Debunking the Overpopulation Myth

by Helen M. Valois

ISSUE: Is the world overpopulated? Could we cure countless social problems if we stabilized or curbed the rate of
population growth?

RESPONSE: No. The claims of the Zero Population Growth (ZPG) lobby crumble in any encounter with the facts.
Proponents of population control argue that the earth has too fragile an environment, and too limited space and
resources to sustain population growth. Historic and scientific facts prove these arguments false. More importantly,
Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Catholic Church on man’s nature and the purpose of the earth provide a
proper understanding of the issues involved, and offer just solutions for the social problems of our day.

DISCUSSION: Behind the movement for abortion, contraception, and sterilization lies the allegation of overpopula-
tion. It is said that poverty, crime, hunger, pollution, and a host of other evils stem from too many people in the world.
This world view is treated as fact by many educational programs in public and private schools. U.S. foreign policy
often makes aid to developing nations dependent on their acceptance of population control measures.

Antinatalists—those who oppose population growth—promote abortion, contraception, sterilization, euthanasia and
homosexuality as means to regulate and curb population growth. Because of the gravity of these issues, they
deserve separate considerations in their own right.1 Therefore, it is not our purpose here to evaluate these means of
population control, but rather to examine the allegations used to promote them—namely, that the world contains or
will soon contain too many people—and refute these allegations with the truth.

Concerns about the number of people on our planet date back to ancient times. Plato, Aristotle, and St. Jerome are
among those who voice opinions on the subject. Modern discussion of the issue is generally traced to Thomas
Malthus, who wrote a seminal essay on the problem of overpopulation in 1798. However, we do him a great
disservice when we call contemporary antinatalists “neo-Malthusians.” For all his concern about the relationship
between available resources and the number of consumers, Malthus himself never advocated the coerced,
contraceptive approach we associate with population planning today.

It took Margaret Sanger, founder of the American Eugenics League, to put the “control” in “birth control.”
Desiring to stem the tide of the “teeming, unwanted and unnecessary pregnancies,” she helped popularize abortion,
contraception, and sterilization in our nation during the early part of this century. 2 Her ideology was known as
“eugenics” because its goal was the encouragement of a good (eu) gene (gen) pool. Her ideas were similar to those
of the Nazis. This fact is proven in her own publication, American Birth Control Review, which published articles
written by members of the Nazi party and other racist groups. After Adolph Hitler showed the world what
“eugenics” is really all about, Sanger’s “birth control movement had to take a quick step away from its overt
eugenical language” and became “Planned Parenthood.”3 Despite its name change, the group’s goal remained the
same.

Conserving Room and Resources?

Believing that Jews and others were crowding them out, the National Socialists waged a world war to gain the
“living space” that Germans allegedly needed and deserved. Because they claim there is little room and not enough
resources, antinatalists today are declaring “World War III” on the growth rate of those groups they believe are less
worthy of consuming room and resources. As Jacqueline Kasun demonstrates in her contemporary classic, The War
Against Population, neither of these contentions is correct. We are nowhere near running out of anything.

The vast majority of the planet’s inhabitable surface is empty of human inhabitants. In fact, demographers have
calculated that the entire world population in 1984 could have fit into the State of Texas, allotting 1500 square feet of
space per person. If allowed standing room only, every person could have fit into one quarter of Jacksonville,
Florida.4 “The impression of the typical air passenger that he is looking down on a mostly empty earth is correct.”5

Furthermore, there is as little evidence that our resources are running out. Marshalling the available data, Kasun
concludes that “there is very little probability of running out of anything essential to the industrial process at any time
in the foreseeable future.”6 In fact, most of the depletion deadlines predicted by ZPG alarmists of the sixties and
seventies already have passed. Where is the threatened global collapse? Evidently, the “population bomb” was a
dud.

Ruining the Environment?

Another favorite tactic of the ZPG lobby is to pit population against the environment. They allege that the global
ecosystem is fragile and irreplaceable. Billions of people being born will be the undoing of the very matrix of
biological life itself. This is the thinking behind abortion patriarch Lawrence Lader. In his book Breeding Ourselves
to Death, he chronicles the efforts of Hugh Moore, zealous promoter of both the disposable Dixie Cup and the
original “population bomb” concept.

Anyone who has ever been to Fresh Kills, New Jersey, where piles of refuse stretch from horizon to horizon, will
readily concede that pollution is a serious problem. While man has existed for thousands of years, industrialization
has had a more harmful effect on the earth than earlier lifestyles did. However, industrialization itself, and not the
number of people per se, is responsible for environmental degradation. It is up to the beneficiaries of the Industrial
Revolution, namely, all of us, to see to it that advances are preserved and harmful effects are controlled and even
eliminated. Perhaps it would be more to the point, in other words, to use fewer Dixie Cups rather than more
condoms.

