Population planning is a disturbing relic from a darker time in human history when abortion, sterilization, and compulsory one-child policies were thought to be the only means of preserving scarce resources and prevent environmental disaster.
It is also a driving factor in today’s politics.
The Population Connection Action Fund, which describes itself as “America’s voice for population stabilization,” has endorsed and funded exclusively Democratic candidates in some of the most competitive House races in the country.
The organization, which has advocated that families with more than two children should be “taxed to the hilt” for “irresponsible breeding,” has endorsed Randy Bryce in his Wisconsin House race, as well as Scott Wallace in Pennsylvania, Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, and Lauren Baer in her race on Florida’s Treasure Coast.
Granted, while those endorsements are unseemly, they aren’t necessarily damning to the candidates. The money from a group that praises “the benefits of childless and single child families,” however, ought to be.
Altogether the Population Connection Action Fund has written six figures worth of checks this election cycle. Wallace took two donations totaling $5,000. Baer accepted two payments of $3,500. Bryce and Spanberger both took $2,500.
The group has tried to clean up its image since the 1970s, when Paul Ehrlich, author of the discredited and debunked Population Bomb, kicked off the hysteria and helped found the organization. The Population Connection today mostly hands out condoms on college campuses and posts memes about affordable birth control these days. They don’t, for instance, operate sterilization clinics anymore, the way they used to.
While the activities have changed in the last few decades, the philosophy of the group seems to be the same. It is still an organization founded on the premise that the world would be better off with fewer people.
