Recommendations of the Task Force on Earth Resources and Population (George H. Bush, Chairman)

Congressional Record | July 8, 1970 | George H. Bush's Task Force

[Askel5]

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As a result of reduced death rates, there are more people in their non-productive years than ever before. More children and more elderly people unable to participate in the world's work force increase the burden on the productive age group. [...] The National Academy of Sciences has said:

Either the birth rate must go back down or the death rate must go back up.

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Earth Resources and Populations—Problems and Directions

Report and Recommendations of the Republican Task Force on Earth Resources and Population. House Republican Research Committee

House Republican Research Committee
Robert Taft, Jr., Ohio, Chairman

Task Force on Earth Resources and Population
George H. Bush, Texas, Chairman

July 8, 1970 Congressional Record, pp. 23188 and contining.

(Current excerpts taken from Section II on Population)

SECTION II. Population Control

It is almost self-evident that the greater the human population, the greater the demands for natural resources and the greater the danger to ecological balance. The paramount questions deals with an optimum human population.

How many is too many people in relation to available resources?

No one seems to honestly know but many believe that our current environmental problems indicate that the optimum level has been surpassed.

A fair analysis would seem to be that our population and consumption rates have grown more rapidly than our ability to develop and supply the resources being consumed while protecting our environment. […]

Congestion and Density

Many of our nation's social problems can be attributed to population density and the congestion of our urban areas.

Projections of the Urban Land Institute place 60% of our population in the year 2000 in just four huge megalopolis areas— (1) from Boston to Washingon, D.C., another from Utica, New York, to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a third from San Francisco to the Mexican border, and the fourth from Jacksonville to Miami, across to Tampa and St. Petersburg. Most of the remaining 40% of the population is expected to live in urban areas as well. Metropolitan areas of over 150,000 grew faster than the national average of 9.8%.

This trend toward density creates immense stress on the public services necessary to accommodate the population. Police, fire, sanitation, transportation—all of these and many others, including education, health and housing, have been unable to keep pace with the demands created by this congestion.

Sociologists believe that this density of population has been a prime cause for increased automobile traffic deaths, drug addiction, broken marriage, alcoholism, crime, homosexuality, suicides, venereal disease and heart attacks as a result of the social stresses that man encounters in his struggle to exist in such a congested environment.

In both his Population Message of July, 1968 and his State of the Union message of January, 1970, President Nixon stressed the need for America to begin developing a national growth policy.

In his State of the Union address, the President said:

The violent and decayed central cities of great metropolitan complexes are the most conspicuous area of failure in American life. I propose that, before these problems become insoluble, the nation develop a national growth policy.

Our purpose will be to find those mean by which federal, state and local government can influence the course of urban settlement and growth so as to affect the quality of American life.

In the future, decisions as to where to build highways, locate airports, acquire land or sell land should be made with the clear objective of aiding a balanced growth.

In particular, the federal government must be in a position to assist in the building of new cities and the rebuilding of old ones.

At the same time, we will carry our concern with the quality of life in America to the farm as well as the suburbs, to the village as well as the city. What rural America most needs is a new kind of assistance. It needs to be dealt with, not as a separate nation, but as part of an overall growth policy for all America. We must create a new rural environment that will not only stem the migration to urban centers but reverse it.

If we seize our growth as a challenge, we can make the 1970's an historic period when, by conscious choices we transformed our land into what we want it to become.

Family Planning and Birth Control

The role of family planning services as part of an overall medical health care system was covered in the Task Force report on Federal Family Planning Programs—Domestic and International which was released on December 22, 1969. In that report, we stressed that an estimated 5.3 million American women do not have access to information or techniques available to the rest of society about how to limit their fertility.

It was further noted that this inaccessibility of knowledge undermines the morals of our society and was not in keeping with the basic principles of a democratic system.

Family planning is more than simply birth control.

It includes many aspect of maternal and child healthcare which must be made available to all our citizens. Birth control must be kept within the total context of Family Planning and should be considered always as an available option for any individual.

The belief that Family Planning constitutes population control must be rejected. Over 97% of American married couples utilize maternal and child healthcare services and an estimated 90% [2] practice birth control in some form and still the United States experience a population growth of 1%, a doubling every 70 years.

Family Planning constitutes the knowledge base for regulating births and reducing infant mortality. Population control is to limit birth, not to regulate births. It is necessary to understand the difference.

The practice of birth control is an accepted norm for American married couples. There is, however, concern among many demographers over the widespread desire on the part of Americans to produce three and four children in the belief that such family sizes constitute the practice of birth control. Without failsafe contraceptive devices, available to both men and women, that are medically safe and easily administered, it is not realistic to believe that an honest, free choice decision is available to those who prefer to limit their families to two children.

Population control is not a function for federal, state or local governments. However, Family Planning services, within the context of maternal and child healthcare services, must be made more accessible to the poor in providing these services as a proper function of all governments at a sensible level of costs.

As part of Family Planning Services, birth control information as well as devices and techniques to regulate fertility should be available to all those who want them and cannot afford them through private sources. The major problem in providing these specific birth control services has been the availability of trained personnel. Medical doctors and nurses are hard-pressed for services in more specialized areas of medicine. Also, providing family services to the poor has not been considered an appealing avocation of the medical profession.

Ideally, our entire healthcare system should be overhauled to create less reliance on specialized medicine and overburdened hospitals and more dependence on para-medical professionals in providing healthcare services and more reliance on providing proper nutrition for all Americans.

The legality of abortion and of sterilization does not come under the jurisdiction of the federal government, but they are properly within the purview of state governments where medical laws are widely divergent. The most disturbing aspect of the abortion issue that was brought before the Task Force, is the disparity between the availability of professional abortion services to those women who can afford the $500-$700 to obtain a therapeutic abortion and the estimated one million illegitimate abortions performed by the unlicensed practitioners for those women who cannot afford professional service. It is apparent that many women who desire abortions take extreme measures, and subject themselves to dangerous methods in order to obtain an abortion.

It therefore seems that the main objective of abortion law revision should be to eradicate the increasing number of unlicensed and unqualified practitioners who jeopardize the health and safety of these women and to establish a system that eliminates discrimination resulting from present pricing structures.

Recommendations and Conclusions

The Task Force is committed to the development of a national population policy. We believe education, family planning services, contraceptive research and development as well as transportation, and community planning and development should be important components of such policy.

Before we can begin to remedy a problem, we must first realize that we have one.

Despite the increased interest regarding this problem, there is still a vast number of Americans who are unfamiliar with even the most essential understanding of this potentially dangerous population growth rate.

