LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
LETTERS to the Editor Readers Respond to 'Population Patrol* Articles Sadly, your September issue has left The Progressive's readers grossly misled and misinformed. The four feature articles on...
...One wonders about "coercion" when the World Health Organization lines up entire villages for smallpox vaccinations...
...You wouldn't know from their articles...
...Without a doubt, continued concentration of economic and political power in the hands of wealthy elites contributes to the starvation of millions of unfortunates...
...Your articles are the duds...
...Their ideological hegemony is evident in the apparent inability of our critics to grasp the difference between opposition to population control and opposition to birth control...
...I resent the way your authors have deliberately obscured the truth about U.S...
...Competition for reporting slots on this newspaper is intense...
...He is identified at the conclusion of one of his responses to one of my articles in the San Antonio Light as "an Israel activist who was in Israel for more than two years...
...Eugene Kreves Tumbling Shoals, Arkansas f the intent of your "Population Patrol" articles was to raise an alarm, readers ought to be alarmed—by this stewpot of disinformation...
...I resent the implication that life on Earth would not be markedly different with ten or twenty billion people than it is with five billion, and I can only hope that the majority of your readers will see through these obfuscations...
...Do you seriously believe that the Utopian equal distribution of world resources will solve population problems...
...taxpayers financing Nigerian music favoring birth control...
...Marc Desmond Brooklyn, New York Nat Hentoff devotes half his space to an area of expertise of which he has little awareness and for which he has no basic aptitude—a woman's body and her right to determine its health...
...Other, like-minded members will do the same...
...The authors of these articles apparently support the traditional view of women as chief cooks and bottle washers...
...Ed Rademaekers Executive Editor San Antonio Light San Antonio, Texas The author replies: Donald H. Cohen neglects to mention that he is, himself, part of the Israeli lobby he defends...
...Now we see that the increasing urbanization and industrialization of the world are poisoning the planet and playing havoc with the chain of life...
...The bulk of her writings were attacks on the American Jewish community, Zionism, and Judaism...
...Andrea Wright Corpus Christi, Texas If You've Got It, Flout It The Progressive is usually edited so well that I was shocked by Gene Bluestein's reference (Books, September issue) to "a secret club where all the laws of the society are conspicuously flaunted...
...No more overcrowded cities, no more famine, no more infant mortality, no more destruction of the environment, no more assault on human rights—oh, brave new world...
...Especially now, in an era of reaction, imperialist intervention, and failure of revolution, we have little choice but to concentrate on the population factor...
...Wright simply did not make the cut...
...My union local would not presume to tell women like me whether we have a right to terminate an accidental or dangerous pregnancy...
...population policy...
...This is a tired old argument...
...H Action is needed now...
...Wright presents not one iota of evidence to prove "Israel's supporters" had anything to do with her job rejection...
...Population growth, he says, is not the cause of environmental degradation, as the reductionists claim, but its symptom...
...Leopold J. Graupera Annapolis, Maryland It ill behooves a progressive journal to take the same side as the Papacy, the right-to-lifers, and the right-wing natalist Julian Simon...
...Happily, James K. Boyce puts everything into perspective...
...But her writings were regularly marred by conspiracy theories and the rewriting of Jewish history and religion to prove her point...
...The other possibility—for the union to set up separate political-action committees funded by voluntary contributions—would have a similar effect...
...Of course there are other causes of poverty and social stagnation...
...In opposition to the New Right, we support birth control, including access to abortion, but for a very different reason than the population controllers...
...At a time when the membership and influence of the labor movement are at a long-time low, the natural reaction of many unions may simply be to stop all "offending" activities...
...But then what about the right of the majority to associate with a union that is active in public affairs...
...the World Bank and AID are certainly guilty of many things, and population control through coercion may be one of them...
...Birth control must be promoted as a means to reduce population...
...If the district court decision in the case of Kathryn Kidwell holds up, she can demand the return of some part of her union dues...
...In the September issue of The Progressive, we advance an alternative position—one founded upon respect for reproductive rights, including both the right to use birth control and the right to bear children...
...We can and must have population stabilization and democratization and development and technologies that will not exhaust our planet...
...In carefully selected examples by Betsy Hartmann, Jon Christensen, and Elizabeth Sobo, we are exposed to the machinations of the World Bank and the U.S...
...And on the question of government coercion, we stand firmly on the side of personal liberty...
...Not reaching these young people could have tragic consequences not only for efforts to slow population growth, but also for the future quality of life for millions of young women...
...Many population controllers advocate government-engineered incentives and, if necessary, government coercion as justifiable instruments in pursuit of this imperative...
...Have faith...
...11 The suggestion that population programs undermine women's health and place in society is ludicrous...
