Population -

The recent death of Paul Ehrlich (1932–2026), that master of anti-natalist propaganda, should cause us to consider the far-reaching consequences of his doctrine. As the author of The Population Bomb, (Note: all page references given below refer to this work) written in 1968, Ehrlich helped shape the disastrous demographic policies which many countries around the world are currently scrambling to reverse.

by Kathy Clubb

Among his predictions was the frightening spectre of overpopulation and world-wide famine to be experienced in the 1970s. By tying food availability to increasing population, Ehrlich successfully sowed enough fear into the academics of his day to ensure that his message would be taken up and disseminated into the unsuspecting community at large.

Contraception

Central to Ehrlich’s policies for population control was contraception; this was to be subsidised by the government and especially was to be made available to the poor.

He lauded the U.S. government’s multi-million-dollar funding of the supply and research of contraception during the 1960s, saying that, until that time, the government had spent as much on family-planning as it had on “rat control” (p. 85).

Perhaps the Freudian slip reveals the disdain Ehrlich had for human fertility.

He even suggested that some form of sterilisation agent could be added to the water or food supply, writing that “doses of the antidote would be carefully rationed by the government to produce the desired population size” (p. 131).

Ehrlich singled out the Catholic Church for its stance against contraception, mentioning the controversy elicited by the 1968 papal document, Humanae Vitae. He noted,

“The announcement of the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae was greeted by a great wave of protest from within the Catholic Church. This dissent was not limited to lay people; it existed throughout the clergy as far up into the hierarchy as the rank of cardinal.” (p. 136)

In The Population Bomb, he praised U.S. federal bills aimed at limiting families to two children and legalising abortion. Although the former thankfully never came to fruition, the latter was eventually to be realised with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision of 1973.

Abortion

Ehrlich deemed legal abortion a sign of progress in the fight to stop population growth. He praised state abortion laws — already one-third of the American states had legalised abortion by the time his book appeared (p. 89).

He was at pains to ensure that scientists indoctrinate the populace with the notion that a newly- conceived zygote is in no way the same as a fully-formed foetus. He said: “They must point out the biological absurdity of equating a zygote (the cell created by joining of sperm and egg) or fetus (unborn child) with a human being.” (p. 138)

By every metric, this goal has been achieved, perhaps beyond his wildest dreams. Readers may recall attempts by the UK Guardian newspaper in (October 18, 2022), to show what “a real pregnancy looks like” in the first trimester. An accompanying image shows white fibres with the caption, “Tissue from five weeks of pregnancy to nine weeks”:

By contrast to anti-natalist propaganda, a science-based Baby Life Begins diagram shows what a child at five weeks’ gestation actually looks like. (Click here for the video version)

Demographics and population control

Unsurprisingly, Ehrlich praised China’s attempts to halt the growth of its population. He lauded its one-child program, citing the “very strong social and political pressures also are exerted to limit
amilies to a maximum of two children…” (p. 206), while failing to mention that those “very strong pressures” include forced abortion — even in the third trimester — as well as forced sterilisation.

Ehrlich also praised the early efforts of Japan to curb its population through the legalisation of abortion, which he said was “a highly effective weapon in the armory of population control”. Through its anti-natalist agenda, Japan was able to halve its birth rate, but it later realised the demographic impact of a falling birth rate and tried to reverse course.

Ehrlich condemned this policy change, writing that “one can only hope that young Japanese couples have more sense than their government does” (p. 84). It would seem his confidence in Japan’s younger generation was not misplaced: a recent poll shows that 60 per cent of young Japanese are planning never to have children.

Like the Japanese authorities, many nations are discovering that their efforts to halt population growth were ill-advised. Even the ultra-progressive leaders at the United Nations acknowledge there is a problem with declining populations. Yet, thanks in large part to the efforts of Paul Ehrlich, they are unable to devise a way to encourage women to have more babies.

The ‘bright side’ of global famine

According to Paul Ehrlich and the scientists he cited, the optimum global population limit was around 1 billion citizens. He thought the earth possibly “had a chance” if a population of four to five billion could be maintained (p. 157).

Yet, for all his dire predictions of global famine, Ehrlich was remarkably upbeat about the consequences of such an event. In fact, he believed human tragedy of such a scale could actually serve his agenda. He wrote:

“Indeed, even if the worst happens, short of the end of civilization, efforts toward solving the population problem may not be in vain. Suppose we do not prevent massive famines. Suppose there are widespread plagues. Suppose a billion people perish. At least if we have called enough attention to the problem, we may be able to avoid a repetition of the whole mess. We must make it impossible for people to blame the calamity on too little food or technological failures or ‘acts of God’. They must at least face the essential cause of the problem — overpopulation.” (p. 158)

The role of academia

Ehrlich’s influence points to the role played by universities and other academic institutions in furthering anti-Christian agendas such as population control. Techno-Marxism’s “long march” through the institutions chose those platforms for good reason: it is difficult for spineless politicians and other policy-makers to dissent from apparently well-researched conclusions being thrust on them by the intelligentsia.

According to the pro-life author, “Alyosha” (a pseudonym), at his Between Two Ages Substack account,

“Real policy isn’t debated in X threads, YouTube clips of normie legacy news shouting matches, or in the campaign rhetoric of elections. It is formulated in dry academic literature, incubated in the classrooms of elite universities, and ultimately executed through the quiet, logistical restructuring of society.”

His conclusion reminds us that Ehrlich was not alone in his calls for population control: he was simply one of the loudest voices at a particular moment in history:

“The core objective of the transnational elite has remained remarkably consistent for over half a century: the scientific management, reduction, and absolute control of the human population.”

