The story has outraged thousands on either side of the political aisle. Moe, who suffers from schizophrenia and bipolar mood disorder, was being treated in a Massachusetts hospital. When she became pregnant, doctors were purportedly concerned that her medications could harm the unborn child. So they recommended an abortion.

The problem is, Moe is a Catholic, who has expressed vocal opposition to abortion.

Since Moe planned to keep her baby, her parents, in conjunction with the doctors, filed a petition with the local courts, which would give them the power to force her to get an abortion.

Incredibly, Massachusetts justice Christina Harms not only granted the petition, she went a step further. She told Moe’s parents that it didn’t matter how they got Moe to have the abortion, even if it meant she had to be “coaxed,   bribed, or even enticed … by ruse.” Not only this, but she directed that whatever medical facility performed the   abortion go ahead and sterilize Moe … without her permission. According to recently released court documents, Harms simply asserted that “if Moe were competent, she ‘would not choose to be delusional,’ and therefore would opt for an abortion in order to benefit from medication that otherwise could not be administered due to its effect on the fetus.”

In other words, Justice Harms didn’t just assume that she knew what Moe was thinking. She assumed that she knew what Moe would be thinking if she wasn’t subject to a mental dysfunction. And on that basis, she was willing to not only mandate the killing of Moe’s unborn child, but the destruction of Moe’s reproductive system.

Fortunately for Moe (and her baby), the decision caused an uproar … and was overturned by the state appeals court.   Appellate Justice Andrew Grainger openly questioned Harm’s reasoning pointing out that “no party requested this measure, none of the attendant procedural requirements has been met, and the judge appears to have simply produced the requirement out of thin air.”

Interested parties across the state also chimed in on the situation, including Democratic state senator Susan Fargo, who told the Boston Herald that, “it bothers me as a woman, that a woman can’t make a decision about her body.” Advocates for the mentally ill also went on the record, including Elyn Saks of USC, who said that “simply having a diagnosis of schizophrenia or any other mental illness is not a basis for sterilization in and of itself. It’s just sheer   prejudice.”

Saks has a special interest in this case: she lives with schizophrenia herself.

The most positive side to this story may, in fact, be the extent of the controversy it has garnered. There was a time in this country, not very long ago, when mandating that a mentally ill woman be subjected to an involuntary abortion/sterilization would scarcely have raised an eyebrow. After all, our own Margaret Sanger was one of the world’s original eugenicists, recommending forced sterilizations for the improvement of the human species, in order to “cut down production of its least desirable members.” Forced sterilization was regularly practiced on racial minorities and those considered mentally unfit until embarrassingly recently (the last known forced sterilization in the United States took place in 1981).

We have made such leaps and bounds in this country when it comes to overall racial attitudes as well as attitudes towards those with disabilities. But cases like this one should serve as a   warning: not all of the old bigotry and fear are gone. We must remain vigilant until these abhorrent practices are firmly and irrevocably buried in the past.

According to on-the-ground reports obtained by the Population Research Institute, elements in the Keralan government are attempting to pass what they innocuously call “The Women’s Code Bill.”  This bill, if passed, would create a two-child policy in the state of Kerala, in an attempt to curb India’s “overpopulation” problem.

Like other restrictive birth policies around the world, the Keralan policy would carry criminal penalties.  For instance, if a couple were to become expectant with an over-quota child, the father could face three months of imprisonment, or a fine of 10,000 rupees (about $200 …  an astronomical sum for lower-class Indians).  People or associations who speak out against the program could be gagged with huge fines or prison sentences.

And, just like China’s one-child policy, the government would refuse to acknowledge the existence of over-quota children, denying them basic rights and state benefits.

The bill would also encourage abortions as a way for families to remain under-quota.  Free abortions would be available in state hospitals.  In addition, free contraceptives would be available to married couples.  The bill also takes the further step of allowing no-court divorce: essentially it would provide for the institution of a “marriage officer” who would have the power to grant divorces outside of Kerala’s legal infrastructure … if both parties were willing.  The reason for this?  An explicit desire to “streamline” the divorce process and eliminate backlog in Keralan divorce courts.