The Task Force feels that one of the most important functions of the federal government is to supply the public with the latest and most accurate data. This should be done in a non-judgmental fashion that will enable the citizens to be well-informed and to influence their own remedial action.

It is expected that the Council on Environmental Quality and the recently established President's Commission on Population Growth and the American Future will provide the public with this necessary information and ensure continuing data regarding the latest developments.

Death tolls have been reduced in every country to negligible rates from epidemics and diseases such as malaria, measles, smallpox, cholera, polio and tuberculosis; major advances have been made against heart disease and cancer, artificial organs can now prolong life.

Since we accept these intrusions into nature's control of population as morally justified, are we not unwise to consider birth control with equal moral justificiation?

If we continue to support government activities to reduce disease and improve health in order to prolong life under the auspices of what is good for society, then should we not consider birth control as a government activity for similar reasons?

In the Task Force report on "Federal Government Family Planning Program" it was recommended that Congress increase appropriations for contraceptive research in the amount of $380,000,000.00 over the next five years.

In conjunction with this research, the Task Force now feels research in the methodologies of pre-determining sex before insemination must be considered and pursued.

For birth limitation and regulation to be an honest free choice goal of Americans to undertake, pre-determination of the sex of children and failsafe contraception must be available to everyone.

The Task Force believes that much more knowledge is needed by the public in general about fertility control, contraception techniques and sex determination, as well as the social and material consequences resulting from increase population, in order that the broadest number of options are available to everyone in making personal decisions that affect the use of natural resources, family size and ultimately our environment.

There must exist a greater sensitivity to these problems which cannot be provided by the federal government. The government can provide leadership and direction but should never be put into a position of having to enact controls on population as a result of public ignorance and indifference.

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^[2] Charles F. Westoff and Norman B. Ryder, Recent Trends and Attitudes Toward Fertility Control and in the Practice of Contraception in the U.S. University of Michigan, November, 1967, p. 10,2 Ibid

[Askel5]

Thanks so much for posting the piece.

I still think you're right, though. Most folks these days do think in the same terms as the Culture of Death.

To further this end, it is useful to promote a courageous effort to discern what elements still survive in consciences in favor of the human person, expressed in the form of deep concerns

For what? The marriages they know better than to risk? The children they know better than to have? The Potential children they intend to purchase and have some surrogate mother birth for them? The parents they will put to sleep lest they suffer? Their own selves on whom they plan to exercise their Right to Die lest they themselves become a burden?

The inverse awful reality of abortion actually having settled like a cloud over the consciences of the Living, I suppose, and ingrained in them the Obligation to die they've enforced on the Unwanted whom they're certain would rather be dead than born deformed or Unwanted or somehow an unecessary Burden on others or the Resources of the Planet.

I realize Peter Singer won't off his Mom but folks conditioned to deciding life or death matters and the relative worth -- en masse -- of others generally exempt themselves from whatever algorithm they've devised for the Rest ... The Excess.

Even if you can catch them being human to their own (being excited when the pregnancy stick turns blue within a fortnight of your Best Shot), how does one extend that to all without coming smack up against some kind of Randian rabid individualism or "hopeful" transhumanism as expressed by the likes of Ivory Tower intellectual (and liberal useful idiot) Hillary Clinton?

[Askel5]

Believe me, I grew up immersed in the pro-life camp. LOTS of good people there. I just don't think they most weight appearance versus substance as they should.

And I believe potemkin organizations like National Right to Life only encourage this.

I base this not only on their hailing of the ESCR decision as a Winner compromise (albeit disappointing decision to be "forced" into) but also a conversation I had in D.C. once in the wake of the SB-30 "Parental Consent" decision in Texas.

If you pull up any of those threads, you'll see members of what David Keene likes to call "The Stupid Party" tossing their hats in the air and screaming "don't mess with Texas!" as Askel5 screams "READ THE BILL!!! READ THE BILL!!!" in the background.

In vain, I tried to point out that the bill required no such thing as parental consent and -- moreover -- fast-tracked minor abortions, provided additional protections for abortionists and codified additional privacy for the whole sordid practice. Contrary to the OUTRIGHT LIE printed in the "Dallas Morning News", there was no prison time for offending abortionists. Rather, his penalties were capped by the legislation.

All in all, a substantive win for the abortionists but a bone of Appearance, aptly named as the PATRIOT Act, thrown to the pro-life cause.

I was in DC not long later for either the Treason Rally or the House Managers Dinner and called up National Right to Life to speak to their Legislative Director. As it turned out, they were out but the Texas Legislative Director was sitting in for a fortnight. Beauty.

He was a most pleasant, intelligent young man. Catholic, I'm assuming, since he was a Thomist scholar. We talked for hours. Was I right about what I'd been arguing here at FR? You bet. In fact, I was even right in that the whole thing was geared to "make it look" as if parental consent were required. He knew as well as I the reports in the paper were, technically, misleading.

That bothered me greatly, actually. Sure, I can understand the strategy but why in the world would pro-aborts and the media end up complicit in such a strategy? They're not that stupid. Surely they knew it was a great bill. (What did it cost them to have "parent" really mean parent or guardian?) But they howled on command, even complained about the spectre of prison for abortionists and never corrected the lies printed in the Dallas Morning Herald. Case closed.

We also talked about the role of fathers.

I admitted that I would sometimes argue that -- if abortion was a "human" right as opposed to some strictly Female special right the State was peddling -- fathers should have the right to "abort" their fatherhood as long as they did so before birth, like the moms. "Don't make it worse!" he cautioned.

I knew he was right but, given that I believe fathers are the key to wresting women from the arms of the state, I kept harping on the subject.

"Bring us a case ... bring us a case," he said. I'll admit I left dejected. Clearly, in the 40 million legal abortions since 1973, there was not one father willing to go to bat for his kid. These things truly depress me.

Once I got back home, though, and started digging, I found the Loce case out of New Jersey. A young man who created a human wall with his friends trying to prevent his girlfriend from killing his child. He did take the case to court. Mother Teresa, Dr. Jerome Lejeune and several other luminaries filed amicus curiae briefs -- Dr. Lejeune even flew in from France to testify. (He's the geneticist that discovered Down's syndrome, by the way.) In the end, Loce was convicted of trespassing and the US Supreme Court refused to hear the case he brought in defense of his right to protect the life of the child he'd have gladly supported had he or she been allowed to live.

So I'm not sure what good bringing a case would be when Justice insists she's deaf, if not blind.

And ... let's face it. I'd given anything never to have to mention the name "Bush" again but there's really no getting around the fact that the Bush family has been in a position of leadership within the GOP my entire life.