Our greatest asset

As most Christians acknowledge, a nation’s greatest asset is its children, especially those raised in stable households by both of their biological parents. While Ehrlich spread the lie that the reproductive act should be separated from its consequence — procreation — the future belongs to those who can integrate both, welcoming children as gifts from God and trusting in Him to provide for the needs of their families.

About the author
Kathy Clubb is an Australian mother and grandmother and home-educated her children for the
best part of 30 years. She has undertaken official pro-life work for 10 years, first in Tasmania, and
then in Victoria. In 2016, Kathy was part of an unsuccessful attempt to defeat Victoria’s abortion
exclusion-zones, which led to a constitutional challenge in the High Court of Australia in late 2018.
Her articles have also appeared at Family Life International, LifeSiteNews, Online Opinion, Caldron
Pool and Fidelity magazine.

There are a number of factors which have led to the decline in family size, yet there are still those who understand that becoming a parent has a personal benefit, as well as a societal one.

The U.S. fertility rate dropped to an all-time low in 2024, according to recent CDC data. Our country’s fertility rate now stands at fewer than 1.6 births per woman, well below the 2.1 children per woman needed to achieve population replacement. Effectively, this means that we’re unable to replace – let alone grow – our population through reproduction. Once the trend toward population shrinkage begins, it’s difficult to reverse.

The problem is global. Twenty-three nations are set to see their populations halve by 2100, according to the BBC. Population collapse could fundamentally reshape societies as they grapple with the impacts on economics, military readiness, healthcare, and culture. Human beings remain the most important resource for any civilization – and we’re on track to run out of them.

So why is the global population, by and large, not replacing itself? A lot of factors contribute to this trend, and, at the end of the day, it remains somewhat mysterious. But we can point to some concrete reasons, outlined in Ross Douthat’s book, “The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success.”

Douthat first notes the major economic and cultural shift from agrarian to industrial and urban living. This change from farm to factory to firm “made children less valuable as extra household laborers and made an intense educational investment in each child make far more economic sense – which in turn raised the costs of childrearing for the ambitious and successful.”

In the past, farms – and to some extent, factories – needed large numbers of laborers, who could be relatively uneducated, incentivizing farming families to have more kids. Today, our economy prizes automation and AI, with just a limited number of tech whizzes needed to keep the whole thing running.

The introduction of contraceptives is another factor Douthat raises. These made it possible for people to separate sexual activity from its natural procreative end, and that trend was only exacerbated by the sexual revolution of the 1960s in which sexuality was reframed as purely the pursuit of pleasure, rather than a life-giving act meant to take place within matrimony.

Feminism also urged women out of the home and away from childrearing, while the rise in divorce undercut the longevity of marriages, discouraging couples’ attempts to build large, stable families.

Additionally, the secularization of society removed religious support and motivation for extending the gift of life, while an increasingly comfortable and consumerist society encouraged self-centeredness and physical enjoyment over self-sacrifice. Further, since the sexual revolution, men and women struggle more to establish relationships with each other in the first place, even though most people still say they want relationships, marriage, and children, according to Douthat.

By some accounts, the declining birthrate is symptomatic of societal anxiety over finances. “People are marrying later and also worried about their ability to have the money, health insurance and other resources needed to raise children in a stable environment,” CBS reports. Yet financial constraints to childrearing seem more of a cultural perception problem than actual poverty, given that generations of our forebears successfully raised larger families on less wealth.

According to a Pew survey from 2024, finances aren’t the main reason people are avoiding procreation. For adults aged 18-49, the most common reason given is “I just don’t want to.” This is often because they want to focus on other things, like hobbies, interests, and careers. Interestingly, the third most common reason provided was “concerns about the state of the world.”

These responses suggest that the biggest determining factor in the birth dearth has to do with societal attitudes towards what is most important in life, and whether or not the world is headed in a positive direction. The ideologies most young Americans are formed in focus on personal fulfillment and career achievement over the sacrifice entailed in giving back to society (and one’s own offspring) through childrearing.

Further, since the breakdown of traditional ideas about religion and truth, the world has suffered from a crisis of meaning, epitomized by nihilist philosophers such as Nietzsche. Tragically, mainstream thought has largely turned away from belief in objective truth, and with it, the belief that life has inherent meaning and value.

Ultimately, our failure to reproduce stands as a sign of a profound cultural pessimism, a loss of faith in the value of life itself. Anyone who truly understands the value of life longs to share it through children. Anyone who doesn’t will see little point in reproducing.

Fortunately, some young people are rejecting this anti-life zeitgeist. In certain communities – especially devout religious ones – couples are choosing to have large families, finding greater joy and fulfillment in the process than any hobby or career could provide. [NOTE: In Hungary, the Orban government’s pro-natalist policies have had some measure of success in boosting the birth-rate. This is something that should be investigated by Western policy-makers. Read more here– Ed.]

Each new life is like the creation of a whole new world. With each child, parents give someone else the gift of experiencing the world and all that life has to offer. What could be more meaningful than that? It is in the act of giving that we also receive the most. The more we give, the more we are ourselves fulfilled – and there’s no greater gift to give than life. Many young parents today are realizing that parenthood is not only a boon to their children and society, but also a blessing to themselves. And the larger the family, the more abundant the gift.

by Walker Larson. The above article first appeared in Intellectual Takeout (Bloomington, Minnesota), and is reproduced by permission.

Tag: Population

The anti-natalist legacy of Paul Ehrlich