The Hidden Agenda of Population Control Zealots "Humanitarian Aid", RU-486, and Other Such Nonsenseby David C. Reardon, Ph.D. Note: This article originally appeared in The Post-Abortion Review, Fall 1997. Population control advocates insist that expanded access to abortion
is essential to improving the status and health of women throughout the
world. Indeed, this message was tirelessly promoted by Hillary Clinton
and U.S. officials at a long series of recent U.N. conferences dealing
with population growth and women's rights. Pro-lifers are obviously opposed to any effort to expand abortion access
around the world. In the current battle over the foreign operations appropriation
bill, they are seeking to reinstate a policy that banned the distribution
of funds to organizations that perform or promote abortions. If they succeed
in adding this restrictive language, the White House is threatening to
veto the bill. On the surface, this would appear to be just another battle over abortion
rights. Should women, of any country, have the right to abortion or not?
In reality, the issue is much more complex. Many proponents of population control honestly believe that these programs
will expand the rights of women and improve their lives. In contrast to
these humanitarians, however, there is another group of population controllers
who want to reduce individual rights at the expense of women. These are the zealots. They are the ones who make excuses for programs
that involve coerced sterilizations, forced abortions, or the withholding
of food or medical care unless poor women "voluntarily" accept IUDs or
Norplant insertions. Some zealots, such as Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Explosion, are doomsayers who believe that population growth threatens the survival
of humanity. "Injustice is preferable to ruin," is one of their most oft-repeated
quotes. Other zealots are not afraid of ruin; they fear loss of privilege. This
latter group believes that higher birth rates will actually improve the political and economic power of developing countries -- but at the
expense of U.S. and European dominance. In short, these zealots are not seeking to advance the rights and welfare
of the poor. Just the opposite. They are actually elitists who see population
control as a means of keeping the "rabble" in their place. Naturally, these elitists are rarely so blunt. They are a civilized
bunch, after all, and generally take care to sound remarkably like their
humanitarian friends. That is one of the problems in this debate. One can never be sure of
a population controller's motives. Humanitarian? Doomsayer? Elitist? Or
a mix of all three? Population controllers of all stripes tend to gravitate toward humanitarian
rhetoric. For example, Professor Garrett Hardin is one of the most enduring
and preeminent proponents of population control. In the early 1960s, before
the modern feminist movement was born, Hardin was the first to popularize
the argument that abortion is part of a "woman's right to control her own
body." But in publications for population control specialists, Hardin, a self-proclaimed
friend of feminists, argues that "freedom to breed is intolerable." He
believes the reproductive rights of women and men should actually be subservient
to public policy. Like many zealots, he has defended and even applauded
China's brutal one-child policy. Unfortunately, many overseas population programs are run by zealots
of a similar stripe. They are fluent in humanitarian lingo but are actually
hostile to individual freedom. While pledging to advance women's health,
they advise clients to use dangerous birth control technologies without
even informing them of the risks. As true elitists, they believe the poor
are too ignorant to make an informed choice, so they make it for them. For example, dangerous IUDs that are banned in America are freely distributed
in developing countries, often as a requirement for obtaining basic health
care. For true believers of population control, even a dangerous contraceptive
is better than none. Human Guinea Pigs The poor are also the primary targets for experimental programs. In a recent
documentary "The Human Laboratory," BBC journalists found that population
controllers had tested Norplant on women in Bangladesh without the proper
disclosures necessary to obtain informed consent. Furthermore, when women
with serious side effects asked to have the Norplant inserts removed, they
were refused on the grounds that their withdrawal from the program would
upset the test results. Some investigators have concluded that the complaints
of many Bengali women were omitted from the final data in an effort to
minimize the perceived risks of the drug. After using these test results to receive FDA approval in the U.S.,
Norplant manufacturers now face several class action suits brought by American
women who are making the same complaints alleged by the "guinea pigs" of
Bangladesh. Unfortunately for Norplant promoters, American women have more
legal recourse than Bengalis. The same BBC documentary reported that women in the Philippines and
Mexico have also been used as guinea pigs for a new experimental pregnancy
vaccine. The HCG vaccine makes a woman's body reject new pregnancies. According
to human rights activists, it has been administered, without the consent
or knowledge of patients, as a "piggyback" vaccine in a series of tetanus
vaccine programs. Many Filipinos were initially curious as to why only women of reproductive
