Tea at Trianon: Population Control in Africa

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Population Control in Africa

From Life News:

Melinda Gates has long championed international family planning, and the Goalkeepers Report highlights it as one of four priority areas, alongside HIV, agriculture, and education. One of the SDG targets is to ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health care services, including family planning. But when it comes to measuring access, the UN relies on metrics better suited to measuring use, or the concept of “unmet need,” of which lack of access to services makes up only 5%.

Sub-Saharan Africa remains notable for both its high actual fertility, and its high desired fertility. While family planning advocates, including Melinda Gates, typically speak of the need to increase access to contraceptives, their real goal is to increase use and to promote a small-family norm. But the looming shadow of past abuses remains large, despite efforts by the Gates Foundation and others to bring back the demographic rationale for family planning in addition to rhetoric about human rights and choice.

Melinda Gates told the Washington Post she is frustrated with the Trump administration’s decision to cut funding for international “reproductive-rights projects,” calling it “incredibly disappointing.” While in the past Gates notably distanced her family planning advocacy from the global abortion lobby, she co-chaired a Gender Equality Council at the G7 earlier this year, that called for public funding for abortion, abortion as a component of humanitarian assistance, and the withdrawal of the Trump administration’s expanded Mexico City Policy blocking aid funding to international abortion groups. (Read more.)