(Though it's true I didn't realize until I got to this place that Prescott was in politics [lost an election to the publicizing of his eugenic views in '56, I believe], that George H. Bush was a Representative and our first Ambassador to China [I thought he'd just been a CIA guy] in addition to serving two terms as Vice President and one term as President, or that Prescott Jr. was the head of our US/China Chamber of Commerce. I did know Jeb and George were governors of two rather important electoral states also key banking and customs/borders concerns.)

The fact none of the Bush men seem to abide always by their Personal Convictions (particularly W.'s stating that life begins at conception), doesn't surprise me so much. It's quite possible that, despite their being Leaders, they don't have the freedom to live out their Personal Convictions. That's the price of being popular or in the Inner Ring in highschool, even. We all know that.

Rather, what bothers me is the way they can't seem to change the hearts of their pro-abort wives. The Bush women stand as constant testament to the fact that reasonable people can disagree about something so sacred as human life.

The Bush women stand testament to the fact that after a lifetime in politics (particularly the last 30 years' polarization, Litmus Test locksteps and "political realities" centered on the abortion issue that unites the Rainbow Coalition) ... that during all those 30 years, sitting through all those political and pro-life functions ... they remained UNconvinced of the self-evident truth that all men are created equal and have dignity and the right to life from conception to natural death.

Not even the rank carnage of our abortuaries (which they'd like to see "reduced" and confined to the first trimester only) or the alienation of the sexes or the destruction of our families which ensue from our Culture of Death ... the linchpin of which is Legal Abortion ... has caused them to rethink their position on legal abortion.

So ... no. I don't believe that the leadership or the Establishment pro-life organizations are our best hope. They practically advertise the fact they cannot make a compelling argument for life to the very core of the longterm political leadership on the right ... be it their own wives or the GOP Senate who voted to reaffirm Roe during the campaign and passed the Schumer Amendment 80-17 (lest Gore get good press coverage for breaking what they assured us was going to be a tie).

I prefer organizations like American Life League or Priests for Life. The sorts of folks who will not compromise and will not be co-opted and who concentrate as much or more on the individual lives at stake and the Individual's ability to change hearts rather than work always to broad-based coalitions ... squandering their moral capital and their letter writing campaigns on useless legislation that nets no real progress.

[toenail]

OVERPOPULATION
HON. GEORGE BUSH
OF TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Monday, June 30, 1969
[pp. 17926-17927]

Mr. BUSH. Mr. Speaker, as chairman of the Republican Task Force on Earth Resources and Population, I would like to comment on two newcomers to the Washington scene. They are Dr. Philip Handler, the new president of the National Academy of Sciences and Dr. Roger Olaf Egeberg, the Assistant HEW Secretary for Health and Scientific Affairs subject to his confirmation by the Senate. I was extremely heartened by the sense of urgency expressed by both of these national leaders on the problems of overpopulation and dwindling resources. In a recent interview with This Week magazine, Dr. Handler stated:

"The greatest threat to the human race is man's own procreation. Hunger, pollution, crime, overlarge, dirty cities-even the seething unrest that leads to international conflict and war-all derive from the unbridled growth of human populations. It is imperative that we begin a research campaign in human reproductive physiology. Second to the problem of overproduction is that of feeding the world. As we look toward the end of this century, we get closer to the time when the total food supply becomes limiting. If we do not provide more food, we face worldwide famine."

Dr. Egeberg has displayed his keen awareness of the crisis our world is facing by emphasizing that at the top of his list of priorities will be intensified efforts in environmental and population control through technological innovations and family planning, the reclamation of waste products, and the development of a low pollution automobile.

We look to these two men for dynamic and purposeful leadership as the new administration charts its course.

I include at this point in the record the text of the interview with Dr. Handler:

OVERPOPULATION: NEW SCIENCE PRESIDENT SEES IT AS GREATEST THREAT TO MANKIND

"Man is on the threshold of a biological revolution," says biochemist Philip Handler. "It will influence the life of each of us Just as greatly as the industrial revolution affected every living person."

On July 1, Dr. Handler will leave his position as chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at Duke University Medical Center to become president of the National Academy of Sciences. This organization of the country's 846 most esteemed scientists serves as official advisor to the government on matters of science and technology.

This Week interviewed Dr. Handler about his views on what lies ahead in the biological sciences.

TW. Will you define what you mean "biological revolution"?

Dr. Handler. I mean that our understanding of living things is now so comprehensive that we should Soon be able to apply that information to human affairs, in order to improve the condition of man.

TW. In what major areas will this knowledge be put to work?

Dr. Handler. In population control, food production, health, control of the environment, and directing the evolution of our own species.

TW. Any reason for the order of your list?

Dr. Handler. The greatest threat to the human race is man's own procreation. Hunger; pollution; crime; overlarge, dirty cities--even the seething unrest that leads to international conflict and war--all derive from the unbridled growth of human populations. It is imperative that we begin a research campaign in human reproductive physiology.

TW. Don't we already know enough?

Dr. Handler. We thought we were quite knowledgeable, until today's problems pinned us to the wall. Our knowledge turned out to be primitive.

The oral contraceptive pill and lUDs (intrauterine contraceptive devices) have been successful because they divorce the act of sex from the act of using contraception. What we now need is a cheap, safe mechanism in which failure to use contraceptives would result in failure to conceive, rather than the present situation, which is the other way around--failure results in conception.

TW. What's the outlook for this?

Dr. Handler. There are several approaches--by immunology, particularly--which offer some promise.

TW. What's the next most serious challenge?

Dr. Handler. Second to the problem of overpopulation is that of feeding the world. As we look toward the end of this century, we get closer to the time when the total food supply becomes limiting. If we don't provide more food, we face world-wide famine.

TW. What solution do you propose?

Dr. Handler. There are hundreds of thousands of plants, and we must systematically investigate them to see whether some could be bred into new forms. No new basic foods have been developed since the start of history.

TW. What about food from the sea?

Dr. Handler. The seas could be exploited on a much larger scale. For example, oysters, clams, and other shellfish could be grown in bays. We surely can grow more than we presently take from the sea. But I really think this type of activity--"aquiculture"--won't happen in the sea at all. When we become serious about growing fish, we'll grow them in "factories." Thats how chickens are raised today.

TW. Are there any other new approaches to feeding the world?

Dr. Handler. Today, we can take a fertilized frog egg, insert the nucleus from a cell of another frog, and the egg will develop into a frog that is a perfect twin of the one that provided the transplanted nucleus It's merely a matter of time before we can switch from frogs to mammals. When we do that, we should be able to make perfect copies of the best bull or cow in the world. We can make any number we desire, and thus markedly upgrade food production.

