“How Abortion Became Popular – A Closer Look at Population Control”
From Choices in Matters of Life & Death by Judie Brown with Paul Brown. 1987. Magnificat Press.
Keywords: Thomas Malthus, Alan Guttmacher, Planned Parenthood, Hugh Moore, Paul Ehrlich, Catholic Church, birth control, Margaret Sanger
The population control movement actually started in the late 1700s with the writings of Thomas Malthus, who declared that it was necessary to control the number of people on earth. Malthus preached that by the early 1900s, the world would be so populated that there wouldn’t be enough room for all of us. Even at that early date in our history, birth control methods were being discussed, and among them was abortion.
It is unfortunate that those who promote abortion tell us repeatedly that they do not believe in abortion as a form of birth control, because their own leaders in the past definitely viewed it that way.
Alan Guttmacher’s early research concluded that at conception a new life begins, a composite of all the hereditary material of father and mother. His book Life in the Making (1933) set forth his evidence that a complete human being exists from the moment of conception. In the 1960s, however, as the president of Planned Parenthood, Guttmacher was arguing for legal abortions as a means of birth control. By this time he had stopped talking about the humanity of the unborn child.
The overpopulation myth was also fueled by Hugh Moore and Paul Ehrlich. Hugh Moore, the Dixie Cup millionaire, in the late 1960s, was promoting his idea that the world was in a crisis of overpopulation, which he blamed on the Roman Catholic Church. He purchased full-page ads in newspapers all across America to preach his message, trying to mold public opinion, and to some extent he succeeded. He warned people that the Roman Catholic Church wanted to control America, and that if it did, there would be millions and millions of people falling off the earth.
Moore engaged a research scientist by the name of Paul Ehrlich to write a book called The Population Bomb which was released as Moore’s ads began to appear in 1968. The public read the ads and felt that they were accurate and began to believe that there were too many people in the world and that something had to be done.
In effect, public opinion was molded by the rich. Margaret Sanger’s Planned Parenthood was also sponsored by a rich man. Sanger left her first husband and her children and eventually wound up divorcing her husband. Noah Slee, her second husband, was the heir to the Three-in-One Oil fortune. He provided millions of dollars to fund her and her activities, especially her major interest: controlling the children of minorities and children of the poor.
The people who changed public opinion were what the common man would view as elitists, people who wanted more of everything for themselves and less for those of the lower classes. These merchants of death got started with money from Three-in-One Oil, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefellers, General Motors and others.
With the growing public sentiment in favor of population control, eventually the federal and state governments got involved with funding family-planning programs. Today abortion propagandists, including Planned Parenthood, receive millions in federal funds (your tax dollars!) in addition to foundation and corporate support.