...They have the resources to wildly reproduce their own numbers, but recognize their responsibility toward Mother Earth to try to rescue her from what now appears to be an insidious, creeping death...
...By focusing on the rights of one union member, Hentoff loses sight of other members' rights...
...II Contrary to your authors' claims, the majority of women want to control their fertility, but in many cases don't have access to needed family-planning services and information...
...There are only one or two isolated statements concerning "family planning" coupled with better health care, but the writers do not elaborate...
...In fact, many of today's population programs focus on efforts to enhance the educational, legal, health, and social status of women...
...Bill McCormick Charlottesville, Virginia A reply: The writers of these letters seem to think there are only two sides in the population debate: Either you are for population control or you think women should be "chief cooks and bottle washers...
...Lynda Beigel San Francisco, California The author replies: The Bill of Rights is based on the need to protect the rights and liberties of the individual, including the individual union member...
...The four feature articles on population programs buried the facts and, instead, gave life to a questionable expose of abuse and international conspiracy...
...This has ominous implications for the planet and all its inhabitants...
...Can we set some facts straight...
...But Hentoff doesn't seem to care about that...
...David R. Weaver Three Rivers, California Betsy Hartmann, Jon Christensen, James K. Boyce, and Elizabeth Sobo call attention to some glitches in population programs and rightly note that population-planning aid needs to be supplemented by development assistance, but they allow a few weeds to obscure the forest...
...Allegations of coercive practices in China and elsewhere led the United States to withdraw funds from the UNFPA and to boycott the Mexico City conference on population control...
...If the focus of detonation is on the Third World, it is because the problem is mostly centered there...
...The need to control overpopulation is universal...
...Polly Strand Berkeley, California Fifty years ago, we were lectured on the mistake of Thomas Malthus...
...If she had been pro-choice and had objected to her union's pro-life activities, I would have come out the same way...
...Keep your wasted bodies producing as many babies as possible...
...support for family-planning and population programs has severely eroded over the past decade...
...They seem unwilling to admit that our finite resources cannot support a rapidly growing population at decent living standards, and they blissfully ignore the unceasing attacks on family planning and reproductive rights by the Vatican power clique and the "cultural conservatives...
...Birth control should not be promoted, and some types of birth control, notably abortion, should be banned...
...Otherwise, when the wheel of history once more spins to the left, the Earth will be so depleted and much of the human race so emaciated that we will be unable to make up for lost time by any kind of remedial action...
...It is simply a continuation of a pattern of assigning impure motives or actions to anyone who disagrees with her...
...Between the lost dues money and the extra record-keeping expense, it would take only 20 or 25 per cent of members—perhaps as few as 10 per cent in some hard-pressed unions— to cause significant financial problems...
...God will provide...
...And we argue that coercion in the name of population control violates basic human rights...
...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...
...We argue that while population growth can exacerbate environmental and social problems, it is not the fundamental problem...
...there are at least ten applicants for each open position...
...Would you prefer having Brazilian women continue to experience mandatory motherhood...
...The idiotic drivel I read in your September issue had essentially the same message: "There is enough to go around...
...The fewer people there are, the slower the rate of consumption and the longer finite supplies will last...
...Louvan E. Nolting Lewes, Delaware Your "Population Patrol" articles brought me back to the dark ages of my childhood, when I was forced to listen to the rantings of the local Catholic priest about the evil empire called Planned Parenthood...
...The First Amendment, however, has not forgotten her...
...History shows that population-growth rates decline with improvements in basic living standards and in women's position in society...
...The population bomb is not a dud...
...But nowhere will the discerning reader find any positive references to controlling human fecundity...
...As for Ed Rademaekers's attempt to relegate my qualifications to those of an occasional op-ed contributor—I held my first newspaper job in 1965, and I'm satisfied that subsequent positions as an editor, staff writer, and stringer amply qualified me for a general-assignment slot...
...Do they think population reduction is inherently coercive...
...Nevertheless, the pressure of population growth on limited resources is a prime cause...
...We were told that he overlooked the factor of Western industrialization, which provided a safety valve for the population pressures on food resources...
...11 Recent projections show that world population, now at 5.3 billion, could nearly triple in the next century...
...What is so evil about U.S...
...Perhaps the club members flaunt their flouting, but that's another matter...
...Second, it is an insult to progressive males to allege that population control is a male-versus-feminist issue...
...The population control line is that population growth is our number one problem, the fundamental cause of environmental crises and other social ills...
...With a snide reference to Malthus, he suggests that if only governments acted more responsibly, the Earth could easily support its present level of population (and possibly more...
...Do the writers think population reduction is necessary...
...It applies to my own privileged children as well...
...The "population bomb" is real...
...An estimated 40 per cent of all fourteen-year-old girls alive today will have been pregnant at least once by the time they are twenty...