TW. What is the outlook in medicine?

Dr. Handler. We all know that the major killers and incapacitating disorders--heart disease, cancer, rheumatoid ailments -- are still with us. We've managed to contain infectious diseases only.

I'm sure that with time we'll have much-improved preventive and therapeutic techniques for many of the remaining diseases. Atherosclerosis, for example, is the underlying process of much cardiovascular disease, in which the arterial walls are plugged with calcium and fatty materials. I don't believe that's necessary. There should be some way prevent it.

There are small cracks in the problem of cancer. I have reason to believe that in the near future, we'll learn, if not how to prevent it, how to cure early cancer.

TW. About death Itself?

Dr. Handler. Well, about aging, I would like to see life like Shangri-la, where you stay physically young until you're 100, and then you die. Whether we can do this depends upon our understanding of the biological clock for man. If we knew what it is, it's conceivable we could intervene.

TW. You mentioned man's environment as a major problem.

Dr. Handler. It hasn't been really very long-10,000 years-since human beings belonged to tribes of wanderers that foraged and hunted. Each species radiates Into a niche, finds a place to which it's suited, and becomes dominant there. Our species migrated that way when it was small, wandering in tribes and clans.

Genetically, we can't be very different from our early forebears. The question is whether species that achieved dominance under primitive conditions can accommodate Itself adequately to living in cities. Biologically, the odds are against man doing equally well under such an utterly different set of circumstances than his beginnings. I don't know the extent to which mankind can survive successfully in large urban concentrations.

TW. Your last point was evolution.

Dr. Handler. There are something over 300 known hereditary diseases of man. We have learned to circumvent a number of them by keeping young people alive who suffer from those diseases. They grow up and reproduce, and spread their genes in the population. Instead of improving, the genetic pool of mankind is deteriorating. I think the total good of humanity demands that we minimize the incidence of these defective genes. We have no historical ethnic to guide us in this matter, but perhaps such people hould not be allowed to procreate.

The other side of the coin is to prevent the problem In the first place. There are some who hope to make DNA--containing only "good" genes--and insert it into the germ plasm of prospective parents. Maybe that will be possible In the distant future.

Or you could improve inheritance by breeding. As its farthest extreme, using the processs I described for cattle, one could, conceivably, deliberately make more Einsteins, Mozarts, or whomever you choose. Another, more practical way is to pick distinguished men and preserve their sperm by freezing it in "sperm banks." Then married couples might enjoy their own sex relationship, but when they want to have a child, use sperm from the sperm bank.

TW. Dr. Handler, you have described a possible world that Includes brand-new kinds of food, freedom from dread diseases, the possibility of greatly extended life span, even the control of man's own evolution. Are we ready to operate this civilization? Do we know how to perform and accept the new values it will impose?

Dr. Handler. No, we don't know enough yet. But that doesn't mean that we should producing new technology. Compared with the natural sciences and engineering, social sciences are relatively primitive. The degree of understanding of man as a social creature is not yet adequate to our task, as is evident in our domestic and international problems.

But, in part, these problems arise because technology has been so successful. It's the comfort enjoyed by 80 per cent of our population, brought about by technology, that makes possible the dream of a society In which the other 20 per cent can live equally well.

Technology also gives us responsibilities. It gave us the ability to destroy humanity on just the same scale, and we haven't really learned to manage that capability yet. That's where our lack of social understanding limits us badly.

A sophisticated blend of social and behavioral understanding with modern technological capability could truly usher in a new era for mankind, If we can avoid a holocaust in the interim.

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[Jhoffa_]

bookmarking..

[Askel5]

I didn't realize he'd have the audacity to feature in the record the exact experts by whom he was most taken and for whose Dynamic Leadership he had only the highest hopes. I guess there is more to come than I thought.

What a piece of luck the nation was embroiled in an orgy of sex and druge, violence and revolution and the Catholic Church was reeling from the crisis of Vatican II while the Long-Range Planners were busy about their work in developing talking points and securing the State's right to control us absolutely through Education sufficient that we Choose wisely lest our ignorance cause them to Force us bend to their will.

What a piece of luck most "think like Bush" these days. Who knows what horrors our alacrity in embracing the Culture of Death has postponed for us.

Anyway, I suspect you've brought this thread to a crashing halt with that last excerpt. Fine by me. We'll have the place to ourselves as I figure out whatever happened to Handler and Egeberg.

A crying shame we can't attribute these quotes to some Democrat and thereby focus much-needed attention on the truth about our Government instead of causing the weak of heart and mind to indulge in the usual dose of rank denial as they huddle together in their Cult of Personality.

[Askel5]

Perhaps, given Bush's specific endorsement of these men's ideas as a part of the Report on which his name appears, you could get busy on tracking down anything resembling a retraction on H. Bush's part of the notion that procreation is the gravest threat facing mankind or that we could breed Mozarts like cattle given sufficient leeway with and progress in the field of biochemistry.

Unfortunately, having tried in vain to uncover just such correction myself (having discovering his "Body Politic" quotes posted above), I'm almost confident the only thing you're going to find resembling a retraction of any sort is his ballyhooed break-up with his good friend, the sensible Alan Guttmacher, once Planned Parenthood "made abortion their rallying cry." (Not that he broke with his wife once he was safely past campaigning and she was able to speak her mind on the subject.)

One thing, though ...

Please, whatever you do, don't insult my intelligence and post anything from an election year.

For, as we all know, during election years the Stupid Party likes to soak in the Personal Convictions upon which they'll elect leaders from the "I'm personally opposed, but ..." pool of candidates. They don't actually expect their candidates to live by these personal convictions.

(To wit ... George W. Bush's belief that life begins at conception having no bearing on his decision for ESCR and his sensible rejection of global warming/greenhouse gas scenarios taking a 180 as he embraces the heart of the Deep Ecology's premise that Humans are responsible for both.)

So, in essence, election year statements mean Nothing where Republicans are concerned.

It would be different, of course if we were talking about Principled Democrats who evidence an uncompromising loyalty to their Personal Convictions on issues like abortion or the Environment regardless the self-evident truths or hard science which render their personal convictions the stuff of fairy tales. No bit of science or logic or self-evident truth budges the Litmus Test loyalty of a Democrat to his personal convictions.

Happy hunting, keep me posted. I'll be looking as well and will bump you to anything I find.

[Askel5]

Re: #63. Who knew the Pubbies had been pushing for the quantum leap all this time?

[toenail]

Speaking of sperm banks and race scientists, William Shockley spanked into a cup, so that humanity could be blessed with his superior germ plasm, deposited at the Hermann J. Muller Repository for Germinal Choice.

