Population Politics Why Ellen Sauerbrey has become a liberal target.

WSJ ^ | November 7, 2005 | WSJ Staff

[AliVeritas]

Samuel Alito isn't the only nominee under attack by liberals for his record on abortion. So is Ellen Sauerbrey, President Bush's choice to be Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.

To be precise, Ms. Sauerbrey is under fire for supporting Mr. Bush's priorities at the United Nations, where the former Maryland legislator and gubernatorial candidate has spent four years as U.S. envoy to the Commission on the Status of Women. Among her alleged sins is that she supports the Administration's decision to withhold $34 million from the U.N. Population Fund because some of the agency's contributions go to China's appalling forced-abortion policy.

The Population Fund is one of the principal cheerleaders of China's one-child policy, which has been enforced through fines, imprisonment, forced abortion, sterilizations and even, human-rights groups charge, infanticide. Several weeks ago Mr. Bush invoked a 20-year-old policy--known as the Kemp-Kasten Amendment--which prohibits federal funding of "any organization or program which supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization."

[samtheman]

But don't you understand? There are "too many people" and the liberals are just trying to "weed some out".

[dangus]

You think what is going on in France is bad, you should see what will happen in China. The current population of infant girls is 37% smaller than the population of girls entering child-bearing years (15-19), or about to leave child-bearing years (35-39). Somehow the United Nations expects the the birthrate in China to climb 20%, even as the number of women entering child-bearing years collapses over 25%. Do they know of some policy shift that Chinese leaders have announced, that will not only undo the direct effects of China's policy, but will somehow do what European and Pacific nations have not been able to do?

Right now, China's population is growing, because the population of elderly in China is exploding. When the "baby boom" generation in China begins to die out, the collapse in China's population will be breathtaking. The United Nations foresees a collapse of four and a half million fewer people per year; Current birth rate data shows that unless fertility increases dramatically, the real rate of population decline would be closer to 20 million PER YEAR. Or a decline the size of the entire population of the United States in just two decades.

[jackbenimble]

Current birth rate data shows that unless fertility increases dramatically, the real rate of population decline would be closer to 20 million PER YEAR. Or a decline the size of the entire population of the United States in just two decades.

Would that be such a bad thing? They currently have something like 1.6 billion people or more than 5 times as many people as we do crammed onto a piece of land roughly the same size as ours. They can't feed themselves. It seems to me they would be better off with a few less people.

[samtheman]

Very good analysis of the situation in China, which of course has been exacerbated by the "one child policy". But it's not the only country with problems you describe. I hear that all over India, in the countryside, there are village after village where you only see gangs of little boys running around. Where have all the little girls gone?