age had been eligible for the free tetanus vaccine, especially since tetanus
is more common among young men. But when women who had recently received
the "tetanus vaccine" began having an inordinate number of miscarriages,
this bureaucratic curiosity turned into charges of conspiracy. Subsequent
lab tests of the tetanus vaccine confirmed it had indeed been laced with
an HCG vaccine. Population control zealots who have little or no regard for individual
rights could hardly be expected to respect local customs, religious beliefs,
or national sovereignty. They are especially frustrated with the governments
of predominantly Catholic and Moslem countries where abortion remains illegal
or strictly limited. Many leading population control organizations, such as the International
Planned Parenthood Federation, have adopted policies that aggressively
promote abortion even in countries where it is illegal. They argue that
illegal abortions may be "part of the process of stimulating change." The Mad Rush Toward RU-486 The FDA's recent approval of the abortion inducing drug RU-486 may make
it even easier for population control zealots to "stimulate change." Five years ago, presidential candidate Bill Clinton promised population
control advocates that he would hasten FDA approval of the new abortion
drug. He kept his word. Following Clinton's election, the FDA urged RU-486 manufacturer Roussel
Uclaf to submit the drug for approval. After much foot dragging, the company
declined, expressing its fear of product liability claims and bad publicity
from anti-abortion activists. Then in May of 1994, the Administration announced
that it had convinced the company to "donate" the patent to the Population
Council, one of America's most zealous promoters of international population
control. This agreement would let Roussel Uclaf off the hook and give the
Administration its abortion drug. To further grease the skids, the FDA agreed to lower the standards for
testing and review which are normally required before approval of a new
drug. The Population Council would be able to attain approval by spending
only $8 million in drug testing trials compared to the $100 million or
more that drug companies must usually spend. In addition, the target date
for approval was reduced to six months. The approval time for most pharmaceuticals,
ranging from migraine treatments to chemotherapy drugs, typically requires
six years or more. In July of 1996, an FDA advisory panel recommended approval of RU-486
even though the American clinical trials were still not complete. Most
shocking of all, this recommendation was made despite the unimpeachable
testimony of Dr. Mark Louviere, a physician who treated a woman for a life
threatening hemorrhage two weeks after the RU-486 was administered. The
woman had lost one-half to two-thirds of her blood. This was disturbing
in and of itself. But what really bothered Dr. Louviere (but not the committee,
apparently) was even though he had reported the complication to the Planned
Parenthood clinic which administered the experimental drug, a representative
of the same Planned Parenthood clinic subsequently told the media that
there had been "no complications among the 238 women" they aborted in this
manner. Normally, one might expect the FDA to immediately reject an application
for approval in the face of such incontrovertible evidence of poor record
keeping, public deception, or even outright fraud. But this was a special
case. This was an abortion drug. Risks Versus Benefits of RU-486 Why is RU-486 receiving the "most favored drug" treatment? While there
may be reasons for accelerating the approval of potentially life-saving
or life-extending drugs, such as in the case of AID's treatments, no such
reasons apply here. RU-486 is clearly intended only for non-therapeutic,
elective abortions. There is no health crisis demanding this treatment
before its risks are properly established. Even as an elective treatment,
patients already have a surgical option, which abortion proponents insist
is already safe, effective, and inexpensive. The rush to approve RU-486 is even more puzzling in light of the European
experience with this drug. RU-486 abortions have actually proven to cost
the same as a surgical abortion, in part because it requires three or more
visits to the clinic or hospital, more staff, and careful monitoring. These precautions are necessary because of multiple side effects, including
heavy bleeding, cardiac arrest, and frequent incomplete abortions. Even
the Population Council anticipates that the rates for hospitalization,
hemorrhage, and surgical interventions to stop bleeding will each fall
in the range of one to two percent. Projecting these rates on 1.5 million
abortions per year, each of these three "rare" complications would effect
15,000 to 30,000 women per year. Combined with the problem of cardiac arrest,
which has resulted in the death of at least one woman and heart attacks
for several others, these complication rates suggest that Roussel Uclaf's
decision not to market the drug in the U.S. may have reflected greater
concern about litigious Americans than pro-life Americans. Nor is this procedure less stressful than surgical abortion. Most RU-486
patients experience severe cramping, nausea, vomiting, and bleeding. Also,
according to Roussel Uclaf spokesman Lester Hyman, "there is considerable
pain attached to the procedure." The emotional drain can be even greater. Rather than being "over with"
in ten minutes, an RU-486 abortion takes days, sometimes a week or more.