[toenail]

Also, do you think it's coincidence that Bush II's pick for head of the EPA (with their population control agenda) is a pro-abort Catholic-hater?

The Rockefeller Republican contempt for man is, other than abortion, most clearly shown in the quest for, and name of, immunocontraceptives. Immunized against offspring. Immunized.

Until they find their Holy Grail of Population Control, a mass sterilization agent that can be put in the water supply, a la Ehrlich, quick "immunization" shots are the easiest and cheapest alternative to surgical or chemical sterilization. Round up the useless breeders, and inject 'em (foreign roundups [see "India"], and domestic propaganda). I think that one useful role that the NRLC plays for the population controllers is to maintain, as was done thirty years ago, the abhorrence of abortion as a catalyst for expanding contraceptive use. There are no doubt many good people in the NRLC, but I've completely abandoned the parallel GOP defense of "we're just incompetent."

[Askel5]

the abhorrence of abortion as a catalyst for expanding contraceptive use

OH THANK YOU for mentioning that. That angle doesn't get enough play.

It's precisely my thought ... particularly where RU-486 or morning after pills are concerned.

It's in this respect I agree absolutely with Independentmind that a concentration on abortion (without a comprehensive recognition of the divorcing of sex from procreation and the right to life from Conception to natural death) ultimately hamstrings us.

Particularly where the GOP wedges their foot in the door with a compassionate exception for offing the innocent in the cases of Rape or Incest. Simply brilliant.

[Askel5]

Immunized against offspring. Immunized.

And yet we have the gall to be outraged when the CDC muckety-mucks refer to pregnancy as a disease.

Gee, where in the world would they have gotten that idea? Was it perhaps instilled THIRTY YEARS AGO by the likes of the Dynamic New Leadership the likes of George H. Bush hailed?

I can't believe the primary complaint from all comers is that this is so dated.

God help us ...

[toenail]

Dated? Hardly.

Did you ever look at http://www.epa.gov/opperspd/futures/millenni/MILL12.TXT -- yes, it's located on the EPA's website. You'll have to search a little for more information on the U.N. University, the Millenium Project, and EPA funding, as I've misplaced some bookmarks.

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1.4.2 Novel policies that could lead to the Vatican's acceptance of contraception without limit:

- Remove Holy See from the United Nations on grounds that it is not really a country and give it the same status as the World Council of Churches.

- Promotion of contraceptive that is accompanied with strong dissemination of moral values.

- Separate personal religious beliefs from personal choices as to the use of contraceptives.

- Theological doctrine developed by U.S. Catholic Bishops in support of sustainable development (of Government Statements at UNCED 1992).

- New international convention of religious leaders - Vatican III - with supporting papal encyclical letter - 1995.

- Elect a non-European Pope.

- Schism

- It is not practical.

- Create philosophical shift among powerful within the Roman Catholic Church.

- Policies that focus on responsabilization of woman to make choices.

- Only decline of organized religion is likely to affect the situation.

- Allow priests and nuns to marry and pay for the raising of children.

- Reconsideration of the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas - especially the discarding of the Thomastic view of "natural law" as it applied to human sexuality. Christ said nothing whatsoever about human sexuality. Separate the notion of procreation as the only "natural end" from that of enjoyment.

- Try to influence Vatican that some kinds of contraceptions could possibly be acceptable-not"chemical" and for women contraception but "mechanical" and for men (condoms)contraception.

---

Your tax dollars helped pay for that, Askel5.

[Domestic Church]

"The Rockefeller Republican contempt for man is, other than abortion, most clearly shown in the quest for, and name of, immunocontraceptives. Immunized against offspring. Immunized."

Wow. What is known on this so far? Are the folks at NIH now funding lupus research to ascertain the prostaglandin interactions in miscarriage with intent to use it for this immunization agenda instead of curing the ill?

[monkey]

I would like to see life like Shangri-la, where you stay physically young until you're 100, and then you die.

Right, off you go.

I went to the terrific Egyptian exhibit, The Quest for Immortality. It will be in New Orleans in 2003.

I wonder how the pharaoh system could last for thousands of years. Did the pharaoh and priests manipulate the hoi polloi all that time, or did the common mindset compel such a system?

Churn up a bucket of water, and then stir the outer edge of the bucket. The outer edge of the water moves about in a circle, and the inner water will start to turn as well, although it's still churning. After a while, the churning ends and all the water is moving in unison. At the transition point from churn to harmonious stirring, it suddenly becomes easier to move the stick, and increase the stirring speed.

Now repeat the experiment, except start by stirring in a small circle in the middle of the bucket. Now the middle portion of water starts to move in a circle, and the churn appears to be pushed outward. Eventually, the water moves in unison, and there is again a transition point where the water will move faster with the same stirring effort.

I wonder which of these two experiments best represents conceptual transitions in society. Perhaps society is a fractal (scale invariant - something that looks the same regardless of the level of detail). When a phase transition occurs in nature (such as water to ice) it is preceded by scale-invariance.

The wand tour of the exhibit stressed that Egyptians didn't worship animals, but the forces (processes) that the animals represented. Most primitive statues depict very little facial expression, as if the subject is a veneer for the powerful processes of nature.

It's a strange person who can say that she loves her children, but would have swept them from existence if they had come about at a different time. But it's not surprising that there is such a process in nature.

[Askel5]

Perhaps one of you could ping your Catholic lists to this posts.

I cannot underscore strongly enough that it was CATHOLICS who led the way in separating "Personal Convictions" from public Imposing of same. It was Catholics from Hesburgh's contraception conferences (as founded by Interlock foundation money) who testified before Congress that Catholics could not -- in good conscience -- oppose the State's embarking on birth control based on their own Personal Opinions.

Likewise, I know we are familiar with Rockefeller's offer to Pius VI to help pen Humanae Vitae

Toenail has dug up some valuable information here that should act like a Brechtian slap to the face of anyone stupid enough to believe the Catholic Church (and our "Campaign for Human Development" bishops) have ANY BUSINESS taking the lead in faith-based partnerships with the State.

I shall endeavor to round out my words here with posts detailing the facts of same in no uncertain terms and with all names, dates and pertinent history.

[toenail]

Just do a Google search for immuno-contraceptives (search for immunocontraceptives [no hypen], as well).

Here's a typical USAID contract:

---

Contraceptive Research and Development (CONRAD)

Cooperating Agency	Eastern Virginia Medical School	Duration	6/92-5/99
Project Number	936-3044	Geographic Scope	Worldwide
Agreement Number	CCP-3044-A-00-2015-00

Purpose: To develop improved and new methods of family planning for use in developing countries. In addition, the program supports research leading to technologies which may prevent the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including HIV.