Concurring with the antinatalists, many animal rights lobbyists argue that human beings are the dangerous foreign
element to be purged from, or at least contained upon, an otherwise pristine planet. This is aptly demonstrated in an
ACTION ALERT letter from the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), dated June 10, 1997. In that letter, the NWF
wrote:

Please write to your Representative and Senators, and tell them to support more money for family
planning programs in the Foreign Operations Bill. Tell them to OPPOSE amendments that will restrict
the delivery of safe, effective, voluntary family planning services (emphasis in original).

Some day humans and wildlife may be able to coexist in a peaceful balance, but that day has not
yet arrived. Stabilizing the human population is essential if we are to achieve that balance.7

This argument not only denies the privileged position man has over the lower creatures, it places him at a lower
level of importance. While defining the human being as “the only animal that practices birth control,”8 many groups
such as NWF contend that this one “animal” has no business thriving and surviving in this world. Do human beings
belong exclusively to the natural world, or do they also belong to the supernatural? If we belong exclusively to the
natural world, we have just as much right to exist as do snail darters and seals. If we also belong to the
supernatural…but animal rights activists cannot contemplate this. To do so would require entertaining the possibility
of a supernatural realm existing. Such possibility would demand acceptance of man’s primacy and demolish their
world view more surely than any environmental damage could demolish their world.

The Consummate Consumer

For the overpopulation alarmist, the child is the consummate consumer. As one antinatalist ad of the 1970’s put it,
“Every 8 seconds a new American is born. He is a disarming little thing, but he will consume 56,000,000 gallons of
water, 21,000 gallons of gasoline, 10,150 pounds of meat, 28,000 pounds of milk and cream, 9,000 pounds of wheat,
and great storehouses of all other foods, drinks, and tobaccos.”9 No mention is made of the fact that this same child
will also grow up to be a producer, contributing to society in tangible and intangible ways. And what of the child who,
due to handicap, injury, or inability, will simply not prove to be a producer of any merit? In the wake of the Nazi
experience and the reality of abortion and euthanasia, need we wonder any longer where the suppression of the
“useless eaters” finally leads?

Reducing World Hunger?

Although the “eliminating useless eaters” strategy was tried in this century and judged a crime against humanity,
the antinatalists continue to advocate it when they address the problem of world hunger. They argue that to reduce
world hunger we must reduce the numbers of the hungry. “Pope Denounces Birth Control as Millions Starve,”
trumpets an ad placed in The New York Times by the Campaign to Check the Population Explosion.10 The ad was
placed in response to the promulgation of Pope Paul VI’s courageous encyclical, Humanae Vitae.

In a world where there is plenty of food poorly distributed, and the potential of producing many times more food
than we have already, shouldn’t we feed people rather than eliminate them? Pope Paul VI called for increased
economic development while rejecting contraception; Margaret Sanger denounced development while advocating
contraception. In her book The Pivot of Civilization, she argues that efforts to provide sustenance for the
malnourished are wrongheaded and mean, because preventing people from starving to death will allow them to
survive and procreate, thus producing more potential starvation victims, whom she also opposes feeding. Her mind-
bending chapter is titled “The Cruelty of Charity.” Shouldn’t the headline read, “Margaret Sanger Denounces
Feeding the Hungry as Millions Starve?”

Fundamentally Elitist Mentality

There is an old story about a ZPG zealot attending a penthouse cocktail party. Holding forth at eloquent length on
the need to reduce the number of people in the world, he was interrupted in his monologue by the hostess, who
graciously ushered him to a nearby window. “If there are too many people in the world,” she smiled, “why don’t you
go first?”

Proponents of population control are not arguing that there are too many people in the world. They are arguing
that there are too many other people in the world. True to their eugenic roots, population alarmists divide the human
race into the valuable part, which deserves to live, and the worthless part, which doesn’t. The first tenet of their
creed is that they themselves belong to the valuable, “good genes” group. In pitting population against natural
resources, the environment, room on the planet and available food, they simultaneously pit humanity against itself.

Catholic Objections to the Overpopulation Myth

The means and goal of population control proponents contradict the Catholic faith. The overpopulation myth we
have been describing fails to recognize these basic theological points: 1) the priceless value of each person, who is an
immortal being made in the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26-28), 2) the universal destination of goods, and 3)
the preferential option for the poor.

