Guest Post by Carol Downer
One side of the population controller establishment, the “pro-natalist”, says they’re concerned about our health, when, in reality, they just want us to have more babies; the other side, the “anti-natalists”, says they’re concerned about our health when, in reality, they want us to have fewer babies. Who’s “facts” do we believe? Or, whether we believe their facts or not, do we believe they’re concerned about our health, or that they’re cloaking their national and international policy debates about the impact of birth rates on national aspirations or economic growth in the neutral garb of a discussion about women’s health.
A recent flurry of supposedly neutral health discussions and commentary was provoked when a pro-natalist Zimbabwean official told his countrywomen “to multiply” in order to be a “superpower” and warns that birth control can cause cancer, a supposedly objective “fact checker group”, Africa Check, rushed to allay women’s fears about oral contraceptives and cancer, and Bustle.Com chimes in support.
Africa Check wrote a critical article about two main assertions by Zimbabwe Official Tobaiwa Mudede on May 25 at the celebration of Africa Day. It ignored his first assertion that the promotion of birth control is a ploy by western nations to retard population growth in Africa, and then it found that when he says that contraceptives can cause cancer, his facts are right, however his advice to women to stop using contraceptives were “misleading and alarmist”.
They rely on WHO’s cancer and research agency, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), who confirmed that there can be a link between the use of oral and injectable hormonal contraceptives and particular types of cancer, increasing the risk in some cases and lowering it in others. Dr. Elvira Singh of IARC concluded that Mudede’s comments are “alarmist”.
Shortly thereafter, Abby Johnston of Bustle.com, sums up the WHO’s position as “the benefit far exceeds the risks” with contraceptive use, and mis-quotes Africa Check in saying that “the higher the birth rate in a country, the higher the maternal mortality rate”. Fact? Africa Check said that the UN only said the dangers of having more children could result in increased mortality rate. Johnston reveals her true concern, which is that African women are having too many babies in her statement, “Access and education on birth control is particularly important in areas facing overpopulation.” She presumably means Africa. African women, just as much as other women, need to have an unbiased comparison of all methods of birth control; www.birth-control-comparison.info
Methinks that the reason that Africa Check didn’t check the facts concerning Mudede’s allegation that “there are those in the West that push birth control is because they fear population growth in Africa” is based on fact, as the Bustle.com article reveals.
There isn’t much written about or by the population control establishment for the general reader. (There is an extensive scientific literature published by demographers -demography is the study of populations, including birth control, migration and immigration). I urge supporters of women’s reproductive rights to read “Quiverfull” by Kathryn Joyce, a contributing reporter for Nation Magazine. Joyce gives a road map to the Christian Patriarchy Movement” in America that forms the popular base for the pro-natalist politicians. Given the tidal wave of T.R.A.P. laws (Targeting Abortion Regulation Providers) in various states, and the recent Supreme Court decisions that promise to sharply restrict accessibility of abortion, I think it is important for us to face the influence of the growing pro-natalist movement in the United States. At the same time, I think we need similar research and analysis of the antinatalist movement, both national and international, who oppose it. My review of Quiverfull is at femwords.blogspot.com.