Description: The primary focus of the CONRAD program is the early stages of contraceptive research and development, beginning with targeted or applied research studies and progressing through the first two phases of clinical testing in humans. This program supports subprojects conducted by collaborating investigators worldwide, as well as laboratory and clinical research conducted at the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine, EVMS. Areas of research that are considered to be important for the development of better, safer, and more acceptable methods of contraception include, but are not limited to: 1) new barrier methods and spermicides with virucidal properties; 2) long-acting injectable and implantable contraceptives for women and men; 3) nonsurgical and/or reversible sterilization techniques; 4) methods suitable for lactating women; and 5) immunocontraceptives directed against human gamete antigens and gonadotropins. CONRAD also supports research on the mechanisms and control of heterosexual transmission of HIV, and on the effect of contraceptive use on heterosexual transmission of HIV and other STDs. CONRAD sponsors international workshops and technical meetings which bring together collaborating scientists and other leading experts to focus research efforts and disseminiate technical information.

---

CONRAD's website is at www.conrad.org.

http://www.conrad.org/CICCRbien9900.html#other:

Sperm-Oocyte Binding

One of the earliest steps in mammalian fertilization is the binding of the spermatozoon to the extracellular matrix surrounding the oocyte, the zona pellucida (ZP). Once bound to the ZP, the spermatozoon undergoes the acrosome reaction (AR). Blockage of the AR or its premature occurrence prevents sperm-oocyte binding. Antibodies generated against ZP glycoproteins can block the interaction of gametes in vitro and inhibit fertility in vivo, but immunization with ZP proteins results in altered ovarian function and varying degrees of ovarian pathology in some species, including non-human primates. A twinning project between U. S. and Mexican investigators is underway to identify peptide epitopes associated with human ZP (hZP) that are important to the hZP-sperm interaction. The goal is to find peptides that can be used as immunocontraceptives without having an adverse effect on ovarian function.

[Domestic Church]

Thanks, Looks like they are using the HIV research funding and this study is hairsplitting the moment of conception on the outer surface of the egg. If they get this, they will try to sell it as pre-conception I bet.

[Domestic Church]

This is a jaw dropper...epecially with the current Church crisis. Gives new meaning to the term "bushwacked".

[Askel5]

I like your image save for the fact it won't translate like it should to those who make the mistake of "standing united" behind a bogus authority (as evidenced by its means and objectives) against the purposed chaos induced by the unleashing of passions.

I don't think either the Left or the Right fails to recognize that -- having stirred up some chaos or unleashed the anarchical New Left -- they can count on folks to react against it.

To wit, the way they dangle their WTO or G-8 conferences ... fishing for discord in Seattle one year, safetly esconced in some remote spot the next as suits their purposes for engendering support by portraying themselves as the victims of the radical anarchical left.

_________________________

As for the Egyptian art, you can bet I'll make a trip to see it. (I'm perhaps still unduly prejudiced against MOMA thanks to my years of being spoiled by The Nelson in KC) With any luck, I'll find that image (and I don't think it's in any of my books) where the male god lies flat on his back and suspends with his penis the female who becomes the sky of a sort.

Those are exactly the sorts of Egyptian Self-Evident (and most beautiful) truths which indeed were on the money and likely left much of society enjoying a freedom to move about the still waters of true harmony rather than the Enthusiasm our state stirs up with Fear, Paranoia, 'Data' and Crises such that we'll swim together like schools of fish.

I was just talking about the Egyptians the other day when I posted "The State and the Soul" over at Liberty Forum. The woman we're speaking of is Ayn Rand, of course:

She can't but conceive of the state as infected because her notion of family is infected somehow. Authoritarian and totalitarian rule differ along the same lines as patriarchal and paternalistic. Huge difference.

(ritual deicide of the Word ... you'll notice that Father and Mother have been replaced by the more interchangeable Parent?)

With her screwed up male/female thing (a little too much rape sex as ideal, thanks, from a woman that could rationalize rank strip mining on the one hand, black lung on the other) She errs that all must needs be paternalistic because she can't conceive of the patriarchy that is the trinity.

I use the trinity as an example (doesn't hurt to know something about religion, yes?) because it's the perfection of three persons but one essence and the "irreducibly complex" human condition of any natural human being born of the mother who was penetrated by his father.


[in] Fights about an abortion: [you'll often here folks argue] Well there are TWO people involved here.

No, there are three. The [only truly innocent party being the] one to be forbidden life.

You make that error in the math -- dismiss pregnancy as a "disease" (as does our CDC) or a "huddled mass of infected flesh" -- and the rest goes awry as a matter of course. Fundamental breakdown from the individual out because he's gone and skewed his essential triad of human existence and cannot conceive of authority's recognizing its [nobless oblige] or all parties being essentially equal even if some are obliged to respect that authority ... the obedience to duty (of both ruler and subject, father and son) which actually liberates all ...



Especially the woman. If Egyptian art has anything to say about it, anyway (and I'll bet all art does, one way or another).

Though lovely (Akenaten having decided Eyptians should worship the one god), This isn't the image I was looking for ... the one where she is not so much Mother Earth as the the sky -- the horizon -- he suspends.

I suspect he's kissing, not preparing to crunch, the skull of his child. Likewise, I suspect that Akenaten and Nefretiti -- like most of humanity -- considered children a blessing, not a burden.

A far cry from the Bushes or Turners of this world who decide the rest of us should have only the Two children (if any at all) and excuse their own large families on the fact that "it's a little late to kill them now".

[toenail]

POPULATION CONTROL AND FAMILY PLANNING
HON. GEORGE BUSH
OF TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Tuesday, July 30, 1968
[pp. 24342-24344]

Mr. BUSH. Mr. Speaker, even before I took office in January of 1967 I heard people say that it was all a Congressman could do to keep up with his mail and his committee work, much less try to think of solutions to the major ills of the world. With the help of hard-working and dedicated staff I have been able to answer all the letters which flow daily into my office and to keep abreast of action pend­ing before the Ways and Means Committee on which I serve. But while I not claim to have discovered a panacea for the earth's problems, I have become increasingly aware of a very sensible approach toward meeting quite a few of our most troublesome concerns.

That approach is family planning and population control.

For years we have heard cries of alarm about the population explosion which nations such as India and China are experiencing. It is a very real crisis, prompting President Johnson to say that:

Next to the pursuit ot peace, the really great challenge to the human family Is the race between food supply and population increase. That race is (today) being lost.

And former President Dwight D. Eisenhower has said:

I have come to believe that the population explosion is the world's most critical problem.

