The 42nd annual National Right to Life Convention kicked off today in Crystal City, Virginia with an eye-opening presentation by Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute.
As the world’s population reached seven billion at the end of last year, population control advocates sought to use the landmark to call for policies to expand abortion globally. Instead of calling for more abortions, Mosher celebrated the seven billion people of the world saying, “This is a happy occasion. The world’s population has more than doubled since 1960, and humanity has never been so prosperous.”
Mosher’s presentation to National Right to Life emphasized that the problem facing many countries is actually underpopulation, not overpopulation.
Mosher has said, “Contrary to what you might hear, the most pressing problem in country after country today is not overpopulation, but underpopulation. In a time of fiscal austerity, the last thing that we need to be doing is spending more tax dollars to drive down the birth rate, reducing the amount of human capital available, and making us all poorer in the long run.”
In 1979, Steven Mosher was the first American social scientist to visit the Chinese mainland. Invited by the Chinese government, he had access to government documents and actually witnessed women being forced to have abortions under the new One Child Policy. At the time, Mosher described himself as pro-choice but after his experiences in China, he changed his position.
In his address to the National Right to Life Convention, Mosher criticized the abhorrent One Child Policy, which has victimized millions. An estimated 400 million Chinese children have lost their lives to abortion under the policy. In addition, millions of Chinese women have been subjected to forced abortions and sterilizations at the hand of the Chinese government.
The plight of the Chinese under the One Child Policy made international headlines this year when pro-life activist Chen Guangcheng publicly took on the Chinese government on its record of forcing abortions on Chinese mothers. Mosher has called on Chen to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to expose Chinese human rights abuses.
The myth of overpopulation was also the topic of the National Right to Life radio program The Pro-Life Perspective last month.
NRLC President Carol Tobias noted that in many places of the world the fear is not too many children but too few to support a growing older population. This also poses a threat to the right to life. Tobias said, “If abortion was posed as a solution to overpopulation, you can bet that the pro-death activists will be campaigning tirelessly to pass laws in favor of euthanasia as depopulation becomes a reality.”
