Overture 0448. On Global Population Stabilization and Reduction—From the Presbytery of Lackawanna.

The Presbytery of Lackawanna respectfully overtures the 216th General Assembly (2004) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to approve the following actions and positions:

1. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), while reaffirming the naturalness and goodness of the human desire for procreation, recognizes that human numbers in our time are far exceeding the intent of the biblical mandate in Genesis 1:28 to “be fruitful and multiply,” because the health and wellbeing of human creatures depend upon the continuing fruitfulness of the earth and the health and integrity of the natural systems by which God governs to make life possible and good.

2. The General Assembly

a. Calls upon the president and the Congress of the United States of America to reverse the recent policies and directives that have reduced and withheld appropriations to the United Nations Population Funds and other voluntary international family planning agencies, and provide fully restored or increased funding for these agencies and/or organizations.

b. Calls upon the president and the Congress of the United States of America to honor the action plans of the United Nations Conference on Population Development (1994) and other United Nations conferences, and to provide strong leadership and substantial funding to ensure the availability throughout the world of contraceptive and reproductive health services, so that all who chose to determine the size of their families may do so, and also to promote the kind of economic development that actually reduces poverty while protecting the environment, and to extend educational opportunities in developing countries, especially to the girls and women who have been denied them, and to enhance women’s status and access to health care, credit, and employment.

c. Urges the president and the Congress of the United States of America to develop and implement, together with appropriate state, national, and international governments and agencies, longrange policies and plans to achieve the goal of stabilizing and then reducing human populations in the United States of America, other nations, and the world, so that by concerted efforts the total births in this world may be fewer than deaths by the decade 2020-2030.

3. The General Assembly urges those who support and those who oppose the legality of abortions to work together to support measures that prevent unintended pregnancies, recognizing that abortions, whether legal or illegal, increase when family planning services are not available.

4. The General Assembly calls upon young people and couples—Presbyterians, those of other denominations and other faiths, and all who acknowledge responsibility to serve the common good—to make their private decisions about procreation in the light of the compelling need to reduce the human impact upon the planet, so that the degradation and depletion of natural resources, the disruption of natural systems, and the losses and extinctions of nonhuman species may cease, in accordance with the CreatorRedeemer’s will for the harmony, liberation, and fulfillment of the whole community of life.

5. The General Assembly continues to encourage all who make decisions about having children to consider conscientiously and prayerfully their options, including that of remaining birthfree and considering the possibility of adopting children.

6. The General Assembly understands and declares that the earth’s protection and restoration require a very substantial reduction of consumption by the comfortable and the affluent; that the overpopulated, impoverished countries in the world are unlikely to give priority to population stabilization and reduction unless the international community as a whole gives priority also to global poverty reduction and the reduction of unnecessary, excessive consumption; that Christians and all other people of goodwill are called to resist the temptations posed by advertising and other enticements to wasteful, injurious consumption; and that if the economic system requires ecologically unsustainable consumption in order to generate employment, it is the system that has to be changed in basic ways, so that all people may participate in a livelihood that is both sufficient and sustainable.

7. The General Assembly directs the Stated Clerk to send copies of these resolutions with their rationale to the president of the United States of America, all the members of Congress, and appropriate governmental and nongovernmental population and environmental agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Council on Environmental Quality, the Population Reference Bureau, the Worldwatch Institute, the Population Institute, the Population Connection, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, any Pro-Life organization, Friends of the Earth, National Wildlife Federation, and other religious bodies with which the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is in communion, as well as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the governing bodies of the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches.

Rationale

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) for many years has recognized the need to curtail human population growth in order to preserve the balances of nature and the integrity of God’s created order, and to reduce the social strains and conflicts exacerbated by population pressures. The PC(USA) has strongly supported voluntary family planning and reproductive health programs and their availability to all who choose to limit family size, and has also advocated for improvements in living standards and the status of women, which in many countries are factors in lowering fertility rates.

The 208th General Assembly (1996), in its policy statement “Hope for a Global Future: Toward Just and Sustainable Human Development,” declared, “Complacency about continued population growth now constitutes defiance of the wisdom of God” and is as though “human creatures alone [could be] forever exempt from the … laws by which God governs complex processes and the [interactions] of living creatures” (Minutes, 1996, Part I, p. 533, paragraph 36.547).

The peril to the future of life does not come simply from overpopulation, since the human impact upon the natural world is the product, not only of the number of people, but also of the technologies used by industry and agriculture and the magnitude of per capita production and consumption; and this means that the greatest global impact comes from the affluent, industrialized nations, the United States of America above all.

The 213th General Assembly (2001), recognizing the massive encroachments of human beings and economic development upon the habitats of other creatures, issued a “Call to Halt Mass Extinction,” declaring that the “CreatorSustainer of all life wills its continuance, diversity, beauty, and interconnectedness” and that the “CreatorDeliverer calls human communities to work with God to rectify the abuses whereby human impacts upon the earth are leading to a mass extinction of living species,” and calling for “steps in practice, policy, and systemic change that will prevent mass extinction and preserve the biodiversity essential to the flourishing of life” (Minutes, 2001, Part I, p. 473).
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The 210th General Assembly (1998) declared that “the inestimable worth of every child” makes it “imperative now to bring human numbers into balance with other creatures, within healthy natural systems, so that all children, present and future, may enjoy a habitat conducive to the realization of their potential under God.”

The same 210th General Assembly (1998) stated: “Recognizing the natural human desire for procreation . . . but recognizing also the compelling need for fewer births, so that God’s creation, human and nonhuman, may flourish according to God’s intent, [the General Assembly declares] that both those who choose not to conceive children and those who do choose to conceive should be accorded encouragement and support, respect and honor for their decisions.”

In the United States of America, human births exceeded deaths in 2002 by more than 1.5 million.

The Worldwatch Institute and the Population Institute provided the following information: the human population of the world more than tripled in the 20th century, reached 6 billion in 1999, and now exceeds 6.2 billion and is projected to increase to somewhere between 7.9 and 10.9 billion by 2050. Almost all of the increase will take place in developing countries where resources are already strained. The population of India, now just over a billion, is expected to reach 1.6 billion. Many impoverished countries must cope with cropland that is insufficient for their needs and declining in quality. An even greater threat is the shortage of water, with half a billion people in regions of chronic drought, a number expected to increase fivefold by 2025; and in some African countries, including Liberia, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Ethiopia, women average six children each, and these countries have recently suffered civil war, genocide, and/or famine.

By 2003, according to the Population Reference Bureau, twentysix nations had Total Fertility Rates (TFRs = average birth per women) of 1.3 or less; this means that they are at the point, or very close to it, at which births are fewer than deaths. Most of these nations are European, eastern and western, but they include Russia, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan. Five years earlier only thirteen nations had TFRs of 1.3 or less; this represents a rapid movement toward fewer births and population stabilization and reduction in a significant number of countries—a movement, however, that will require strenuous, concerted efforts if it is to be extended throughout the world, including our own country.