During the 1960s and 70s, there was an increase government focus on population control. President Lyndon B. Johnson highlighted this “crisis” in a special message to the Congress titled “To Build the Peace.”

 

“The report of 100 experts assembled last year by the President’s Science Advisory Committee on the World Food Supply rings with grim clarity. Their message is clear: The world has entered a food-population crisis. Unless the rich and the poor nations join in a long-range, innovative effort unprecedented in human affairs, this crisis will reach disastrous proportions by the mid-1980’s.”

 

 

 

Inspiration for the belief in population control was accredited to Dr. Paul Ehrlich who was the author of a booked titled “The Population Bomb”. In his book he emphasizes the importance of population control and conservation of natural resources. Many Americans used this book as justification for population control practices across the United States; however, the target population according to Ehrlich is very different from the population targeted by the government and doctors during the 1970s.

 

“Within the US , there are a lot of people that believe the problem is that there are to many poor babies or too many black babies,. Its nonsense, it is the affluent and the well to do and the middle class people who are doing the consuming and polluting, and it is really our problem to start controlling our population growth first. By our I mean, the affluent whites in the United States and their equivalent in the Soviet Union, Japan, and western” Europe. 

So why target the Latina Population?

“In the early 20th century across the country, medical superintendents, legislators, and social reformers affiliated with an emerging eugenics movement joined forces to put sterilization laws on the books. Such legislation was motivated by crude theories of human heredity that posited the wholesale inheritance of traits associated with a panoply of feared conditions such as criminality, feeblemindedness, and sexual deviance. Many sterilization advocates viewed reproductive surgery as a necessary public health intervention that would protect society from deleterious genes and the social and economic costs of managing ‘degenerate stock’.”

– Researcher Alex Stern, author of the new book Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in America

Where did the support and government funding for these sterilizations come from?

WASHINGTON, March 16 — President Nixon signed a bill today creating a commission to evaluate national population growth, which he described as “explosive In every way as we head into the last third of this century.”

– Jack Rosenthal, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist

 

“Its generalities it was a great idea. It provided a service that people in the lower end of the economic strata simply did not have before. It was a great idea. It just shows you what can happen, the unintended consequences of an unregulated flow of money.” (27:45-27:54)

– Joseph Levin

 

And the effect…

“It happened to poor Latino People, It was that sense of these poor people were having too many babies.” (28:57-29:06)

 

 

 

“Dr. Qulligian… came out and gave us a little tour, and he said in a very proud that we had just got this big grant to see how low they cut the birthrate of the negro and Mexican population. We were just floored!” (29:45-30:11)

– Dr. Karen Benker

 

 

“When you talk about family planning back in the 70s, it was a really big deal and there were lots of lobby interest and non profit organization that wanted to make sure that we had population under control.” (26:19-26:31)

– Joseph Levin, Civil Rights Attorney

 

 

 

“Until there came a time that family planning came in. They’d warn every woman, “Take care of it! Don’t have so many.” (27:06-27:13)