The environment, population, and women's human rights.

• Author: Boland, Reed
• Position: Symposium on Population Law

1. INTRODUCTION

   In the view of many current observers, the state of the earth's environment and the population it sustains has reached a critical point. A host of serious problems face the world community and satisfactory solutions appear difficult to reach or even, in the eyes of the most pessimistic, to be unreachable. The world's population has doubled since 1950 to nearly six billion, with over eighty million new births each year.(1) Predictions for future growth range as high as 11.2 billion by the end of the next century. Deforestation and soil erosion are occurring at unprecedented rates.(2) Levels of carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases are continuing to increase.(3) Although the precise magnitude and consequences are unclear, global warming is taking place and sea levels are rising, threatening, if the trend continues, a number of low-lying countries.(4) Fisheries are being depleted, as are natural aquifers and the rivers that supply water for irrigation of crops.(5) The rate of growth in food production has decreased from previously high levels, raising fears of widespread famine.(6) In light of these facts, it is not surprising that some have adopted a highly pessimistic, if not "doomsday," approach to prospects for the world's continued development, believing that the point of no return may be close at hand.(7)

   And yet, by no means are all of the earth's current vital signs disheartening.(8) Population stabilization has been achieved in some thirty countries,(9) and the rate of population growth is falling at historically high rates in virtually all parts of the world.(10) United Nations estimates of the total current population of the earth have been revised downward by twenty-nine million from estimates made just two years ago.(11) Use of alternative sources of energy is increasing as the prices for generating this energy fall.(12) Recent food shortages have been due far more to civil wars and problems in distribution than to a lack of food.(13) The most recent analyses of food production estimates predict enough food to feed the world's population through at least the first quarter of the coming century.(14) There are also wide variations in predictions of future population growth, ranging from a high of 11.2 billion to a low of 7.7 billion by the year 2100.(15)

   Moreover, if history has any value as a guide, it demonstrates that doomsday predictions about overpopulation and the depletion of the world's resources which have been made from the time of Malthus up to the present have proven to be largely wrong.(16) Human ingenuity and technological progress have so far managed to outpace the natural forces conspiring to bring about the downfall of mankind and the despoliation of the environment.(17) Ways have been found to solve even the most seemingly insurmountable problems.

   By raising this alternative viewpoint, I do not want to assume an overly optimistic role. Just because history has proven most environmental doomsday scenarios wrong, this does not mean that it will necessarily do so in the future. The earth is finite and there may well be limits to what scientists have called its "carrying capacity."(18) Neither do I count myself among those who would leave the problems confronting the environment and mankind to the forces of the marketplace--swearing off government intervention as needless and perhaps counterproductive meddling.(19) I do believe that we must address the world's formidable environmental and population problems. We need to lower the rate of population growth and lessen the degradation of the environment.(20)

   Rather, I raise this more optimistic viewpoint because I believe that embracing the doomsday approach without consideration of all the facts has had major harmful consequences, particularly with respect to questions of population control. First, it has led to major excesses and mistakes in the planning and implementation of population policies and programs. There has been a rush to adopt measures to lower the rate of population growth, such as directly inducing people to accept contraception to the point of using force, but the measures have not been thought through either as to their ultimate efficacy or to the impact that they have on the lives of individuals.(21) The result has been practices that seriously implicate human rights, particularly women's human rights since the fertility of women is the target of most population programs. Fear of an unsustainable future for all has created immediate suffering for many.

   Second, acceptance of the doomsday approach has precluded the adoption of more balanced and rational strategies for reducing the rate of population growth, ones not focused so single-mindedly on the provision of contraception. Such strategies would involve careful and objective examination of the issues and an analysis of what is known about the dynamics of population change and the factors that actually bring about a decrease in the rate of population growth.(22) Such strategies would not ignore the need to provide contraception to the millions of women who want and need it,(23) but would reject so heavy a reliance on finding contraceptive acceptors and meeting targets, and would fully respect the human rights of contraceptive users. This strategy might achieve more success than many of the programs that have been adopted heretofore. Indeed, it may only be through respecting and promoting human rights (particularly women's human rights) that we can make a lasting impact on the rate of population growth.

2. COERCIVE POPULATION POLICIES

   1. Pro-Natalist Policies

      Due in large part to efforts of the press and women's health advocates, many of the major abuses perpetrated in the name of various population policies have been brought to light in recent years.(24) By the end of 1989, when the Ceausescu regime was overthrown, it became clear that the Romanian population had been subjected to one of the most highly restrictive pro-natalist population control policies ever devised. Believing Romania to be surrounded by ethnically hostile and more populous neighbors, as well as believing that a larger population was essential to national prosperity, President Ceausescu strove to increase the number of Romanians as rapidly as possible. To this end, he adopted measures prohibiting the great majority of abortions, restricting the sale of various kinds of contraceptives, permitting sterilization only for serious health reasons, and dispensing large doses of pro-natalist propaganda. Towards the end of his regime, President Ceausescu's enforcement of this policy was so intense that his Government instituted a system of workplace gynecological check-ups for women to ensure that those who became pregnant did not have their pregnancies terminated. At the same time, in what turned out to be a fatal error in political judgment, he instituted extreme austerity measures to pay off the entire foreign debt incurred earlier by his government.(25) The population as a whole was deprived of food, heat, electricity, personal amenities, and resources adequate to care for the children that they were urged to create.(26) This situation lasted until the end of 1989, when living conditions became so intolerable that the Government was overthrown and most of these measures were canceled.

      The effect of this population policy on the health of the Romanian population was disastrous.(27) The infant and maternal mortality rates in Romania were among the highest in Europe, the latter some two and one-half times the maternal mortality rate in the United States. Approximately 10,000 deaths from illegally performed abortions have occurred since the imposition of the policy, around 5.2 million women are permanently sterile as a result of poorly performed abortions, and thousands of children were abandoned, many of whom were subsequently cared for in state orphanages under overcrowded and unsanitary conditions where they suffered from malnutrition and serious illness. Unfortunately, the legacy of Ceausescu's policy continues. The rate of abortions, which rose dramatically during the months immediately following the revolution, remains at very high levels.(28) Abortion is the primary means of controlling births, and Romania has the highest abortion rate in the world with three abortions performed for every live birth. Contraception is still not readily available, is more expensive than obtaining an abortion, and is regarded with suspicion, even by many medical personnel who were persuaded of its ill effects by the pro-natalist propaganda of the Ceausescu regime.(29)

   2. Anti-Natalist Policies

      Much more often, population policies are imposed as part of a strategy to lower the rate of population growth. As the world's population has increased dramatically since World War II, there has been growing acceptance of this strategy. High rates of population growth have been viewed as outstripping the ability of countries to sustain socioeconomic development, depleting the world's resources and causing major political instability. Stemming or reversing these rates has been judged to be the key to a sustainable and livable future. This strategy has gained widespread acceptance in the international population community, as well as in the planning departments of various governments.(30)

      One of the most consistent proponents of this approach has been the government of India, which recognized early in its history the problems associated with high rates of population growth and, in response, adopted one of the first major population policies.(31) In the mid 1970s, the anxiety of the Indian government over the country's demographic prospects reached a fever pitch, leading it to adopt a highly coercive plan to lower the rate of population growth.(32) One major component of the plan was the promotion of widespread sterilization of Indian citizens. To carry out these sterilizations, the Indian...