Even if the woman can ignore the nausea and pain, she is still faced with
the days of anxiety. She must worry about whether the procedure will work.
For up to one in ten women, it does not. Plus, she will inevitably be plagued
with questions about whether her fetus is alive, or dead, or suffering
at any particular moment. Finally, if the woman sees the expelled human fetus--with its head, arms, and legs clearly
intact--this sight may be burned into her memory for
the rest of her life. In this last respect, the emotional impact of such
chemically induced abortions may be even more pronounced than that for
women undergoing a "blind" surgical abortion. It is no wonder, then, that
even Edouard Sakiz, former president of Roussel Uclaf, admits that RU-486
abortions involve "an appalling psychological ordeal." Because of these problems, the opposition to RU-486 includes not only
the usual anti-abortion "suspects" but also some pro-abortion feminists.
While the former believe it is a drug used for immoral purposes, the latter
believe RU-486 is simply inferior to and more dangerous than surgical abortion. Exporting Abortion Despite all of these problems, population controllers and the U.S. government
want RU-486 as quickly as possible and with minimal review. Why? When properly administered, RU-486 is not safer, less expensive, or
more private than surgical abortion. But it does have one advantage; it
is more portable. Once it is granted FDA approval, it will be relatively
easy to take into Third World countries where abortion is not legally available. The U.S. government spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year
to "protect our national interests" through programs designed to suppress
the "excess" population growth of developing countries. As part of this
effort, the Clinton Administration, in particular, has openly lobbied for
expanding access to abortion in the Third World. But this latter objective
is blocked by two obstacles. First, abortion is still illegal in many developing
countries. Second, surgical abortion is more technically complicated; it
requires more in the way medical facilities and training. Despite its many
flaws, RU-486 offers a way around both of these problems. Since most developing countries do not have labs and agencies governing
the approval of drugs, their import restrictions, if any, are often linked
to approval by the U.S. FDA. "If a drug is safe enough for the Americans,"
they assume, "it must be safe enough for us." Even in countries where abortion
is illegal, FDA approval is the key to exporting RU-486 for "other" medical
purposes. Once it is brought into developing countries, RU-486 can be easily transported
and distributed. With a little training, it can be cheaply administered
by midwives. To avoid trouble with the law, or the conscience of individual
patients, these abortifacient treatments can be disguised under the euphemism
of "menstrual regulation." Perhaps most important of all, since the citizens of developing countries
have far less recourse to civil courts than litigious Americans, those
who manufacture and distribute RU-486 in these countries will be shielded
from proper liability for the injuries that will inevitably occur. For population controllers, this is a no-lose situation. When women
begin to die because the drug was not "properly administered" their deaths
will be blamed on the "archaic and patriarchal" laws that prevent easy
access to " safe and legal" abortions. In this way, population control "spin masters" can turn the expected
complications of RU-486 to their own advantage. By driving up abortion
rates -- and corresponding maternal deaths--population control zealots
will be able to put more political pressure on Third World governments
to legalize abortion in order to "make it safe." In short, the rush for FDA approval of RU-486 is not about improving
the welfare of American women. It is about exporting more abortions to
the "backward" people of the Third World. It is about protecting "our national
interests"--i.e. American dominance--by suppressing "excess births" in
nations which might otherwise compete for the economic resources and political
influence which we now enjoy. The FDA review of RU-486 has been a thinly veiled sham; its conclusion
predetermined by a "national interest" in increasing abortion "options."
For the Clinton regime, expanding the tools of population controllers--here
and abroad--is more important than protecting the health of individual
women--here or abroad. Conclusion The record of U.S.-funded population control programs is not an encouraging
one. These programs may be supported and funded by humanitarians, but it
is sadly clear that they are often run by zealots who have little regard
for individual rights, cultural and religious norms, or national sovereignty. It is not only pro-lifers who should be concerned. All people of good
will should look beyond the rhetoric and join in an effort to ensure the
protection of individual freedom, patients' rights, and national sovereignty. Originally published in The Post-Abortion Review 5(4), Fall 1997. Copyright
1997 the Elliot Institute. |