Abstract

PIP: The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) is a showdown between those who do and those who do not believe in the sacredness of human life. Believing in the sacred nature of human life means a belief in the right to marry and to choose freely the number of children to have unlike the situation in China, for example, where the government believes it has a right to dictate the number of children allowed. Whereas the Pope is a champion of the sacredness of life, the Director of the UN Fund for Population Activities, Dr. Nafis Sadik, who is Secretary-General of the ICPD, is not. The ICPD agenda couches a recipe for human misery in noble-sounding phrases. This recipe is based on a view of people existing to serve the economic and development plans of a state and on the notion that development in third world countries depends on a curtailment of population growth. In fact, Africa, for example, is underpopulated, and the idea of the population explosion has been a lie from its inception. There is no correlation between population density and development; development has occurred in dense areas like Hong Kong and Japan and in sparse countries like Canada and Australia. The environmental degradation of air and water pollution is a local rather than a global problem, is temporary rather than permanent, and is caused by the selfish action of industries and governments. The hole in the ozone layer may have always been there, acid rain is a natural process caused by trees creating the acidic soil conditions they need to thrive, and global warming cannot be a serious concern when scientists were issuing predictions of global cooling just 20 years ago. The ICPD is a potential disaster for the human race]