The net effect of all this seems to be a systematic and deliberate assault on traditional Indian family structures and values, all for the purpose of disrupting what Keralans have been doing for centuries: having large families.

In addition to this, this two-child policy is being proposed in the face of hard demographic data, data that clearly shows that shows that Kerala is experiencing the same birth rate decline and population aging that is afflicting the rest of the world.  In other words, even if overpopulation were a problem, the “problem” would be quickly correcting itself on its own, without the need for forceful, abusive policies.

But what really worries population control advocates around the world is that the Catholic Church has set up its own social agenda in Kerala.  These Church policies make a point to extend benefits like education, health care, and other benefits to larger families.

Most Catholics see these policies as merely an extension of the Church’s existing philosophy on the primacy of the family and the value of children. But many radical population control groups have tried to frame it as a sort of “population war,” with the Keralan Catholic hierarchy playing the part of the irresponsible villain.  According to a recent article in Population Matters, the Church in Kerala is “worried about its dwindling numbers,” and as a result is “exhorting its flock to have more children.”

“In the southern state of Kerala,” the article continues, “where Catholics have long been a large, important minority, church authorities believe the state’s overall Christian population could drop to 17 percent this year, down from 19.5 percent in 1991. While they don’t have precise numbers for the Catholic population, they believe it is also dropping sharply.”

Never mind that the Catholic Church is the world’s original charitable institution, so it has always been in the business of giving out free healthcare, food, shelter, and education.  Giving such aid to larger families is nothing new.  Population Matters also makes much about the fact that some of these charities give cash benefits to large families, but so what?  Large families have more mouths to feed … the money is not social engineering.  It just makes sense.

And furthermore, never mind that even this article is forced to admit that these policies are not universal across the region.  Some Indian Catholic institutions base their charitable giving on the number of children.  Some don’t.  It just depends.

The thing is, if there’s anything we’ve learned at PRI, it’s this: people who dehumanize other people tend to assume that everyone thinks the same way.  In other words: to many, human population is nothing better than a scourge on the planet at worst, and a tool to be manipulated at best.  Naturally, they figure that every other social institution thinks this way.

But the fact of the matter is that the Catholic Church sees each human as individual and unique.  It sees each person as valuable for their own sake, and it sees each human fertility decision as intensely private and individuated.  And as such, the Catholic Church has always been in the business of helping people live better lives.  Sometimes helping people live better lives means providing them with free health care or education. Sometimes it means giving them cash bonuses to help them feed their families.

And sometimes, it means leaving people alone to make their fertility decisions in the privacy of their bedrooms.  The Keralan government could stand to learn something from the Catholic Church.

Take, for instance, the UN’s latest initiative, aimed at the world’s youth. The International Year of Youth was initiated by the United Nations at the end of last year, and officially began on August 12, 2010. According to the UN, the Year was initiated for the purposes of promoting “peace, freedom, progress and solidarity towards the promotion of youth development and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.”

And the year will be started off with a conference in Mexico City, from August 24th-27th, called the World Youth Conference.

Hmmm. This conference, and its related International Year of Youth, bear an uncanny resemblance to a certain tradition that the Catholic Church has been practicing since 1986: World Youth Day.

World Youth Day, started by Pope John Paul II, was designed to be an event where youth from all over the world could come together and celebrate their Catholic identity. Like so much of Pope John Paul II’s pontificate, the emphasis was on solidarity and a sense of Catholic unity. It was this unity that brought legions of youth together, from disparate backgrounds and widely separate countries, and it was this sense of unity that strengthened them to be faithful Catholics in an often hostile world. Young people leave World Youth Day invigorated, encouraged, and full of love of their faith, and for their fellow humans.

The United Nations has obviously seen the effectiveness of having such a powerful youth focus, and it would seem that the events of the International Year of Youth, particularly this World Youth Conference, were inspired directly by the Catholic event.

