Pro-life leaders have signed a declaration decrying the Rockefeller Commission’s recommendation of abortion as a solution for overpopulation, marking the 50th anniversary of the panel’s report to President Nixon and Congress.
The “Declaration of a New American Future” calls for the end of legal abortion, as well as taxpayer funding of abortion and population control programs.
“We embrace the worth of every human life and call for positive policies that put supreme value on the sanctity of life and the preservation of institutions that safeguard it,” states the declaration, released to coincide with Sunday’s anniversary of the March 27, 1972 report.
Signatories include former Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, former Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, American Values President Gary Bauer and Princeton University law professor Robert P. George, among others.
The U.S. Commission on Population Growth and the American Future (better known by the name of its chairman, philanthropist John D. Rockefeller III) remains the only U.S. study on population growth commissioned by a president and Congress.
To prevent two- and three-child families from exhausting the nation’s resources by the start of the 21st century, the commission’s report recommended government funding and specific coverage for abortions in public and private health insurance plans, among other measures.
“With the admonition that abortion not be considered a primary means of fertility control, the Commission recommends that present state laws restricting abortion be liberalized along the lines of the New York statute, such abortion to be performed on request by duly licensed physicians under conditions of medical safety,” the report states.
The Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion nationwide.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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