The problem of population growth is skyrocketing, and in this report I intend to address myself to some of its aspects.

The United States is itself not free of the threat of overpopulation. Today we have something like 200 million citizens, but within 32 years--by the year 2000--we shall have 300 million Americans, a 50-percent increase. As the distinguished former Chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Atomic Energy Commission, David E. Lilienthal, has written:

An additional 100 million people will un­dermine our most cherished traditions, erode our public services and impose a rate of taxation that will make current taxes seem tame. . . . (Eventually) there comes a point at which a change In quantity becomes a change in quality-when we can no longer speak of "more of the same." And another 100 million people will, I fear, make just that change in the joy of life in America.

Sitting as I have on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, which has responsibility for social security legislation, I have heard almost endless testimony to the effect that our national welfare costs are rising phenomenally, prompting me to wonder how we can take basic steps to arrest it. But the problem is by no means wholly financial; it is emphatically human, a tragedy on unwanted children and of parents whose productivity is impaired by children they never desired. In the words of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

There is scarcely anything more tragic in human life than a child who is not wanted.

Adding all this to the problems of poverty in cities and rural areas and to the increase in crime which many sociologists see related to overcrowding, I have decided to give my vigorous support to measures for population control in both the United States and the world. Certainly responsible religions have the right to determine their doctrines, but for those of us who feel so strongly on this issue, the recent encyclical was most discouraging.

ABROAD: THE POPULATION TIME BOMB

Every day the world gains 180,000 people; that is, 180,000 more people will be born today than will die. In a year's time the total is a staggering 70 million, equal to the population of France, Belgium, and Holland combined. At the present rate, the population of the world is expected to double within 35 years to a total of 7 billion people.

These figures do not tell the horrifying tale that overpopulation spins: of increasing poverty, of disease, of human misery, and, worse, of starvation. Fam­ine already stalks India and China with their mammoth populations. Before you go to bed tonight, 10,000 people around the world--most of them children--will have died of starvation and malnutrition. Some say that U.S. foreign aid can easily wipe out this tragedy if only it is applied in large enough quantities. But the respected former President of the World Bank, Eugene B. Black, offers a chilling contradiction:

I must be blunt. Population growth threatens to nullify all our efforts to raise living standards in many of the poorer countries.

Birth control must come swiftly to stave off the number of future mouths which will feed on an ever-decreasing proportion of food. But it is by no means the only answer. The immediate response to the problem of overpopulation is more food. The years 1980-85 are the critical time. If we cannot approach feeding the world's people by then, no program of improved agricultural production or population control will pre­vent the widescale starvation which will then follow.

At the same time we are rushing to increase the world's food supply, we must also seek to promote information about family planning and to provide those nations which request them with birth control devices. Such methods as the interuterine device--IUD--and the contraceptive pill, as well as other more traditional practices, have met with a less than totally successful response in the past few years. But until medical research provides better means for stem­ming overpopulation, we must make sure that these are available on a massive scale to the people who need them and want them. The United States and a few Western European nations have the technological ability for mass production of this equipment as well as the capability for birth control research. If we cannot provide the underdeveloped world with such aid, no one will.

But let me impress upon you that the answer is neither birth control alone nor increased food production alone; it is both. To quote the able former director of the Food and Agricultural Organization, Mr. Binay Sen:

Population stabilization and accelerating the rate of increase of food production in the developing countries are like the blades of a pair of scissors. Neither can be effective without the other.

AT HOME: THE HUMAN TRAGEDY

Over a year ago, the New York Times noted:

In the period of greatest affluence the world's richest city (New York) has ever known, the welfare rolls keep growing at a faster rate each year. . . . The most disheartening point of these statistics is that nearly two-thirds are children under 18, growing up in an atmosphere of despondency and defeat.

What that newspaper had to say about New York City applies to the entire nation. The fastest-growing part of the relief rolls everywhere is Aid for Dependent Children--AFDC: At the end of the 1968 fiscal year, a little over $2 billion will be spent for AFDC, but by fiscal 1972 this will increase by over 75 percent to almost $3.7 billion. But these figures do not tell the intensely human side: that the affected children are often unwanted, that two-thirds of them come from families where the father is absent, and that, if past trends continue, they will pass on the curse of poverty to their children. It has been shown that of all the families living in poverty, 33 percent have five children and 43 percent have six chil­dren. Seventy-one percent of the non-white poor families have five or more children. Poverty is a vicious trap into which innocent youngsters should not be placed.

We speak of these children as "unwanted"; are they really so? Evidence from various studies indicates that this is indeed the case. One study--reported in "Family Planning, Sterility, and Population Growth," by Freedman, Whelpton, and Campbell, 1959--revealed that while only 6 percent of first pregnancies are unwanted, the figure rises to 62 percent by the ninth pregnancy. A Florida survey reported that 70 percent of the women going to public health maternity clinics did not want additional children. This desire for smaller families is outweighed, however, by the ap­palling lack of information many women have about family planning: frequently, mothers who finally learn of birth control clinics and aids tell physicians that they were previously unaware of such facilities and would have used them if they had known. The Denver Planned Parenthood Clinic re­ported that of the women accepting contraceptive help, fully 89 percent had never before used its services. Indeed, it is now estimated that about 5 million women want family planning help-- but that only 700,000 actually receive such assistance through public and pri­vate sources.

Some statistics from closer to home especially dramatize the need for these services. Mr. Norman Fleishman, executive director of Planned Parenthood of Houston, reports that there are approximately 377,000 women in Texas--54,000 of them in Harris County alone-- who are in their reproductive years and are in need of family planning help. But less than 41,000 are presently receiving aid from the 15 Planned Parenthood centers in the State, or only a miserable 10.8 percent of the total need. The big stumbling block are local health departments and public hospitals, which give every kind of postnatal care but do not supply women with birth control infor­mation and devices. Only 25 health departments--out of 65 in the State--give family planning information, and only 15 give birth control care. The regional Planned Parenthood office estimates that no more than 15 percent of the poor and near-poor families in Texas have access to effective, medically supervised care that will give protection against unwanted pregnancies in Harris County. In short, the willingness for birth control information exists; it is just the facilities which are lagging.

There are two persistent myths which prevail with regard to family planning in the United States. One holds that the poor want children because it means additional welfare funds for them. This is patently untrue, for studies have shown the poor to be aware of the fact that the increased cost of having another mouth to feed and another body to clothe and shelter far exceeds the pittance they receive from public assistance. Rather, as was mentioned above, the poor have more children than they can afford because they do not have access to proper birth control information and devices.