However, unlike World Youth Day, the UN’s approach is a false one, one that violates the very idea of a youth-centered event.

Here’s why. The Catholic event is a natural gathering, voluntarily attended by hundreds of thousands of youth who are filled, to varying degrees, with the same powerful faith. They come, uncajoled, unpaid, on their own initiative, out of the desire for grace and solidarity. Throughout the years, the event has never had fewer than 300,000 attendees; and has occasionally reached numbers as high as 4 million.

The UN event, on the other hand, is based around vague, secular goals, and represents an agenda-driven attempt to influence youth on a massive scale. Lacking the central fire of shared religious experience, values, and a sense of hope, the International Year of Youth can never hope to achieve the same grassroots effect so beautifully realized by World Youth Day.

One has only to go as far as the event’s literature to see why. The Youth Conference’s “Concept Note,” released by the Mexican embassy, calls the conference a “meeting point” where governments can “identify priorities of action for youth to be dealt with on the international development agenda beyond the Millennium Goals.” The “Millennium Goals” referred to here are the famous (or infamous) United Nations Millennium Development Goals, which were adopted in 2001 and have driven much of UN policy since then. Included in these goals is the ostensible desire to “improve maternal health,” which inevitably translates into addressing things like the “contraceptive prevalence rate” and the “unmet need for family planning.”

So in other words, the goal of the Youth Conference is primarily is a way for the United Nations to make its voice heard to a captive audience of youth. The aforementioned “concept note” lays out an agenda that is strictly one of goals and indoctrination topics, openly stating that the UN event intends to “promote the establishment of a mechanism that will provide specific follow-up for the youth agenda in the United Nations System.”

Mechanism? Specific follow-up? Youth agenda? This literature makes it obvious that the United Nations has no intention of allowing youth a place to live freely and flourish. Rather, it has specific talking points, and it won’t leave until those points are sufficiently lodged in the brains of impressionable youth. And, once again, those talking points represent an unending message of sexual promiscuity, abortion, population control and contraception: to an audience of even younger listeners.

As PRI’s president Steven Mosher points out, the UN’s connection to World Youth Day is superficial only. This is especially true since, instead of serving as a challenge to the youth of today, it will act as precisely the opposite: an enabler of their basest desires. “Instead of being urged to contribute to society,” Mosher says, “they will be urged to follow their own basest instincts, instead of being urged to self control they will be encouraged to let it all hang out. And instead of youth coming at their own expense great distances to be uplifted by the the Mass and the presence of the Pope, they will be paid participants who, much like the practitioners of the world’s oldest profession, will be dancing on someone else’s dime. Namely, yours and mine.”

This is not solidarity. It is indoctrination. And at the end of the day, it will be done with our tax dollars.

I have long believed that Connelly is wrong in opposing children to art.  So I was pleasantly surprised, recently, to see my view validated by Frank Cottrell Boyce, a successful British screenwriter, novelist and actor.  Boyce’s article, entitled “The Parent Trap: Art After Children” and appearing in Britain’s Guardian, makes the case that children, far from inhibiting or destroying an artist’s creativity, are actually a creative boon.  He has this to say about fatherhood and art:

What is “me”, if not the sum of all my relationships and obligations? A customer, that’s what. The more you give, the more you are. Think of Chekhov, with his patients and his crowds of dependent relatives, whose living room became such a public space that he had to put up no smoking signs. His advice to young writers was “travel third class”. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s was to “buy carrots and turnips” …

There’s a belief that to do great work you need tranquility and control, that the pram is cluttering up the hallway; life needs to be neat and tidy. This isn’t the case. Tranquility and control provide the best conditions for completing the work you imagined. But surely the real trick is to produce the work that you never imagined. The great creative moments in our history are almost all stories of distraction and daydreaming — Archimedes in the bath, Einstein dreaming of riding a sunbeam — of alert minds open to the grace of chaos.

