WASHINGTON — The Catholic pro-life group Human Life International has called upon the Bush administration to rescind what it called offensive directives of a population-control strategy authored 30 years ago by Henry Kissinger, secretary of state under President Richard Nixon.

Promulgated by the National Security Council on Dec. 10, 1974, the “National Security Study Memorandum 200” laid out a detailed strategy by which the United States would aggressively promote population control in developing nations. Elements could include the legalization of abortion; financial incentives for countries to increase their abortion, sterilization and contraception-use rates; indoctrination of children; and mandatory population control.

The author of the study on the memorandum, Brian Clowes, research manager of Human Life International, said the document — also known as the Kissinger Report — warns of rapidly developing populations in lesser developed nations. It expressed concern that the smooth flow of resources to the United States could be jeopardized by lesser developed nations if population pressure is a factor.

He also said the memo’s policies have been implemented primarily through the United Nations Population Fund, the U.S. Agency for International Development and International Planned Parenthood Federation by indoctrinating future generations on the “value” of small families and making sure that as many people use contraceptives as possible.

Neither the Bush administration nor the Agency for International Development returned calls seeking comment. But Clowes said a look at the success of population-control policies around the world over the past 30 years shows the ideas promulgated by the memo have been successful.

“According to the United Nations population information network website, you will see that 100 nations are now not going to be able to replace their populations. They’ve fallen under the 2.1 (birthrate) mark. More and more scientists, demographers, politicians and writers are finding that soon we might be hit with a population implosion.”

He said that since 1965 the United States alone has put $17.3 billion into holding down the populations of developing nations while basic health-care priorities such as clean drinking water remain underfunded.

“I myself have been to Asian and African health clinics that don’t have the most basic health-care necessities like vitamins, bandages, needles, antiseptics and antibiotics. But they have shelves full of thousands of rounds of birth-control pills, Norplant, Depo-Provera injections and all the rest.”

In Haiti, for example, 88% of all the women have access to a complete range of contraceptive services and only 22% have access to safe and clean drinking water, he noted. “Now, if we’d taken all these billions of dollars and put them into authentic economic development instead, people would naturally have smaller families and they’d enjoy a much higher standard of living,” Clowes said. 

Population Paranoia

Another of those countries is India. Jeanette Pinto, director of the human life committee of the Archdiocese of Bombay, India, said her country was one of the first in the developing world to initiate a state-sponsored family planning program to slow population growth.

“Millions of U.S. dollars have flowed into my country to develop, expand and strengthen population projects and provide so-called family planning services,” she said. As a result, she said, “a whole generation of Indians has been raised on a diet of population paranoia.” Pinto said an example is the sterilization program begun in India in the 1970s and still prevalent today.

“Abortion was legalized in India with the passage of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act in 1971, and our spiral downward has continued unabated. India’s fertility rate has plummeted over the 30 years since NSSM 200 was foisted upon us with such effectiveness. Our birth rate is now below the replacement level of 2.1 children per family in many states. While our national fertility rate in 1975 was 5.43 children per woman, it is now 2.76 and still declining.”

Clowes said that instead of bringing 20 million Asians and Africans into the 21st century by focusing on safe drinking water, electricity, paved roads, modern schools and health clinics, “all we have done is make millions of large poor families into small poor families. “

Joseph Meaney, director of international coordination for Human Life International, said the growing AIDS crisis in Africa and Asia is another factor that makes anti-fertility policies more out of touch with contemporary reality. “With birth rates declining and death rates increasing, especially among the young due to AIDS, it’s understandable that leaders from developing nations reason that anti-population growth policies cannot be justified in terms of the best interests of the poor nations themselves.”

Hopeful Sign

But Meaney said there may be some encouragement coming from the United Nations. The General Assembly in December ratified the Doha declaration, a statement of non-governmental organizations meeting in Qatar on the 10th anniversary of the Year of the Family. The declaration, which reaffirmed traditional definitions of marriage and family, included a call to “evaluate and reassess government population policies particularly in countries with below replacement birthrates.”

Father Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, said the intent in spotlighting the Kissinger memo is to critique the foreign policy that it unleashed upon the world and the attendant mindset, which has become the default mentality of the age.

“Instead of the United States positioning itself to take advantage of the natural resources of other nations, which is a stated objective of NSSM 200, we should be supporting and guiding economic development that allows the people of each nation to utilize their own natural resources to their own benefit,” Father Euteneuer said. He called on the Bush administration to redirect funds from population control into authentic economic development to raise the standard of living of people in developing countries.

Clowes is more succinct. “A human and humane foreign policy is directed towards the betterment of people, not the exploitation of their resources.”

Keith Peters writes

from Washington, D.C.