ACT Right to Life Association N E W S L E T T E R

Winter (June - August) 1998

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Book Reviews

THE BIG LIE AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT
A Response to the Pro-Abortion Propaganda
by Leroy Behnke
(Our Sunday Visitor, 1994,  38pp, RRP $2.95)

This is the sort of booklet all pro-life people should have copies of  (note the plural); it's cheap. easily read and provides answers to the slogans that pro-abortion people rattle off.  There are about 35 slogans in use by the "pro-choice" lobby group and the booklet deals with 15 of them. 

Many pro-lifers know that abortion is wrong but often don't feel confident that they can explain their position in a discussion.  This booklet should help. For example, the pro-abortion group will often say that "overpopulation is a serious problem" (slogan #11).  In fact, 75% of the world's population lives on just 3% of it; and if every  man, woman and child was given a mobile home they could all fit into the state of Texas.  The problem is more to do with economic and political systems.

The slogans covered include: abortion is a matter of personal choice; a woman has the right to control her own body; foetuses aren't legal persons; we can't return to 'coat-hanger' abortions; and women shouldn't be forced to bear the children of rapists.

If you are involved in the pro-life movement for more than a few days, you are bound to hear some of these slogans.  The booklet will give you some brief answers (and facts) and it's inexpensive so you can buy a number of copies to loan to people who perhaps think they are "pro-choice" simply because they don't know what that implies.

THE WAR AGAINST POPULATION
The Economics and Ideology of Population Control
by Jacqueline Kasun
(Ignatius Press, 1988,  216pp, RRP $22.60)

Since the time of Plato and Aristotle people have been worrying about overpopulation.  The predictions have always been that it is imminent and that the results will be disastrous.   Hence, the argument goes, abortion should be legalised and freely available.  Interestingly, overpopulation is always taken as proven, when no evidence exists that the world is, or will become, overpopulated. As a result,  we have the contradictory situation in which the United Nations, while urging lesser-developed countries to limit family sizes, at the same time is lamenting the rapidly declining fertility levels in many western countries.

The War Against Population examines the issues surrounding the population control movement and has been comprehensively researched -- there are footnotes to reference sources on almost every page.  Although it has been some years since it was first released, the book has not really dated.  The ideology, arguments, motivations and tactics are still the same.  To use just one example. the prophets of Population Control will often cite the overcrowding in cities as an indication of overpopulation.  As Kasun points out people "...crowd together not because of lack of space on the planet but because of the need to work together, to buy and sell, to give and receive services from one another..."  In fact "population growth permits the easier acquisition as well as the more efficient use of the economic infrastructure -- the modern transportation and communi-cation systems, ... electrification ... and waste disposal systems... [It] increases the size of the market ... [and] not only inspire[s] more ideas but more exchanges, or improvements, of ideas among people."

The idea that population is multiplying at an accelerating pace is the driving force behind the population control movement; it is also a "dogma" which is demolished at Dr Kasun's hands.  After all, a simple glance at history will show that as countries develop, their rate of population increase automatically slows.