While the antinatalists see and analyze a “population,” the Christian knows that a population is a group (however
large) of individual human beings. Each of us is endowed by God with an immortal soul. We are made in His image
and likeness. Therefore, each person is not only more valuable than any earthly thing, but is valued on an entirely
different scale. It is this truth that makes population suppression repugnant, even if its claims of earthly amelioration
were proven to be true. It would not be a Pyrrhic victory but a hellish defeat to wipe out world hunger by wiping out
the hungry, to eradicate poverty by eradicating the poor. The hungry and poor are worth more than both their
afflictions and the resources necessary to sustain them. Indeed it is their own inestimable worth that makes their
afflictions worth addressing in the first place. Individuals are equally valuable in the sight of God. Eugenic thinking is
racist and directly opposed to Christianity.

While the antinatalists regard a baby as a way of wasting good food and resources, the Christian knows that
sustaining human life is what food and resources are for. The notion that sustenance and raw materials should be
hoarded for the privileged few by denying existence to the underprivileged contradicts the universal destination of
goods. God intends this world’s resources to be used by all people and not just by some. As the Catechism of the
Catholic Church (CCC) explains, “The goods of creation are destined for the whole human race” (no. 2402). It
attacks the overpopulation myth by remarking, “Goods of production . . . oblige their possessors to employ them in
ways that will benefit the greatest number” (no. 2405, emphasis added).

When the antinatalists urge us to curb the births of less privileged humanity, they preach against every admonition
of the Old and New Testaments on the subject of the poor. For the poor are the apple of God’s eye and the proper
object of our charity. The phrase “preferential option for the poor” points to a real facet of Christian teaching. In the
Gospel sense, the antinatalist could be described as having a “preferential option for the rich.”

Paganism generally views new life with a critical eye, while the Judeo-Christian ethic sees children as a blessing
from the Lord. As Genesis 1:27-28 attests:

God created man in His own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female He created
them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and
subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every
living thing that moves upon the earth.”

God’s Son later took flesh as a poor baby bound to consume tons and tons of food; bound to set us free.
Christianity alone can debunk the overpopulation myth. Therefore the answer to this problem, as to the other
problems of the modern world, is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Spreading this Gospel is a vigorous and necessary task
of the new evangelization. A task which Our Holy Father John Paul II has so often urged us to undertake.

1
See CUF’s FAITH FACTs on these issues, which are listed at the end of this FAITH FACT.

2
Interestingly, these means of birth control were promoted by Annie Wood Besant. In 1891, Besant succeeded Helena Petrovna
as head of the Theosophic Society. Theosophic philosophies and practices are rooted in the occult and provide the substance
of New Age belief. The Holy See condemned this philosophy in 1919. For more information, see CUF’s FAITH FACT, “Let the
Son Shine: The Truth About New Age.”

3
Drogin, Elasah. Margaret Sanger: Father of Modern Society, New Hope, KY, CUL Publications, 1979, p. 29.

4
Kasun, Jacqueline. The War Against Population, San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1988, pp. 37-38.

5
Ibid, p. 38.

6
Ibid, p. 39.

7
Long before June 1997, the NWF has promoted population control measures, including abortions and sterilizations. CUF
recommends anyone who supports NWF or subscribes to their magazines to withdraw support.

8
Ehrlich, Paul R., Anne H. Ehrlich and Gretchen C. Daily, The Stork and the Plow: The Equity Answer to the Human Dilemma,
NewYork, Putnam, 1995, p. 33.

9
Quoted in: Lader, Lawrence. Breeding Ourselves to Death, New York, Ballantine, 1971, p. 82.

10
Ibid, p. 82.
AVAILABLE FROM CUF BOOKS AND TAPES BY MAIL:
Catechism of the Catholic Church; $19.95 (Paperback) • CUF Member 10% discount
Catechism of the Catholic Church; $29.95 (Hardcover) • CUF Member 10% discount
Kasun, Jacqueline, The War Against Population; $16.95 • CUF Member 10% discount
Drogin, Elasah. Margaret Sanger: Father of Modern Society • CUF Member 10% discount
To order, call Benedictus Books toll-free: 1-888-316-2640.
Hahn, Scott, et al., Catholic For A Reason; $15.95 • CUF Member . . . $14.35
To order, call Emmaus Road Publishing toll-free: 1-800-398-5470.
Other Suggested Reading
Zimmerman, Anthony, S.V.D., Catholic Viewpoint on Over-Population, Garden City, Hanover House, 1961.

FAITH FACTS, FREE FOR THE ASKING: 1-800-MY FAITH (693-2484)

• Canonical Misconceptions: The Church’s Teaching on Abortion
• The Truth About Birth Control
• Euthanasia
• Withholding Nutrition and Hydration
• Let the Son Shine: The Truth about New Age
• Play it Again: Organ Donation
• Reproductive Technology
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