I totally agree with this wonderfully articulated sentiment.  Children are distractions from creative work, as Boyce recognizes, but they are emphatically the right type of distractions.  Children see things that we cannot see, they remind us of truths and insights that we long ago forgot.  And they remind us that the greatest insights in the world were discovered not while ponderously meditating, but while delighting in the simple pleasures and pains of life.

In fact, I would go even farther than Boyce.  Being a father of two young boys myself, I believe that children actually increase one’s productivity in all sense of the word.  I have a powerful memory of the moment my older son was born.  He came into this world, tiny and rosy-pink, by caesarian section.  As I held him, swaddled tightly to about the size of a nerf football, I remember staring into his screwed-shut eyes and thinking: “It’s official.  It’s time for me to grow up.”

I was seized by a heady combination of feelings.  There was an overwhelming sense of wonder conjoined with a steely determination to care for this little bundle of life as best as I could.  I knew that if I failed to man up, there would be no one to blame but myself.  And I also knew that, if I didn’t start accomplishing my life goals now, I never would.

I am certain that every new father worth his salt has had a similar experience.

Children are a great blessing to grown-ups not simply because of the joy, the wonder, and the incredible privilege of caring for a young soul that they provide.  Children are also a blessing because they are a kind of living alarm clock, telling us that it is time to wake up and seize the day.  The chain of generations has added another link, the cycle of life has come round again, and it is time to get busy.  They remind us, just by being there, that time is irrevocably passing by—time that we can never get back again.

By reminding us that we are mortal, children concentrate the mind, and galvanize us to accomplish the tasks that are set before us.  Because if we don’t have all the time in the world, how are we going to spend the time we do have?

This is why children are not merely a boon to creativity, they are, in many ways, a boon to life itself.  The dystopia portrayed in the film Children of Men is correct in this, that a world without children is a world without a reason to live.  Children are not just the next generation, they are, in many ways, the life-blood of this generation.  The fact that a child is born and grows so quickly in maturity and needs, demands a refocusing of ourselves and our energies.  It demands that we make decisions about what is really important to us.   The responsibility of raising children translates easily into more discipline, more focus, and more of a determination to succeed in what we do.

In other words, children don’t just help us be creative or productive.  In many cases, they are the very reason we succeed at all.

Up to now, attempts to ban federal funding of abortion have been piecemeal, funding bans limited in scope and duration that only address part of the problem. Most of this legislation doesn’t consist of standalone bills at all, but of brief language added to funding bills by pro-life members of Congress. These additions, known as “riders,” simply amend the bill to exclude any funding of abortions in a particular budget, say, the foreign aid budget. Each year when these appropriations bills come before the Congress these “riders” need to be added, and the battle fought once again. The outcome is never certain, and over the first two years of the Obama presidency, the outcome has not always favored the pro-life cause. For example, Reps. Todd Tiahrt and Lincoln Davis attempted to amend the Financial Services Appropriations bill to restore the DC abortion funding ban—and their amendment was rejected.

If passed, the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” would represent a giant leap forward for the pro-life movement. The bill would eliminate the need for such “riders” forever, putting in place a permanent, across-the-board ban on federal funding of abortion. No longer would pro-life amendments be subject to the shifting composition of the Congress, held hostage by pro-abortion politicians, or bypassed in omnibus bills. The federal spending in the area of health, foreign aid, and defense would be governed by a clear and simple directive: not one penny of these funds can be used to procure or pay for an elective abortion.

This would be a powerful step forward for the pro-life movement and one which, Congressman Smith and his pro-life colleagues, the majority of the American people are firmly behind. According to Smith, every “reputable poll” shows that large majorities of Americans “want no complicity whatsoever in paying for the evil of abortion.” This is why, he says, the “patchwork of policies” that currently exist to block abortion funding is not enough, in the long term, and reminds the public that it is “time for a single government-wide policy against funding for elective abortion.”

The passage of the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” Smith continues, would constitute formal recognition by the federal government that “abortion is lethal violence against children and exploitation of women,” not to mention a repudiation of the strident voices of a virulently pro-abortion minority. At the time of this article’s writing, the bill, called the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,”already had 73 co-sponsors, including 6 Democrats.

