Book Review
Title: From Malthus to Mifepristone: A Primer on the Population Control Movement
Author: William Kay
Genre: Non-Fiction
Rating: ***
Review: From Malthus to Mifepristone key focus in this book is on eugenics. Eugenics is the science of improving a population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics. Eugenics was penned by the pen of Sir Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin. Galton’s revelation, illuminated with statistical rigour, was that the children of bankers and cabinet ministers are more likely to find fame and fortune that are the children of sharecroppers and ditch diggers.
The first major piece of legislation that spurred Malthus into action was the Berkshire Bread Act (1795), this act used parish levies to supplement the income of the poor. Elites represented by Malthus feared that this piece of legislation would undermine labour discipline. However, it has to be said that Malthus didn’t want English labourers to emigrate, he didn’t want them to stop having kids. Malthus simply didn’t want them breeding beyond the market demand for their labour. Kay also discusses the rise of eugenics, which peaked at the Second International Congress of Eugenics in New York City (1921).
Moving into the late 1880s Galton proposed mass sterilization to stem to rise of those he deemed inferior. In the USA, state legislatures began passing compulsory sterilization bills although these were blocked by courts until 1907 until Indiana introduced the world’s first compulsory sterilization law and was soon followed by thirty other states. The nucleus of American sterilization activism, the Eugenics Record Office (ERO), began in 1910. ERO’s Model Eugenical Sterilization Law stipulated forced sterilization for the feeble-minded, criminalistic, inebriate, and chronically unemployed. These methods of forced sterilization can be seen in The Third Reich’s sterilization law. Hitler’s chosen Reich Commissioner for Eugenics had earlier been chosen to lead the International Federation of Eugenics Organizations at a conference in New York. While much of these forced sterilization laws aren’t around today, much of today’s modern population control stems from these ideas and most types of population control boils down to abortion, IUD installation, and female sterilization.
Kay gives us quite a lot of history on population control and Malthus himself and his ideas, but I am not going to go over everything here but as mentioned previously the Berkshire Bread Act of 1795 provoked Malthus into writing the first edition of his Essay. Under this Act, local parish tax funds provided wage supplements for the landless rural poor. This system indirectly proved a windfall for some wealthier landowners as it sustained their employees during seasonal and economic downturns. Independent small farmers paid much of the tax but benefitted little as they rarely employed workers. Despite enjoying some potential indirect benefits, rural elites generally feared these welfare payments would undermine labour discipline. However, it is important to note that Malthus didn’t advocate contraception but rather he supported abstinence before marriage, late marriage; and fidelity during the marriage as a way to control the population.
Kay moves onto to talk about Eugenics, Social Darwinism, and Conservationism with a particular focus on Eugenics and Social Darwinism. He discusses in-depth the ideas of Darwin and his cousin Sir Francis Galton. Galton is an interesting person to look at because he concocted “eugenics” to refer to what he sometimes called a science, and sometimes a religion. Eugenicists sought to improve the human stock. Superior breeds should have more children; inferior breeds fewer. Galton encouraged caste sentiment and strong rural communities. To Galton, the life of the individual was trifling compared to the life of the race.
Kay then goes to talk about how these ideas changed and developed over time right up to the early 1910’s before he moves onto Anglo-American Population Control during the Fascist Era, which again is just another huge history lesson on the subjects rather than projecting new ideas and thoughts on the topic which continues into the next chapter Anglo-American Population Control Movement Thought Leaders 1947-1952. Despite this there are a few very interesting facts that appear for example: “Racism slipped into remission in the USA and UK during WWII. Only murmurs of eugenics remained audible on campus. White supremacism became unacceptable in polite society.”
For the next several chapters Kay regurgitates a history lesson of other people’s thoughts, ideas and beliefs that was very slow and a little difficult to read. It isn’t until we reach the chapter entitled Population Control in Imperial Japan and Occupied Japan 1925-1955 that I actually became interested purely because I adore Japanese history, culture and everything in between. Japan differs greatly from China who had implemented the one-child policy, however, in Japan a five-child family became the national standard. In the 1930s birth control advocates and abortion providers were repressed. During WWII, despite suffering three million fatalities and having millions of men overseas, Japan’s population did not decline. Right after the war, between 1945 and 1950, 12 million Japanese babies arrived. American occupiers then launched the next war in utero. They began this demographically, conducting five censuses in five years.
