another great war in our times may be, we may well ask ourselves, never-theless, hOlv much better would our manpower status be for a World War III in, say, 1960? Assuming a Selective Service pool confined to the ages 20 to 3~ in-clusive, we ~an compute some sig-nificant fig\jres from future popu-lation esti",ates used by the Na-tional Res~urces Planning Com-mittee and based upon statistics of the U. S. Bureau of the Cen-sus. Such ~ pool, in 1940, would have numbered 16,303,000 men, married and single, native and foreign born, out of a total popu-lation of 131,669,275. For com-parison, 16~316,908 men between the ages of 21 Ilnd 36 did regis-ter under Selective Service on Oc-tober 16, 1940. By 1960, our total population will, according to estimates, have increased by more than 15,000,-000. This figure is attained with the assumption of medium birth flnd death rates and no net immi-gration; incidentally, it marks a thirty-three and one-third per cent drop in population gains by pirthas compared with the twenty years, 1920-40. The 20-3.J.-year-I old pool of men for the armed ' forces would be a mere '163,000 plen more than in 1940, A war in 1980 would ~nd the Ijame age-group pool totaling 562,000 fewer men than in 1960. peside& an alarming decrease for a twenty-year period, this shows a frightening trend. The entire estimated population of 153,022,-000 means a tremendous drop of 9,000,000 in over-all population growth in comparison with the 1940-60 period with its own ~tllrtling depression in child-bear- ' irg. These decreases are reminis-cent of the 8,100,000 dl'op in growth for 1930-40, when birth control notably came into its own in the first great inroads against our national population. Speak-ipg then pf the sharp decline for the youngest age groups, the usu-ally calm measured tone of the statistician broke and his pithy warning was-The same trend is sp,olOn in Fra.nce. Any possible war in the year 2,000, but fifty-sen·n years from npw, mlly find our country with its r 61 1 , , .. ,: --~ .. .......... ---~ .... .... ~ THE LINACRE QUARTERLY source of fighting men and war-industry wor~ers in the consid-ered JDanpower pool cut by more than 1,200,000 since 1980, or by approxiJDl\tely 1,784,000 SlDce 1960! Despite the sigIlificance of the populatioll estimates on which these figures are based, they were Ill&de before the 1940 census and were in that year proven to be underesti1/Ultef. With their as-sUfDption of mepium fertility (birth produ~tion) and medium mQrtality, our 1~40 population should have b~en ~bout 132,600,-OpO. It was really almost a mil-Ijor less. In fact, it was well be-low the j!stimate of 131,902,000 (Scripps Foundation for Re-search in Population Problems) made on the basis of a possible low fertility and medium mortal-ity. The net immigration gains in the 1930's were negligible. The low fertility thereby indi-cated will continuj! and certainly go lower if birth control makes advances in the future c.ompa-rable with those of the past twenty years, as eviqenced by our vital statistics. The 1980 population is, therefQre, not truly indicated by the previously cited and gen-erally ac~epted estimate of 153,-022,000. According to the Scripps Foundation's low fertility esti-mate (one of many estimates it prepared), the actual census fig-ures in that year may be merely about 134,381,000 - not even three million more than in 1940. The ratio of growth would, of course, h~ve continued to drop until we hit our population peak of 140,000,000 in 1960. From then pn, the downward trend woulq po longer be one in ratio of growth, but in the real numerical decrease of population that must eventually lead to national disas-ter. Tpe decline and fall of ev~ry great nation in history was her-alded by a falling birth-rate, such as Wj! already have in the Uni.ted States, and by the steady decrease of population we shall most cer-tainly have unless we start to do something about the decline · in child-bearing. Calculations of my own, carried forward from the officially ac-• cepteq estimates up to 1980, pro-vide a picture of what the follow-ing years will bring even with sta-tionary birth and mortality rates. Not to take any advantage of the probable low fertility and the now practically assured downward movement in birth-rates, I have used the same medium fertility ra tes which ga ve the National Resources Committee the popula-tion eliitimate of 153,022,000 for 1980, and showed a gain of slightly less than 9,000,00() over the 1955 estimate. '1 also assume the SllfDe medium mortality and no net immigration. . Going five years past the turn of the next century, we find that in 2,005 the total po pula tion of the United States will be about 145,51~,000, nearly a million and a half less than the prediction for 1960. In other words, assuming mediulJl stationary rates and fig-uring for twenty-five-year periods, r 1;<) 1 I. . , T,E LINAORE QUARTERLY I this would be the first great nu-merical decreai,e of our popula-tion-a drop ~f 7,482,000 from the 1980 estimll-te. The ever-reced-ing gains of tpe previous intra-censal periods ,yill have given way to the inevitable era of repeated loss. The Uniied States will be treading much the same road the great Roman Itation trod toward oblivion and absorption nearly 2,000 years