“Our research into abortion abuses both at home and abroad,” says Steven Mosher, PRI’s president, “provides compelling evidence of the need for such legislation. The American people oppose funding abortion with their tax dollars, yet pro-abortion leaders in Washington routinely ignore their moral and ethical concerns. It is high time that this tyranny of the minority, as it might be called, be stopped.”

One of the items on the OAS’s agenda for that meeting was to push a homosexual viewpoint on sexual orientation and make tolerance of that view “binding” through the speedy passage of authoritative resolutions.  With the prominent backing of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the OAS was able to prioritize LBGT issues and push them to the forefront for a vote.

The end result was typical: pro-homosexual resolutions were strong-armed through the proceedings with no formal debate and no support in the very countries that are purported to need them.  Now, homosexual groups are using the passage of these resolutions as a spring-board to launch campaigns and marches in Lima.  Their battle flag, as it were, is a statement purportedly released by foreign embassies (and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV / AIDS).  This statement has the embassies of Belgium,  Australia, Netherlands, the UK, Czech Republic, Sweden, France, and the United States in formal support of the homosexual marches:

On the occasion of the celebration of Gay Pride this year in Peru, we express our support and solidarity with the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Peru.

We support the right of these communities to use this traditional occasion to go together peacefully and legally with the aim of expressing their desire to end the silence surrounding those specific issues that affect them . . .

The policies of our governments in this area are consistent with the principles set out in Resolution 2600 of the Organization of American States (OAS) on “Human Rights, sexual orientation and gender identity” approved June 8, 2010.

We congratulate the Peruvian government for adopting this resolution. . . ”

A US embassy source in Lima told PRI that the statement is indeed real, and was reportedly drafted by the British Embassy.  As such, it represents an act of bald partisanship and, as Polo said in a recent LifeSiteNews article, a sort of residual colonialism.

“These same countries wouldn’t accept our Peruvian embassy even expressing opinions regarding the laws in the United States, France, or the United Kingdom, let alone proposing to change them or pressuring them through local groups,” Polo said.

The indictment is clear: the role of a foreign embassy is solely to be a “diplomatic mission”—not to meddle in internal affairs or promote partisan activity.  To do so is not only to overstep the role of an embassy, but it is, in effect, to practice a form of cultural colonialism.

The obvious short-term goal of this, of course, is to give homosexual activists in Peru some measure of credibility.  In a country that is solidly Catholic and has strong pro-family leanings, they are in dire need of it.   The Peruvian people have weathered repeated attempts by Westerners to give them abortion, contraception and feminism, but have also been battered by one of the worst population control campaigns in recent history.  They have little time or patience for a campaign that flies so hard in the face of their values and priorities.

In light of this, this campaign seems not only out-of-place, it seems desperate.  The handful of homosexual activists behind this ill-fated endeavor should pack up shop and go home, and stop embarrassing themselves.

This second video follows up on the first installment in the series, available here. This latest video, just over two minutes long, deftly refutes the common misconception that world population is exploding, demonstrating how fertility rates all over the world are shrinking.

“No one who views this video will ever be taken in by the myth of overpopulation again,” says Steven Mosher, PRI’s president.

“The videos also have an accompanying web site: www.overpopulationisamyth.com, which presents the facts behind the video in a little more detail,” says PRI’s Joseph Powell, who developed the project and did most of the animating. “This site, while factual, still remains accessible, with links to scientific sources.”

“We’re very excited about this site,” explains Joel Bockrath, PRI’s Vice President for Operations. “All of our science is backed up by credible sources and downloadable. We think this could be a valuable resource for students and teachers especially, who may feel alone defending a sometimes unpopular position.”

My wife has a sort of faux-award that she occasionally bestows, called the “Golden Eyeball Award.” It is presented to people who, for some reason or another, inexplicably miss seeing something that is sitting directly in front of them.

