Earlier this month, the Vatican held a conference on the family in Mexico. At the conference, Steven Mosher of the Population Research Institute said:
We are gathered here to celebrate the natural family and the new life that it brings into the world. At the same time, we must be aware that both the sanctity of life and the natural family will soon come under renewed attack from the new U.S. administration and the international organizations that it will fund and encourage.
There are two reasons for this. The first is the deepening world recession, which is disproportionately affecting the poor, and not just in less-developed countries. Wealthy elites–people who are already predisposed to blame the poor for their poverty–will be emboldened by the current crisis. As the unemployment rate goes up, they will seek to eliminate this growing “surplus population.” They will demand that the poor be aborted, sterilized and contracepted in even greater numbers. Never mind that it was not the poor of the world who brought down the U.S. financial system, or caused the housing crisis, but the wealthy and powerful.
The second reason for my concern is the incoming U.S. administration. I do not exaggerate when I say that President-elect Obama’s positions on life and family questions are the more radical than any his predecessors. Obama has opposed legislation that would mandate medical treatment for babies born alive after a failed abortion. He is in favor of the so-called Freedom of Choice Act, which would overturn every single pro-life protection that local, state, and federal authorities in the U.S. have managed to pass into law over the past three-and-a-half decades. His appointment of moderates to key financial and security positions has angered the Left wing of the Democratic party, and may make his adoption of aggressive pro-abortion, pro-population control policies more likely as he seeks to placate h is base.
And then came the Mexico City Policy executive order. And then Nancy Pelosi spoke on population-control-as-stimulus. Mosher unfortunately seems to know of what he speaks.