...Apparently, he makes a career of writing letters to editors...
...As the media have done much to help build the public's awareness of these complex issues, it was disappointing to see The Progressive do such a poor job at addressing overpopulation...
...Fenwick Anderson New Haven, Connecticut The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...
...Anyone who has read former Representative Paul Findley's They Dare to Speak Out knows there is no absurdity in suspecting Zionist influence in a newspaper's hiring decision...
...Over the past year, there has been a surge of interest in the environment...
...I resent these accusations...
...I'm sure it is a comfort to her to blame my decision not to hire her on pro-Israel reaction to her free-lance articles...
...Obviously, mandatory controls are repugnant, but government knows no other methods, which is why the impetus must come from the grass roots...
...the real cause is inequitable distribution of resources...
...However, the facts are otherwise...
...Therefore, I have lined up in the Kidwell case with the conscientious objector against the majority...
...By definition, flaunting implies some ostentation, but contemptuously breaking laws or social norms is flouting...
...We argue that safe birth control, with the necessary complement of adequate health care, should be freely available as a means of reproductive self-determination...
...If Kidwell prevails, I'll be in the same position she was in: I'll have to choose between my union membership and my First Amendment right to associate with the activist union I originally joined...
...The impact of our present numbers has already been sufficient to decimate rainforests, create water and food shortages, hasten wildlife extinction, pollute air and water, and initiate a global warming whose full consequences cannot yet be determined...
...Nat Hentoff New York, New York Newsroom Outcast Andrea Wright's claim that her articles in the San Antonio Light focused on "Israeli government policies and official U.S...
...But no system, whether capitalist or socialist, can supply the needs of the Earth's five billion people...
...Wright did, from time to time, argue cogently against certain Israeli policies...
...However noble the idea of equitable redistribution, it is a symptom, not a cause, and must be considered within that framework...
...Donald H. Cohen Dayton, Ohio I protest Andrea Wright's characterization of the San Antonio Light as anti-Arab...
...funds for the United Nations Fund for Population Activities and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, jeopardizing the health of millions of women and their children...
...These two camps have too long dominated and narrowed the population debate in the United States...
...These things will come to pass—but only if we learn to limit our numbers...
...She labored creatively to prove her foregone conclusions...
...indeed, some claim it is a good thing...
...Ifound two major errors in the central themes of your "Population Patrol" articles: First, that the Earth's overpopulation has very little to do with the misery of its inhabitants...
...I hope that some day she will understand that a newspaper's decision to publish an op-ed piece or two does not automatically qualify someone for a job...
...In 1984, President Reagan cut off a//U.S...
...One-third of the world population will enter its reproductive years during the 1990s, yet less than half have access to contraceptives or family-planning services...
...I can't help wondering whether Hentoff was straining to support this decision because it would cripple the effort of many union activists to bring the AFL-CIO into the issue of reproductive rights...
...Charles J. Coddington Aurora, Illinois Your writers, who raise the danger of aggressive policies based upon "coercive population schemes" plotted by the World Bank, no less, seem to discount the alarming statistics that are available from Zero Population Growth, the Population Council, and the United Nations Fund for Population Activities...
...We call for the expansion, not the contraction, of women's rights...
...I do not apologize for either of these agencies...
...Susan Weber Executive Director Zero Population Growth Washington, D.C...
...The New Right maintains that coercive population control violates basic human rights...
...On the impact of population growth, we thus occupy the middle ground between the extremes of the population controllers and the New Right...
...Lynda Beigel ignores the First Amendment rights of a woman, Kathryn Kidwell, to follow her conscience...
...reaction to them" is not true ("Newsroom Outcast," Journal Entry, August issue...
...It wouldn't be the first time he's sacrificed his moral and intellectual integrity to his obsession with abortion...
...Agency for International Development...
...But the choices are not simply mandatory sterilization or mandatory motherhood...
...Ed Doerr Americans for Religious Liberty Silver Spring, Maryland An uninformed reader might come away from your September issue with the illusion that there is no population problem, that poor families are fully justified in having eight or ten or twelve children, and that anyone who calls this into question is only slightly less reprehensible than, say, Hitler or Mussolini...
...The New Right line on population, which was embraced by the Reagan Administration, is that population growth is not a problem...
...It would seem so...
...James K. Boyce Betsy Hartmann Amherst, Massachusetts Conscience and the Union Card Nat HentofPs analysis of the free-association clause ("Conscience and the Union Card," Who's on First?, August issue) is not only a perversion of constitutional law but a recipe for chaos in grass-roots politics and the labor movement...
...U U.S...
...Another dimension has been added to the urgency of "Every child a wanted and fed child"—a critical need to preserve what precious land and water we have left...
Vol. 54 • November 1990 • No. 11