If anyone deserves this award this year, it is some members of our American media community, who can consistently be counted on to miss the glaringly obvious when it comes to the annual March for Life.  Of course, ignoring the largest continuing protest in American history has become the status quo for most news sources, but this year many seemed to go out of their way to get things wrong.

Take, for instance, Rick Sanchez of CNN (who, to his credit, actually reported on the March).  Sanchez was inexplicably unsure as to who was more numerous at the March: pro-lifers or pro-choicers.  In a YouTube clip since made infamous by bloggers, Sanchez squints ceremoniously at his monitor while insisting that, “as you might imagine, there are both sides being represented today.”  As images of thousands of pro-life protesters stream across the screen right in front of him, he reassuring his viewers that “we’re going to keep an eye on these for you because we want to make sure we report it fairly and squarely” (in the end, he deduces that there seem to be more pro-lifers.  Good work, Sherlock).

As someone who attended the March personally, I know from experience that pro-choice protesters are rare to nonexistent.  While sources disagree on the number of pro-life attendees, we all agree that there are more of us than whatever handful of pro-choice protesters bother to show up to counter us.

The media also seemed obsessed this year with proving that the pro-life movement was aging ungracefully, and that it was not attracting young people, especially women, to its ranks.  According to Krista Gesaman of Newsweek, there were few young women to be found at the March, since most of them are more inclined to stay home and blog.

“Where are the young, vibrant women supporting their pro-life or pro-choice positions?” she asks. “Likely, they’re at home.” She goes on to quote a DC police department official as stating that “a majority of the participants are in their 60s and were the original pioneers either for or against the case.”

My advice to Krista?  Get out of your office and out onto the streets of DC.  The truth may surprise you.

For her part, our reliably antagonistic foe Cristina Page goes a step further.  In a piece picked up the Huffington Post she says that the anniversary of Roe v. Wade is “yet another day to observe the pro-life movement’s riveting mid-life crisis.”  Incredibly, she says that the pro-life establishment’s “relentless allegiance to ‘ideals’” has led to a “newly emergent, progressive pro-lifer,” who is, somehow, “a far more threatening development to the traditional pro-life establishment than anything NARAL or Planned Parenthood could have dreamed up.”  This emerging pro-lifer, according to Page, has far more in common with the pro-abortion left than he/she has with the traditional pro-life establishment.  Morals and values, she insists, are a game for the oldsters.   ;And the oldsters are dying out.

Not only are these assumptions deeply insulting, they just aren’t true.  Those who actually attend the March (like me, and countless other bloggers and news writers), have all noticed the same trend: the March is getting younger every year.

Not only that, but it is growing in size, and its ethnic diversity is increasing.  In fact, the pro-life movement as a whole has all the appearances of a movement that is gaining momentum, not losing it.  Our leaders also seem to be having smashing success in communicating their values to the younger generation, because the younger generation is turning out in droves (click here to see PRI’s 2008 YouTube video on this very topic).

And why shouldn’t this movement speak to the young?  Today’s youth are the survivors, the ones who made it past the slaughter.  They are the lucky ones.  For people like Cristina Page, born while abortion was illegal, the issue is about women’s rights and reproductive health.  For the young, it is about life and death.

So long as there is a movement that advocates the killing of its young, it will inevitably lose in the long run.  The pro-life effort is solid because it is self-sustaining-while the pro-choice movement is not.  When people like Cristina Page accuse us of being old or out-of-touch, this speaks more to their own jaundiced ideologies than anything else.  When when a movement has no future and no hope, it’s hard to see past the despair and the darkness.

The pro-choice movement is akin to the dwarfs in C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle-so attached to their own cynicism that they absolutely refuse to be “taken in.”  Even by the facts.

That is, according to the group Catholics for Choice, who blithely takes a strong stand on abortion and contraception-namely, in favor of them.

