Paul Ehrlich – advocate of forced abortion and mass sterilisation given platform by Vatican
18 January 2017
One of the world’s leading advocates of reducing human population by abortion and contraception is to address a Vatican conference. Paul Ehrlich, author of the discredited book, The Population Bomb, will be speaking at the Vatican event, entitled “Biological Extinction”, which will be held from 27 February to 1 March, despite having expressed support for forced abortion and mass sterilisation.
The event will be jointly hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Science and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Both of these Vatican agencies have, since the election of Pope Francis, hosted some of the world’s leading population control advocates. Pope Francis has expressed himself “gratified” by the Sustainable Development Goals, which seek universal access to “sexual and reproductive health” by 2030. These terms are used to promote abortion and contraception worldwide.
Paul Ehrlich is an outspoken advocate of killing children in the womb. In a 2011 interview he suggested that it would be better for many girls to killed in the womb, by sex-selective abortion, than be born. In the same interview he supported the principles behind compulsory mass sterilisation and spoke positively about government control over human fertility. In his 1977 work Ecoscience he called for “compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion.” More recently he has said:
“The idea that every woman should have as many babies as she wants is to me exactly the same kind of idea as everybody ought to be permitted to throw as much of their garbage into their neighbour’s backyard as they want.”
Not surprisingly, given his expressions of support for forced abortion and mass sterilisation, Paul Ehrlich has also expressed anti-Catholic views. In a 2014 book, Hope on Earth: A Conversation, he has said that “the most unethical thing going on now” in religion is the Catholic Church’s “opposition to the use of contraception” of which the “main source” is “the Vatican and its bishops.” Furthermore he asserted that “the pope and many of the bishops are one of the truly evil, regressive forces on the planet”.
Ehrlich is best known for his discredited 1968 work The Population Bomb, in which he falsely predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in the 1970s, including 65 million Americans. He even asserted that it was possible that “England will not exist in the year 2000.” In reality, the population of the earth has doubled since 1968 without any of the catastrophic consequences predicted by Ehrlich occurring.
The PASS, under the presidency of Dr Margaret Archer, has consistently provided a platform for leading figures of the population control movement including Dr Jeffrey Sachs, the special adviser to outgoing UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Sachs, who considers killing unborn children to be a “cost-effective” way of reducing fertility rates, has participated in at least twelve events at the Vatican during the current pontificate. A pro-life activist, who questioned Dr Archer’s collaboration with Sachs, was told: “I am appointed by the Pope and responsible directly to him. I’m afraid that leaves you and your cohort out in the cold.”
Pope Francis has frequently spoken out against abortion but his continued support for the Sustainable Development Goals, and his failure to prevent Dr Archer using her position to provide platforms for those, such as Paul Ehrlich, who favour the killing of unborn children, make his words sound increasingly hollow.