13 January 2009

Birth control pill inventor laments demographic ‘catastrophe’

From Catholic News Agency:
The chemist who made a key discovery leading to the invention of the birth control pill has written a commentary calling demographic decline in Europe a “horror scenario” and a “catastrophe” brought on in part by the pill’s invention.

Mr. Carl Djerassi...said his invention is partly to blame for demographic imbalance in Europe. On the continent, he argued, there is now “no connection at all between sexuality and reproduction.”
...
Djerassi described families who had decided against reproduction as “wanting to enjoy their schnitzels while leaving the rest of the world to get on with it.”

The fall in the birth rate, he claimed, was an “epidemic” far worse but less highlighted than obesity. In his view, young Austrians who fail to procreate are committing national suicide.

If it is not possible to reverse the demographic decline, an “intelligent immigration policy” will be necessary, Djerassi said.

According to the Guardian, Archbishop of Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schonborn told Austrian TV that Pope Paul VI had predicted the pill would cause a dramatic fall in the birth rate.

“Somebody above suspicion like Carl Djerassi ... is saying that each family has to produce three children to maintain population levels, but we’re far away from that,” the cardinal said.
As to the "intelligent immigration policy" mentioned, this is just what France has been forced to do, whose own French population is so uninterested in having children that the country has welcomed the immigrant Muslim community (which is one of the fastest growing peoples in the world) into its midst, glad to benefit from its workforce and tax payments. France now has the largest Muslim population in Europe, numbering around 13%.

(thanks to Fr. Mercer)