They even have a web site devoted exclusively to the use of the condom, appropriately named condoms4life.com.  This site states its mission as an “unprecedented worldwide public education effort to raise public awareness about the devastating effect of the bishops’ ban on condoms.”  This mission is carried out by press releases (with headlines like “The Pope Is Wrong on Condoms”), radio ads (explaining away “myths” about condoms), and full-size posters, one of them complete with an amorous gay couple.  The image is underscored with the words: “We believe in God.  We believe that sex is sacred.  We believe in caring for each other.  We believe in using condoms.”

Not far away in the land of cyberspace is another website; this time, for the supposedly Catholic group “Catholics United.”  This group has officially endorsed the Senate health care bill, abortion and all, calling it a “necessary step” toward “reform that truly meets the needs of the uninsured.”  Catholics United also has its sub-creation: Catholics for Health Care Reform.  This “Catholic” group touts ads like this one, which resort to sloppy proportionalism in trying to justify state-sponsored abortion coverage (health care reform is “pro-life” because more money is going to pregnant mothers and children than to abortions.  Right).

Add groups like Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, and others who adamantly support health care reform, and one gets an unfortunate cross-section of a disturbing number of America’s supposedly Catholic groups.  Based on what groups like these teach, one would almost think that the Catholic Church’s official position on abortion and artificial birth control was the same as that of the American pro-choice lobby.

The last time I checked, the Catholic Church didn’t promote the use of contraception-not even a little bit.  In fact, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says specifically that “legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do not justify recourse to morally unacceptable means [of birth regulation] (for example, direct sterilization or contraception)” (CCC 2399).

The Church also says, quite clearly, that abortion is always evil.  “Since the first century,” says the Catechism, “the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law.” (CCC 2271)

If American groups wish to endorse abortion, contraception, or any other issue that the Catholic Church holds as morally wrong, they are free to do so.  It is a free country.  However, they need to recognize that by doing so, they are no longer truthfully representing Church teaching and need to distance themselves from the label of “Catholic.”

In other words, these “Catholic” groups are not really Catholic at all.  Rather, they are groups that have appropriated the Catholic name, with the moral authority and prestige attached to it, and subverted it to a distinctly un-Catholic agenda.  Even the funding sources for these groups betray their real background:  Catholics for Choice, for example, has reportedly received money from such organizations as the Playboy Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, in addition to receiving its first office space as a donation from Planned Parenthood.  Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good has known financial ties with left-wing radical George Soros.  These are organizations and people whose opposition to Church teaching is well-documented and obvious.

And yet, as obvious as this basic conclusion seems, pointing it out to these groups is treated like nothing short of a hate crime.  For instance, Deal Hudson, head of the website InsideCatholic.com, straightforwardly told Catholics United and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good that they were “fake Catholic groups.”  In December Hudson wrote that “the same fake Catholic groups that helped President Barack Obama get elected, have rallied to the cause of the health-care bill, abortion funding and all . . . Catholic teaching explicitly rejects such self-justifying tactics (see Veritatis Splendor 75), and the U.S. bishops have been unwavering on this point.”

For pointing out the obvious, Hudson was summarily crucified in the press and by Catholics United.  Chris Korzen, executive director of Catholics United, shot back that “abortion is legal in the United States, and there’s not much either Catholics United or Deal Hudson can do to change that.” He promptly went on to demolish his own Catholic credibility by insisting that his organization was neither “pro-abortion rights or anti-abortion rights,” but “pro-common ground.”

Bryan Cones of U.S. Catholic Magazine wrote indignantly that “you don’t have to limit yourself to what is finally the clumsiest of moral arguments and say that abortion alone is the make-or-break issue for Catholics when it comes to health care reform,” and that even though abortion was evil, “there is plenty of evidence that making abortion illegal actually does little to prevent it.”

None of these precarious arguments touch on the main point at stake here: which is that Catholic groups need to hold to the rigorous ethics regarding life that the Church has held so dear for so many centuries.  Moral equivocations aside, the Catholic Church’s teachings on these matters are quite direct.  Groups that call themselves Catholic should square up, or stop the masquerade.  It doesn’t do anyone any good.

