State control of population growth and family planning was foretold at the /Bucharest Conference in the 1960’s.

China’s state policy of forced abortions, and India’s use of forced sterilizations followed.  It seemed only too likely that the plague would spread.

In 1991 the shoe fell with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of Norplant, the long-lasting, five year contraceptive implant.

A million women

Although Norplant was developed in the U.S. and has already been used, according to reports, by “more than a million women in the world from Thailand to Sweden,” it has only just received approval for use in the United States.

American reaction to this approval has shaken Norplant’s developer Dr. Sheldon Segal and his team.  Dr. Segal is said to have been concerned that some government would use Norplant to enforce birth control, and the government that he had in mind was China.

He should have looked nearer home.

Even before the drug was on the market a judge in California ordered a woman convicted of child abuse to use Norplant as part of her sentence.

The Kansas Legislature has held hearings on a bill that would pay welfare mothers $500 to have the implant, plus $50 a year and an annual checkup.

Two days after the Food and Drug Administration’s announcement, the Philadelphia Inquirer hailed Norplant as a way to fight black poverty.  The editorial raised a storm of protest (including Dr. Segal’s) against what was rightly seen as a blatantly biased attack on one class because of their race and poverty.

Gap

It has been interesting to note that even some pro-abortionists have harshly criticized the Kansas bill, the California court sentence and the Philadelphia editorial.  They say there is a “gap between birth control and the threat of women control.”  That gap should not be crossed.”

Dr. Segal has expressed outrage at the suggestions for enforced or coerced use of Norplant.  Although the offer of $500 may seem an incentive and not coercion, he says that “when you single out a welfare mother, wave a $500 bill in front of her face and say that the government is going to induce you not to have children, you’ve gotten into a risky area, ethically and morally.”

In common with many others, Dr. Segal is discovering that once the genie is out of the bottle it cannot be put back.

Summing up his feelings, he said: “We created a method to enhance reproductive freedom, and people keep finding ways to use it for the opposite purpose.”