PrintNovember 25, 2009
After a Takeover of Health Care, Can a One-Child Policy Be Far Behind?
Make no mistake about it: the health care bill that moved forward to debate in the Senate on Saturday is simply a power play by the government to gain more control over how we live our lives. It could easily lead to government control over the continuation of our families.
In 1979, China's Deng Xiaoping announced a one-child policy in a speech. The policy was formalized nationwide by 1981. The technical policy on family planning followed two years later. Still in force today, the technical policy requires IUDs for women of childbearing age with one child, sterilization for couples with two children (usually performed on the woman), and abortions for women pregnant without authorization. By the mid-eighties, according to Chinese government statistics, birth control surgeries -- abortions, sterilizations, and IUD insertions -- were averaging more than thirty million a year. Many if not most of these procedures were performed on women who submitted only under duress.
How does China's internal population management relate to the current health care legislation debate in our country? Why should we be concerned? Could it really happen in the United States?
China did not initiate their one-child policy to be cruel to their people, nor did they do it because they do not respect life. They initiated the policy simply due to the growing fiscal demands of a rapidly expanding population. In the mid 1950s, Mao Zedong encouraged population growth as a means of increasing the size of the labor pool, and consequently, the means of production. Years later, this unchecked growth, assisted by government bans on birth control, lead to food supply shortages. In 1962, when a famine resulted in 30 million deaths, China began to look for ways to reverse its population growth. Initially, simple nationalistic appeals and slogans worked, but by 1979, when the rate of growth started to accelerate, more drastic measures were devised "for the public good." The rest is history, and that history is scarred by more than an estimated 250 million abortions, many by force. Naturally, it was all "for the public good."
We talked about "death panels" in reference to the health care bills now under consideration by Congress, but another approach is simply to control the number of people entering the system -- new births. Naturally, it will all be "for the public good."
Should we be concerned? Consider that one of Mr. Obama's close advisors, his Science Czar, is John Holdren. Mr. Holdren is a radical thinker who can, and has, rationalized the use of forced population control if economic conditions warrant it. If government-run health care begins to reveal a shortage of medical care supply versus a dramatic increase in demand for medical care -- as is a predicted result of the legislation before Congress -- Mr. Holdren will be at the president's side with his suggestions. Those suggestions will be to force a downsizing of the population. A one-child policy will be an easy first step for this man and for this administration.
To emphasize my point, I quote Mr. Holdren's own writing from the book he co-authored with Paul and Anne Ehrlich, entitled Ecoscience. It is important to read these quotes to fully understand exactly what is in the minds of the people to whom we may be giving control over our lives.
Holdren (with the Ehrlichs) notes the existence of "moral objections to some proposals (regarding population control) ... especially to any kind of compulsion."
He writes:
Several coercive proposals deserve discussion, mainly because some countries may ultimately have to resort to them unless current trends in birth rates are rapidly reversed by other means. Some involuntary measures could be less repressive or discriminatory, in fact, than some of the socioeconomic measures suggested.
Holdren refers approvingly to Indira Gandhi's government for its (at the time Ecoscience was written) attempt at a compulsory sterilization program:
India in the mid-1970s not only entertained the idea of compulsory sterilization, but moved toward implementing it...This decision was greeted with dismay abroad, but Indira Gandhi's government felt it had little other choice. There is too little time left to experiment further with educational programs and hope that social change will generate a spontaneous fertility decline, and most of the Indian population is too poor for direct economic pressures (especially penalties) to be effective.
Yes, we should be concerned. Still, it will all be "for the public good."
As to whether or not it could happen in the United States...yes, it could. This past week, we already had a trial balloon floated in the form of a study by the U.S. Preventive Task Force that suggested women wait until the age of fifty rather than forty to have regular mammograms to screen for breast cancer. The uproar was immediate and deafening. However, this is a clear view into what is coming.
If we cede one-sixth our of economy -- health care -- to the government, and along with it effective control of the most personal aspect of our lives, we will place so much power in government hands that the only result most certainly will be absolute corruption and abuse.
For the "public good," radical thinking will consolidate more power and control in the hands of the federal government. We will experience the trampling of citizens' constitutional rights, while constitutional limitations on government powers will be breached.