This couldn’t have been what OPT expected when it tried to capitalize on the obsession of leftist politicians with global warming.  But their press release, put out in September of this year, struck many as more than a little self-serving.  Perhaps it was that it hailed contraception as, of all things, “the latest in green technology.”  Or perhaps it was the OPT funded the very study by the London School of Economics that it later hyped in its press release.  Then there was the study itself, which made the rather strange claim that, “considered purely as a method of reducing future CO2 emissions, family planning is more cost-effective than leading low-carbon technologies.”

The report concluded by claiming that “the population issue must now be added into the negotiations for the Copenhagen climate change summit in December.”  Although the authors stopped short of asserting, as Al Gore did, that babies cause global warming, they came close.  Readers are left with the impression that fewer breathing humans equal a greener, healthier planet.  We’ve never heard that one before.

A visit to OPT’s prehistoric web site is like a trip back in time. “By reversing population growth,” OPT says, “we’d be taking another green step towards environmental survival for all.”  There is no mention that Europe is dying.

The site even has a “Stop At Two” pledge, where environmental devotees can make a promise to reverse population growth.  One wonders whether any of OPT’s aging membership are still young enough to reproduce.

The intriguing thing about OPT’s most recent pitch for mass population control—disguised as a scientific study—is the reaction it garnered among the public.  One might expect at least some denizens of the Left to enthusiastically second its program, or at least nod approvingly.

Instead, the reaction was muted and, well, uncomfortable.

Austen Ivereigh of America Magazine , for instance, encountered OPT at London’s “Battle of Ideas” festival in early November. Ivereigh reminds us that “doom-mongers always ignore the elasticity of economic productivity,” and contends that “the ecological crisis will be solved by meeting the needs of the poor, not chasing them off the planet.”

Even Ellie Lee, a self-proclaimed member of the pro-choice movement, takes issue with the “moral imperative” laid down by the OPT.  “Campaign groups such as the Optimum Population Trust,” she writes on the Times Online, “seek to persuade us that we should plan, found and grow our families according to a moral imperative far more pressing than what we may feel is right for us.”

Lee is (rightly) miffed at the idea that OPT sees itself as a referee on who can have children, and when. “This is the attempt to manipulate the feelings and decisions of women all over the world,” she writes, “as they negotiate their way through the profoundly important process of making decisions about when to start a family.”

Brendan O’Neill, writing for Spiked! , thinks likewise.  He describes an invitation-only OPT conference that he attended earlier this year, quipping that the affair was “hideously white.”  There is something “unavoidably spooky,” he notes, about people who spend all their time “fretting about overpopulation.”

“You can bet,” he continues, “that when these well-to-do worriers about the human plague on the planet talk about burdensome people causing ‘congestion, overcrowding and loss of green space’ . . . they aren’t talking about themselves, or their friends, or their neighbors, or their mistresses; they’re talking about ‘them’. You know ‘them’! The breeders, the not-sufficiently-educated, the dwellers of teeming cities, not only in Africa and Asia but in Europe and America too.”

This apt observation shines a harsh light on the innate “creep factor” of organizations like OPT.  Their members, when viewed en masse, look less like crusading saviors of the earth, and more like angry, bigoted, pampered ideologues.  Their creed has not aged well.

Regrettably, gatherings of these types of crazy people are not limited to country clubs and richly-catered seminars.  Population obsession is alive and well in men like John P. Holdren, President Obama’s “Science Czar.”  PRI has reported on Holdren’s extremism in the past, and suffice it to say he has shown evidence of being yet another of these “well-to-do worriers.”  Unfortunately, he now has the President’s ear, as well.

However, culturally, population control is beginning to make the Western public uncomfortable.  While many still believe the world to be overrun with humans, the proposed “solutions” to this so-called “problem” are even more unthinkable.  Men like John P. Holdren, and the leaders at OPT, would do well to remember this.

As far as population control goes, in the words of a sixties song, the times, they are a-changin’