Love isn’t Free: And Decrease the Surplus Population

Part of series on Humanae Vitae

My least favorite episode of Star Trek is “The Mark of Gideon,” which aired in January of 1969. It involves a race, the Gideons, who live on a severely overpopulated planet, where there is little room to move or breath. It’s explained that the Gideons live long, regenerative lives, sterilization doesn’t work, and they don’t accept other methods of birth control, because they believe: “We are incapable of destroying or interfering with the creation of that which we love so deeply. Life, in every form, from fetus to developed being. It is against our tradition, against our very nature. We simply could not do it.” An ambassador is planning to release a virus on the population to wipe out enough people to reduce the crowding. Ultimately, the crew saves the girl carrying the virus so that she won’t have to die but allow her to carry the virus back down the planet in order to kill others.

It seems written as a reaction to Humanae Vitae and was consistent with the worries of its time that rapid population growth was barreling the human race toward catastrophe. The idea that population growth was a danger helped promote the use of birth control: we must make the world a better place for some people by removing others.

The twentieth century witnessed unprecedented population growth. Better hygiene, more food production, and medical and technical advancements lowered mortality rates. The history of humanity slowly climbed to 1.5 billion by 1900, then exploded to almost 7 billion by 2000. 

Near the middle of this, 1968, the same year Humanae Vitae was written, Paul R. Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, predicting hundreds of millions of deaths by starvation in the next decade and that society would break down by the end of the century due to the masses of people competing for limited resources. 

Overpopulation has always been a concern, given before rapid growth. The Greeks, Tertullian, and other ancients worried about it. The population has doubled again since 1968, so the fear of overpopulation and limited resources is still a heavily studied and worried about topic. We are depleting our resources faster than ever. There are dangers of disease, famine, and conflict that are worsened by crowded conditions. They are real challenges that must be addressed on both local and global levels. 

In another of his encyclicals, Populorum Progressio, Paul VI says, “There is no denying that the accelerated rate of population growth brings many added difficulties to the problems of development where the size of the population grows more rapidly than the quantity of available resources to such a degree that things seem to have reached an impasse. In such circumstances people are inclined to apply drastic remedies to reduce the birth rate.”

Yet drastic remedies have moral consequences. This fear of overpopulation has caused some to want to solve the problem through artificially manipulating population growth, change how we make people, not how we make or allocate goods. They present it as the conscientious choice to promote contraception. The world has too many people; it doesn’t want any more. 

In Humanae Vitae, Paul VI warns that those in power might use contraception against populations in their efforts to balance population and resources: “Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone.”

In 1968, Robert McNamara that countries implementing birth control practices would get preferential access to resources. Doctors in Bolivia called it insulting that money should be exchanged for the conscience of a Catholic nation. In Colombia, Cardinal Anibal Muñoz Duque said that if American condition for aid undermined the teachings of the Church, they would rather not receive one cent.

The undeveloped countries, after all, weren’t (and still aren’t) the ones using up more than their share of resources. Overconsumption uses up resources more than population numbers. For example, the wealthiest 10% cause 50% of carbon emissions. Resources are hoarded, restricted, withheld. There is enough to go around if people used their share and if efforts were in place to care for our environment. And advancements have been made to increase food production, use renewable energy, and find other sustainable solutions. But the wealthy (and I broadly include me in that category) do not want to reduce their standard of living to help others. They like their comforts and their comfortable way of living. So instead, many policies promote limiting population growth.

Limiting population growth of poor people, specifically. Population control efforts quickly show political and economic biases. Population growth is mostly in Africa. As a continent, it uses far less resources than other regions. Yet it is the poor populations who must be controlled. There are some policies that mandate families limit children, such as China’s one-child policy or India’s forced sterilization program in the late-70s. Such programs or other forced sterilizations (such as in water and food supplies) can be used to eliminate undesired ethnic, religious, or political groups under the guise of environmental concern.

Other programs promote birth control, abortion, and sterilization through gifts or benefits offered to people willing to participate such as free medical care, rations, tax benefits. For the poor who have well-formed moral consciences, they are asked to sell out their beliefs in exchange for goods or services they need access to. 

In short, the wealthy are told they deserve children on their own terms, no matter the cost. Put off having children, then when you decide you want them and that you want them to be your own, pay any cost for fertility treatments or donors or surrogates. But the poor are told that it is selfish to give birth to their children, that it would be better if the child were never born than to have him live in squalid or dangerous circumstances. Abort the baby. Get yourself sterilized. Your family is unwanted.

This idea is most egregious in places where the demand for population control is dictated out by the government. Look at China’s one-child policy as an example. There are now generations of children supporting two parents and four grandparents all on their own. There is a gender imbalance due to preference for boys (if you only have one shot, you’ll abort the lesser desired), leading to millions who statistically will not be able to settle down even if they want to. What happens to a society with millions of frustrated, bitter men? China has had to loosen its policy in attempt to counteract the social repercussions. 

The places experiencing population loss are also struggling to care for an aging population, straining social benefits systems as there are less and less workers. Many countries are offering incentives to couples to have children. But for decades people have been told that children are a burden, your individual happiness is more important than a family or community, and you can have child-free sexual relationships. Society disseminates a message against children and families then can’t understand why their people won’t have children and families.

In Populorum Progressio, Paul VI says, “[Public authorities] can instruct citizens on this subject and adopt appropriate measures, so long as these are in conformity with the dictates of the moral law and the rightful freedom of married couples is preserved completely intact. When the inalienable right of marriage and of procreation is taken away, so is human dignity.”

Marriage, and its function of raising children, is a sacrament, a grace given by God that must not be frustrated by either outside or internal demands of reordering or control. Once the value of one child is diminished, the value of children is diminished. When we no longer see a human life in the image of God, worthy of dignity, we begin to see one another as competitors, burdens, enemies. How we individuals conduct our relationships results in how we a society conducts itself. Paul VI says in Humanae Vitae, “In a word, the exercise of responsible parenthood requires that husband and wife, keeping a right order of priorities, recognize their own duties toward God, themselves, their families and human society.”