WASHINGTON — Fifty years after a Nixon-era commission called for zero-population growth in the United States, a coalition of pro-life leaders has released its own “Declaration on a New American Future.”
The Daily Wire first obtained the new declaration, which comes on the 50th anniversary of the March 1972 Rockefeller Commission report.
That report was requested by President Richard Nixon and authorized by Congress, recommending that states expand women’s access to abortion and make contraceptives readily available to teenagers as strategies for controlling population growth and expanding individual freedom.
Nixon rejected the Rockefeller Commission report’s pro-abortion recommendations in May 1972, saying that abortion was “an unacceptable means of population control” and he did not support “unrestricted abortion policies.”
“Such measures would do nothing to preserve and strengthen close family relations,” he said of the contraceptive recommendations.
The new pro-life Declaration on a New American Future calls for the United States to resume policies that “embrace the worth of every human life and put supreme value on the sanctity of life and the preservation of institutions that safeguard it.”
This includes the reversal of the Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion, an end to taxpayer funding of any programs that “subvert the respect for the equality of every human being under the law,” and acknowledging that using abortions as solutions to population growth has contributed to plummeting U.S. fertility rates.
“We equally reject the core policies on respect for human life promoted by the Rockefeller Commission and the apocalyptic tone and content of its warnings about a bleak and heartless human future,” it says. “We hold that the history of humanity, though troubled by conflict, poverty, war and disease, demonstrates that progress is possible in every area of human endeavor.”
The signers added that they believe it is “essential that public policy reject extreme notions” that put all groups and individuals in society in competition with one another, “inevitably lead to declining standards of living.”
“As is plain for all to see on the 50th anniversary of the Rockefeller Commission report, the apocalyptic predictions about future famine and disease caused by ‘overpopulation’ have proven to be false, but the damage to the fabric of American society has proven to be immense,” Charles Donovan, president of the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, said in a statement.
“When government promotes a policy of children as disposable, and when killing innocent children is promoted as a solution, we should not be surprised that the vulnerable of our society are mistreated, denied equal opportunity, and marginalized,” added Donavan, who also served as and deputy director of presidential correspondence for President Ronald Reagan. “This trend can and must be reversed, and it starts with a renewed emphasis on equal respect for every human under the law.”
The Declaration on a New American Future is signed by 30 pro-life leaders, including Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, and March for Life President Jeanne Mancini.
“The Commission’s Report reflected the temper of the times,” the declaration said, referring to the 1972 report. “In 1968 Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich published a manifesto called “The Population Bomb.” The book’s dire warnings capped a tragic decade of assassination and social discord.”
“The cover of the paperback version of the bestseller did an extraordinary thing, depicting a smiling infant inside the outline of an igniting bomb,” the declaration continued. “The goal was not to stir the natural heart of human beings to protect an innocent child, but to depict the baby as the bomb.”
Fifty-five years later, the declaration says, the signers see that these “crude arguments” portrayal of the next generation as the enemy and warnings of overpopulation-driven disease and famine “have proved false – and that, as before, the faults of overbearing government and cruel policies that divide and devalue people are the source of the greatest calamities.”