Population Economics

In her 1999 book, The War Against Population: The Economics and Ideology of World Population Control , Jacqueline Kasun quoted a statement made by USAID Office of Population director Reimert Ravenholt in a 1977 St. Louis Post-Dispatch interview. Ravenholt said that we should aim for sterilization of 25% of the world’s fertile women. Without severe population control measures, it would become impossible to maintain “the normal operation of U.S. commercial interests around the world.”

Kasun explains, “Dr. Ravenholt was reported to believe that only such extreme measures could counteract the ‘population explosion’ that would otherwise so reduce living standards that foreign rebellions would spring up ‘against the strong U.S. commercial presence.”

Ravenholt was a cut-up. Kasun cites a scholar who “described Dr. Ravenholt’s behavior at a dinner for population researchers: for the amusement and edification of the guests, Dr. Ravenholt strolled around the room gesturing as if he were operating a hand vacuum abortion pump.”