Read It And Weep: How Obama’s Science Advisor John P. Holdren Values Life

In 1972, John P. Holdren and his old buddy Paul Ehrlich wrote an article in “The Canadian Nurse”. The article is entitled “Abortion and Morality”. The subtitle reads as follows: “Has a potential human the right to live inside an actual woman without her consent?”

The article goes on to list the well-known arguments for abortion, such as “If abortion is needed by individuals and by society, is medically safe, and is not patently immoral, it is difficult to be sure exactly what is accomplished in subjecting the procedure to restrictive government scrutiny”, Holdren and Ehrich say.

“Infants”, the two continue, “are entitled to due process and equal protection under the Fouteenth Amendment to the (US) Constitution, but fetuses are not. Because of this distinction, the relaxation of abortion laws could scarcely imperil the rights of infants or of elderly and otherwise dependant people. (…) Repeal of abortion laws is long overdue.”

These were not some isolated comment by two overzealous eco-fascists. In the 1973 publication Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions, Holdren and the Ehrlichs wrote quite candidly about their basic view on life, providing us with yet another peek at the decaying undergrowth out of which the Ecoscience document has emerged- proposing among other things a “planetary regime” to assume command of matters of life and death.

In chapter 8 of the Human Ecology-document, page 235, Holdren gives us his definition of human life:

“The fetus“, Holdren writes, “given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being.”

In other words, Holdren not only argues, as he did in 1972, that the unborn may not be considered human- he believes that children during the early years afterbirth, cannot yet be considered human beings. Given this presumption by Obama’s science adviser, it may not come as a surprise that he does not shy away from coercive abortion policies or other such measures to scale back the population. After all, if an infant cannot be construed as a human being, as Holdren argues, God-given rights do not apply to them, nor does constitutional protection- and therefore they can be deemed as completely at the government’s mercy.

In the same year that Obama science czar John P. Holdren spoke his mind in Ecoscience, he wrote an article for the book The No-Growth Society, in which a gathering of Neo-Malthusians makes the case for depopulation policies to be implemented in order to avoid impending doom and destruction.

In the book all the contributing authors advocate the “no-growth society”, which means there should be no growth in the number of people consuming the earth’s natural resources. In the introduction, economist Mancur Olson presses the point that more government regulation and control is absolutely necessary in order to reach the state of no-growth, or zero population growth (ZPG):

“Another characteristic that no-growth societies have is an extraordinary degree of governmental or other collective action. (…) Whether it became so by choice or by necessity, a no-growth society would presumably have stringent regulations and wide-ranging prohibitions against pollution and other external diseconomies, and thus more government control over individual behavior than is now customary in the Western democracies.”

The next author, Kingsley Davis (who is credited for coining the terms “population explosion” and “Zero Population Growth” or ZPG), explores by which means the state of no-growth could be achieved.

“If ZPG were the supreme aim, any means would be justified. By common consent, however, raising the death rate is excluded; also, reducing immigration is played down. This leaves fertility reduction as the main avenue. (…) If then, the means is birth limitations, why not take measures to reduce births? Why not simply limit each couple to two births, with sufficient penalties to discourage three? The response of the Population Establishment is that this would be “compulsion”. Although plenty of compulsion has been used to lower death rates, it is not to be used to lower birth rates. On the contrary, the right of couples to have the number of children they want has been declared by policy leaders to be “a fundamental human right.”

Then he laments the voluntarism of people to decide how many children they wish to have and launches an idea for a propaganda-campaign. Knowing perfectly well that bearing children is a natural inclination inherent to our species, he advises something cunning:

“Built into the social order, therefore, are values, norms and incentives that motivate people to bear and rear children. (…) Respected leaders of society are not about to disavow them, nor is the general public likely to do so. Accordingly, what is strategically required, if one wants to be a population policy leader, is a formula that appears (emphasis added) to reduce reproduction without offending the mores that support it. The formula is to interpret the social problem as an individual one and the solution as a technological matter. Thus “fertility control” becomes control by the woman, not by society; and the means becomes a medically approved contraceptive. (…) The respectability of this approach to population policy is reinforced not only by its appeal to health and medical authority and its link with science (reproductive physiology) but also by its preoccupation with parenthood and children. “Family planning” and “planned parenthood” implicitly feature the family. Nearly every family-planning booklet depicts on the front two radiantly happy offspring, and on the inside implies that every woman’s main concern is her children, a concern that alone justifies her limiting their number.”

Davis goes on to assert that “if ZPG is the goal, “existing values” are not a help but a hindrance (…).”

“Ironically”, Davis continues, “the “voluntarism” so much emphasized by the Population Establishment, if consistently advocated, would be unacceptable. A regime of complete freedom in reproduction would be anarchy.”

Davis however is not at all enthusiastic about family planning. According to him, it’s not effective enough:

“If family planning policies, even when broadened somewhat as they have been in the last few years, are not likely to bring about ZPG, then additional and more drastic measures may be required.”

Holdren’s contribution, Population and the American Predicament: The Case against Complacency, departs from the same point as did his surprisingly revealing writings in the Ecoscience monstrosity: humans are a virus, and their prosperity on earth (and in the United States particularly) needs to be put to a halt as soon as possible. In the piece, Holdren puts forth several rhetorical questions. The first being:

“Do the potential consequences of continued population growth in the United States justify systematic measures to hold fertility at replacement level if it should show any tendency to rise again?”

His second “question”:

“Should such measures be used to push fertility well below replacement (…)?”

Of course, he answered these questions in great detail in the infamous Ecoscience document as well as propose concrete measures, such as forced abortions and other outright criminal suggestions. In the no-growth article though, Holdren only hints at such measures, starting out by illustrating the “moderate position” formulated at the time by the National Commission on Population Growth, which recommended that “the nation welcome and plan for a stabilized population.” Right out of the gates, Holdren makes clear that this recommendation is far too humane for his taste:

“The specific issues (…) justify, I believe, a greater sense of urgency than the Commission’s recommendations convey.”

In Two Cheers for ZPG, sociologist Norman B. Ryder also prescribes reducing the number of births:

“Assuming that ZPG is not to be achieved by purposeful elevation of the number of deaths, in order to terminate population growth under current conditions we must reduce the number of births to the number of deaths, a reduction by 46 percent. This is a heroic prescription indeed, considering that, barring the grossest of departures from our traditions of freedom, we have confident knowledge of no policy weapon which can nudge fertility down (or up) more than a trace.”

He comes to the conclusion that even a “massive propaganda campaign” would not be effective enough to quench the Malthusian thirst for more death.

All these statements by Holdren and his fellow-Malthusians reveal a far reaching willingness to deceive the public. They are also illustrative of the mindset from which Holdren has gone about his professional career. With all these (documented) writings in mind, it’s really a miracle that the American people- and the Congress supposed to represent them- tolerate this individual at the heart of the executive branch.