Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population
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Listen to a short interview with Matthew ConnellyHost: Chris Gondek \| Producer: Heron & CraneFatal Misconception is the disturbing story of our quest to remake humanity by policing national borders and breeding better people. As the population of the world doubled once, and then again, well-meaning people concluded that only population control could preserve the "quality of life." This movement eventually spanned the globe and carried out a series of astonishing experiments, from banning Asian immigration to paying poor people to be sterilized.Supported by affluent countries, foundations, and non-governmental organizations, the population control movement experimented with ways to limit population growth. But it had to contend with the Catholic Church's ban on contraception and nationalist leaders who warned of "race suicide." The ensuing struggle caused untold suffering for those caught in the middle—particularly women and children. It culminated in the horrors of sterilization camps in India and the one-child policy in China.Matthew Connelly offers the first global history of a movement that changed how people regard their children and ultimately the face of humankind. It was the most ambitious social engineering project of the twentieth century, one that continues to alarm the global community. Though promoted as a way to lift people out of poverty—perhaps even to save the earth—family planning became a means to plan other people‘s families.With its transnational scope and exhaustive research into such archives as Planned Parenthood and the newly opened Vatican Secret Archives, Connelly's withering critique uncovers the cost inflicted by a humanitarian movement gone terribly awry and urges renewed commitment to the reproductive rights of all people. The New York Times - Nicholas D. Kristof Fatal Misconception is to population policy what William Easterly's White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (2006) was to foreign aid: a useful, important but ultimately unbalanced corrective to smug self-satisfaction among humanitarians.
Preface ixAbbreviations xiiiIntroduction: How Biology Became History 1Populations out of Control 18To Inherit the Earth 46Populations at War 77Birth of the Third World 115The Population Establishment 155Controlling Nations 195Beyond Family Planning 237A System without a Brain 276Reproducing Rights, Reproducing Health 327Conclusion: The Threat of the Future 370Notes 387Archives and Interviews 487Acknowledgments 491Index 493