The second myth is that Negroes do not want birth control, believing it to be a form of "genocide." On the contrary, family planning has been growing in popularity among Negroes wherever it is available because our black citizens rec­ognize that they cannot hope to acquire a larger share of American prosperity without cutting down on births, just as the rest of the Nation must do. But they have met with discrimination in these services as in other health services because they are dependent on public facilities-and those facilities have simply not been active in the area of birth con­trol. To provide medically sound and sympathetic birth control services would end this unwarranted discrimination gap. And as to the issue of whether or not black Americans favor planning their families, we need only repeat the word of the late Dr. King:

The Negro constitutes half the poor of the nation. Like all poor, Negro and white, they have many unwanted children. This is a cruel evil they urgently need to control. . . . For the Negro, therefore, intelligent guides of family planning are a profoundly important ingredient in his quest for security and a decent life. . . . They do not welcome any solution which involves population breeding as a weapon. They have instinctive sympathy to all who offer them fair opportunity to develop and advance as all other people in our society.

The Federal Government, along with many State governments, has taken steps to accelerate family planning activities in the United States, but we need to do more. We have a clear precedent: when the Salk vaccine was discovered, large-scale programs were undertaken to distribute it. I see no reason why similar programs of education and family planning assistance--all on a voluntary basis--should not be instituted in the United States on a massive scope. It is imperative that we do so: not only to fight poverty at its roots, not only to cut down on our welfare costs, but also to eliminate the needless suffering of unwanted children and overburdened parents.

SOME PROPOSALS ABROAD

I propose that we totally revamp our foreign aid program to give primary emphasis to population control and agricultural improvement. In my opinion we have made a mistake in our foreign aid to date by concentrating on building huge steel mills and concrete plants in underdeveloped nations while the real effort should have been toward helping to bring those countries up to a level where they can feed their own population.

For indeed, what do we want out of our foreign aid? It is to help people, we can do it much better by increasing agricultural production and promoting population control than by constructing sports stadiums and highrise housing projects. Nothing could be more humanitarian than to dent the grim list of those 10,000 persons who die each day of malnutrition or starvation. All this we must do now, knowing that if we fail, no amount of aid of any sort will ever be able to touch the problems of a world grown too populous for its own good. By no means should we try to do this alone. We should attempt to shape other nations' foreign aid programs to emphasize the same two items. The United Nations would do well to concentrate on the problem of overpopulation in its own aid efforts. The proclamation of an "International Population Year" by the U.N. will do much to focus world attention and hopefully action on this most vital problem.

We must encourage foreign nations to increase their poulatlon control activities, and especially to provide birth control services to rural areas instead of just the cities. After these first necessary steps have been taken, these countries could turn to more sophisticated approaches, such as providing incentives for their people to limit the size of their families voluntarily. At the same time we should continue research into better means of birth control-such as injections and male contraceptives-which can spur future, more effective population control drives and eventually turn up wholly new methods for combating the problem.

I prefer to see private capital do this research at its own expense, releasing Federal funds now spent for this purpose to pay for the manufacture and distribution of those devices already developed. It is a little-known fact that the State which is presently conducting more research into birth control is Texas. Valiant experimentation and discovery is being done at this very minute in the Southwest Research Institute, at the University of Texas at Austin, and at Baylor Medical School in Houston.

Private foundations are also striving admirably to deal with the population explosion. The key to the food crisis may well have already been found by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. The Rockefeller Foundation, working in Mexico, has developed something known as miracle wheat, which might be able to take up where the fastly diminishing supply of American grain runs out. And both Rockefeller and Ford, operating through the International Rice Institute in the Philippines, have developed a miracle rice-IR-8-which if produced on a huge scale will do much to save millions of Asians from starvation. Both of these discoveries--pioneered totally by nongovernmental organizations--will buy time for the world while population control efforts are instituted.

AT HOME

I propose that we increase and ear­mark appropriations for our already existing family-planning services in all areas: the dispensing of birth control information, the training of family planning caseworkers, and the distribution of birth control devices if the patient requests them. Money spent toward family planning is a good investment, since in the long run it will save on such costs as aid for dependent children. But again let me emphasize that this is a preponderantly human problem, and compassion more than fiscal conservatism demands such action.

Our States and cities should be encouraged to pass legislation increasing the scope of their own efforts in family planning. A sort of central bank of infor­mation in this area, offering the latest news of advances in research and in private and governmental services, should be set up and used by these sub-Federal governments. One of the greatest blocks to more vigorous family planning in the United States today is the timidity which local agencies such as hospitals and welfare departments have in dealing with this subject. We must somehow find ways of convincing these officials that the public supports family planning and des­perately needs these agencies' aid in this important area.

Along the same lines, our public hospitals and medical centers should all have some place where interested women can obtain information on birth control. An excellent time to give such information would be at the time of postpartem care of the mother. Our medical schools and nurses schools should vastly increase their courses in the field of family plan­ning so that every person connected with medicine will be aware of the means of forestalling future unwanted pregnancies. It is my hope that Texas, already a leader in birth control research, will again take the lead and expand its current curriculums to include more of this sort of training.

And I propose the establishment of a Joint Congressional Committee on Family Planning in America, in the style of Senator Gruening, of Alaska's Subcommittee on Foreign Aid Expenditures, which has done so much to increase public awareness of the population explosion abroad. Thanks to Senator Gruening's courtesy I have participated in his hearings. This new joint committee, comprised of members from both the House and the Senate, will seek to focus national attention on the domestic need for family planning through hearings and proposals for ways to increase our present efforts in this field. Hopefully, the expanded public awareness of the need for birth control at home will serve to end the municipal and county "timidity" about birth control mentioned earlier.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

For information about what you can do in your own city to advance the cause of family planning, call your local Planned Parenthood center. In Houston they are located at 3512 Travis, telephone No.: JA3-7419. The Houston center is the fastest-growing one in the country, now ranking just behind New York and Chicago in the number of patients served-15,000. It needs your help and your support. For further information about the population explosion abroad, write either the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, 515 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022, or the Population Crisis Committee, 1730 K Street NW., Washington, D.C. 20006.

I do not claim that these proposals will be the absolute answer to the problems of increased population, either in the United States or anwyhere else. But I earnestly hope that they will receive the attention of a nation which is concerned as I am about the spread of poverty, hunger, disease, and human conflict.

For years any public discussion of family planning was most controversial. Things are gradually changing, but they must change faster. In the past there has been some religious opposition to family planning. I still feel, in spite of the recent encyclical, that there will be a liberalization in this opposition.

It is so frustrating to have within our group a real answer to this pressing problem, and yet feel no sense of urgency in our Nation. All of this can change. It must change. It must change soon.