earlier. By 2,030, our people will nUIIjber 134,581,000-only about three millions more than in 1940. By 2,055 our na-tion will be 130,408,OOO-more than a million drop below our 1940 census total. Twenty-five years later we will have dwindled to an approxifJlate 124,780,000, which is roughfy but two million more than we were in 1930. In the year 2,10q, our population will have fallen to more than 6,-000,000 below the 1930 level. The ebb tide of our nation (unless we are preserved 0ir rescued by immi-gration) will be falling fast. It will be our national penalty for the original sin against nature. Lest any of l he foregoing con-siderations be branded as statis-tical sleight-of-pand, I cite some findings by an outspoken advocate of birth control. ' My authority is P. K. Whelptor, of the Scripps Foundation, whp favors a gradu-ally slowing-up decline in the birth-rate until we can maintain a stationary population. Writing in the Planned \ Parenthood Fed-eration's publiclftion, Hu,man Fer-tility. in December, 1941, he ad-mitted that even if the continually falling birth-rates of white wo-men (particular subject of his article) III the United States sho111d remain at the 1935-1939 level "the white population will gradually cease to grow, and be· gin to decrease, perhaps within thirty or forty years." This he ascribed to the fact that each one hundred women of one ~eneration would be contrib-uting only ninety-five daughters to the childbearing period of the next generation. This would mean a constant drop of five per ceut frolTj the number of women nece:s-sary to keep the population sta-tionary. M.r. Whelpton further admitted that the birth-rate for white women "during the next twenty or thirty years" must pro-duce an increase of more than fif-teen per cent, or a total of 110 girl babies for every hundred white women, in order to "achieve" the "gradual slowing up of popu-lation growth followed by the maintenance of a stationary pop-ulatipn." Even in that estimate, he generously allows the possibil-ity of a death rate twenty per cent lower than the average for 1930-1939. In my opinion, however, [he wrote] it is unrealistic to expect the birth rate to continue dropping at the rapid pace of 1923-33 [From 22.2 to 16.5 per 1,000 popu-lation] ; much more probable is a slowing up of the declines which will result in the popu-lation peak occurring some TUE LINAORE QUARTERLY tim~ betweep 1950 ,and 1970. [Rell-chipg the peak in those ' ye&fS woulq mean, not me-dium, but low fertility.] Whether we will then have a sta.~ipnary :pppulation or one diminishintg in nwmbers (un-Jess maintained by immigra-tion) will depend on how soon the decUne in fertility is ar~ rested MU/ 1chethe.r or not S01ije i1lf:rease from the lfJw point can be obtained. (Brackets and italics mine.) It ~s sincerely regrettable, and rather difficult to understand, that one of America's most capable students of population problems should, despite the powerful ar-gume1lts of his statistical data against the contraceptionists, re-main in their camp. He could render inestimable service to the cause of nlltiollal morality and se-cure &. future for our country. Unfortunately, the facts cited from his article in the official or-gan Qf the birth controllers were followed by ~is suggestion that the "population program" should provide more "fertility" clinics for birth-control information and services. "This will tend to de-press the birth-rate, it is true," he wrote, in a weak attempt to explain what must be for him a sCllrcely tenable position:. ... but to /lttempt to raise ferlility to the maintenance level by withholding from the poorer and less educated ('lllsses the cont.raceptive in-formation which is readily available to the well-to-do and more educated classes is highly undemocratic, ex-tremely selfish ... and per- , haps even dangerous from the standpoint of the quality pf tomorrow's children, and hence of our future popula-tion. The latest efforts of the contra-ceptionists are strongly pro-nounced attempts to lower the al-ready dangerous fertility rate by f/llse appeals to the patriotism of w~men in war plants and by dire prPpaganda for general consump-tion, that childbearing ' is un-hellIthy and unsocial in these "emotional" and unstable times. Eradication of the nationally destructive evil on the family front is not less a patriotic duty tq the future of our country than is that solemn duty to the present which our people face so well and ' bravely today with "blood, toil, s}\'eat and tears" on the industrial and fighting fronts of this arse-nlll and defender of democracy apr) civilization. We Catholics alld all right-thinking Americans must be well organized, vocifer-ous and ceaseless in action, both privately and jointly, in unmask-ing to the entire public and to our representative official bodies the threat of the "planned parent-hood" forces and the already ser-ipus inroads upon the potential human resources of our nlltion fill' the future.-Reprinted from A merica, Vol. LX VIII, No. 26. r 64 ) 

By  Planned Parenthood  the People May Perish

https://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1099&amp;context=lnq

By Planned Parenthood the People May Perish

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

epublications@Marquette