However, Japan was soon faced with overpopulation which can still be seen as an issue today. In 1949 Warren Thompson joined Japan’s occupation authorities to help coordinate the birth control campaign. Thompson oversaw an immediate fourfold increase in the number of articles on overpopulation in the Japanese press. After Prime Minister Yoshida met Thompson, his cabinet agreed that birth control was indeed the fundamental solution to Japanese overpopulation. Economic hardship became legitimate grounds for abortion. Twenty-seven different contraceptives were approved, and a law declaring Japan “extremely overpopulated” was passed.
Kay then goes on to talk about the methods and implementation of population control in different countries over various time periods which moved back into the regurgitation territory. By the time we reach Reimert Ravenholt: The Model of Modern Major Malthusian we are nearly halfway through the book.
Part two is focusing on The Modern Population Control Movement. Kay does take a slightly different turn here and discusses several different organisations that focus on population control like Having Kids. Having Kids is a small California-based society advocating for small family sizes. Their board is stacked with animal rights activists. Founder Courtney Dillard formerly sat on the steering committee of Oxford University’s Population Ethics and Policy Research Centre. Having Kids uses lobbying and litigation to prohibit “bad” parents from having kids. Another organisation mentioned is the Population Action International (PAI) began in 1965 as the Population Crisis Committee, an astonishingly influential and militantly Malthusian cabal. Presently PAI has annual budgets of $8 million and 34 employees. They aim to increase contraception use in the Global South. PAI’s favourite buzz-phrases are: preventing unwanted pregnancies, preventing unsafe abortions, family planning, and reproductive health.
This continues localised to the USA, but Kay goes on to discuss Global Population Control and Foreign Aid which is again another history lesson but with different organisation thrown in.
One chapter that is actually closely linked to eugenics is the Contraceptive Manufacturers in the Population Control Complex. You may not be aware of it, but the global contraception market is probably worth around $20 to $25 billion a year. The global condom industry (male and female) has annual sales of around $10 billion. Over 25 companies manufacture condoms, but in the West 3 firms (Church & Dwight Co., Inc., Reckitt Benckiser Group plc, and Ansell) dominate the market. Each of these 3 multinationals manufactures an array of products, reaping sales of over $1 billion annually. While they sell most of their condoms to individual consumers; they also sell billions of condoms to non-government organizations and government services contractors from within the population control movement. These firms also share a common interest with the population control movement in disseminating pro-condom, anti-natalist propaganda. The manufacturers of surgically-implanted and/or pharmaceutical contraceptives are far more dependent on the population control movement for sales. Across much of the developed Western world (at the movement’s behest) governments now fully or partially cover the costs of contraceptive purchases of low-income women. The US federal government has since 1970 subsidized the contraceptive purchases of low-income women.
In 2017 the US Health and Human Services’ Office of Population spent $286 million on contraception (including sterilization). This “pregnancy prevention” program routinely makes million-dollar grants to Planned Parenthood affiliates and independent family planning associations. Due to the Hyde Amendment, little of this money funds abortions; it almost entirely goes toward contraception. Many state governments have parallel programs, but the boon to the contraceptive industry has been government-mandated contraception insurance coverage. After discussing the contraception industry Kay then moves his attention to the abortion industry.
Currently, there are around 56 million abortions are performed annually around the world. Forty-nine million occur in the developing world. Seven million occur in the developed world. The global annual abortion rate is 35 per 1,000 women of reproductive age (15 to 44 years old). The abortion rate in the developing world is 37 per 1,000 women of reproductive age, compared to 27 per 1,000 in the developed world. In the Anglo-America states, as in North-Western Europe, abortion rates are in the 14 to 18 per 1,000 range. In the most recent year of record (2014) there were 926,200 surgical and pharmaceutical abortions performed in the USA. One in 5 US pregnancies ends in abortion. One in 4 American women has had an abortion. The US abortion rate is 14.6 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age. This rate is half what it was in the 1980s. The decline is attributable to increased contraception usage.
While these statistics are interesting and at times shocking it doesn’t lessen the increasing sense of boredom I feel as a reader, especially considering eugenics is a topic that I find particularly interesting. However, this wasn’t because the book was bad or poorly written quite the opposite, in truth, to me personally it reads more like a textbook rather than an analysis on the topics which is what I was expecting.
By the time we reach the conclusion I wasn’t surprised to see at least 10+ pages of footnotes considering the number of quotations and research that obviously was used throughout this book. In conclusion, I wouldn’t recommend this book for people looking for new ideas on eugenics but rather for those wishing to learn the basics of the eugenics movement and population control it would make a great learning aid.
Buy it here:
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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