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201 Long-Range Study Mustn't Sidetrack Birth Control
    The Washington Post  March 21, 1970

     A bill to establish a Commission on Population Growth and the
American future  was enacted by Congress early this month.  As origin-
ally proposed in President Nixon's message on population last July,
the commission would have made a technical survey of American 
demography and of governmental activities that are sensitive to 
population numbers.  The President also asked for a creative examination
of the growth and distribution of urban centers, so that rational 
planning might replace haphazard sprawl.

     House amendments enlarged the commission's mandate to include an
inquiry on "the impact of population and on the depletion of natural
resources."  Most important, it will also discuss "the various means
appropriate to the ethical values and principles of this society by
which our nation can achieve a population level properly suited for
its environmental, natural resources and other needs."

     We have been bombarded with proposals that range from one extreme,
of putting sterilizing chemicals in the water supply, to the other, of
ignoring the problem of population overgrowth.  Both are equally 
hazardous to our future as a democratic society.

     Furthermore, it is preposterous to advocate less intrusive 
solutions without more public understanding about the realities of the
problem.  In a poll at Cornell University, a majority advocated 
restraint on population growth but most of the individuals thought that
three to four children was an ideal family size.

     The commission can do a vital service by steering between evasion
and hysteria in delineating the consequences of different rates of
growth within the realities of our economic and social policies.

     Just how much is this generation willing to invest in the education
of the next one?  Or in conserving unspoiled lands so that a future
generation can experience a wilderness rather than study an album
of historic photographs?

     It can also help to sort out the more realistic proposals for
influencing reproductive behavior consistent with our central ethical
principle of individual liberty.  Simple solutions are improbable, and
we may have to consider some important social experiments without
being absolutely certain of the results.

     For example, welfare reforms, whether or not directly coupled
with family allowances, can be expected to influence planing for family
size.  It is important that we reinforce our statistical data collection
and analysis so as to make the most intelligent appraisal of 
"experiments" of this magnitude.

     The new commission must not become an excuse, as many will  
predict, for neglecting existing opportunities.  Sen. Joseph D. Tyding's
bill, introduced last May, calls for some real action on providing
family planing services to all women who want and need them.

     It has the unhappy defect of requiring about $100 million a year
in new funds--as will any effective program.  As Sen. Ralph Yarborough
commented, "Between the policy on family planing and the fulfillment
there is such a gap that it makes the Grand Canyon look like a Texas
creek."

     The proposed commission has a large task in discovering a new
ideology for America in dealing with its long-range problems of 
population growth.  It will be wasting its time if immediate programs to
give the means for birth control to women who are already inclined to
it are kept in limbo.
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