"You just keep having children. This is how you keep a man," Sylvia, mother of twelve, told Maternowska. "If you don't give [children] to him, he doesn't give [money] to you.... And sometimes even if you do give, you lose anyhow. Life is hard." Women would do anything to keep a man. There was a brisk trade in sexy outfits and wild rumors circulated about love potions, some from voodoo healers, some home-made, including rice and beans cooked in water in which a woman had washed her underwear.

That's a passage about Haiti. Haiti, poorest country in the Western hemisphere…is there enough rice in Haiti to waste on a man who might leave? Or can a woman cook dirt cookies in her underwear water, too? Not uplifting questions, sure, but what exactly did the World Bank so fear from these people that they were willing to endorse the literal dragging of Indian women to sterilization clinics and worse, the measures that in China all too often resulted in forced third-trimester abortions?

Well, eugenicists feared the introduction of the Pill into the First World would cause "the swamping of the Nordic and Anglo-Saxon races by imbeciles, blacks, Asians, and eastern and southern Europeans," and technically, that happened. By the late sixties, books like the Population Bomb had softened that message, focusing on India where the (not improbable) prophesy was that "squalid, teeming slums and mass starvation" would beget "imminent political collapse." Ahhh, political collapse, our generation knows it well! But then what?

Particularly after the Communist takeover of China in 1949, Washington policymakers began to fear the rise of an increasingly resentful—and rapidly proliferating—global population of poor people who were easily susceptible to radical ideas and militaristic leaders. But in the end such people, if they threatened anyone, were mainly a danger to themselves.

As we know from the poor countries in which we've brought about political collapse lately!

Helen Epstein's whole review is worth reading — and the NYRB is worth subscribing to and makes a great gift for dads! — but here's a critical line. As anyone who has ever been in love knows, treating others humanely might come more naturally when you suspect they might have the capacity to hurt you.

The greatest threats to the global climate come from China and the West, where birthrates are extremely low. The future of the planet depends less on the number of babies born in Uganda than on the choices we in the West make, which, at the moment, are not good ones. As recently as 2004, a Japanese study found that when shopping for cars, Americans cared more about the size of the cup holder than fuel efficiency.[10] Our habits may be shifting, but ever so slowly.

The Strange History Of Birth Control? [New York Review Of Books]
Earlier: Is It About Time We Made A "Pregnancy Pact" Of Our Own? [Jezebel]

Related: New Limits To Growth Revive Malthusian Fears [WSJ]
RU-486: Brought To You By John D. Rockefeller [Some weird website I don't think is related to antiabortion zealots]

Well, the Chinese justice system has to be good for something, and so far it has agreed to pay the several grand in medical expenses Jin Yani incurred over the 44 days she spent in the hospital as a result of complications of the forced abortion of the nine-month-old fetus she conceived with her husband five months before the legal minimum childbearing age of 20. They want a little more than that, of course, but the mere fact that the case has been heard is an achievement.

In a blow against the state's brutally imposed one-child policy, she and her husband are claiming danmages against the authorities, saying that officials acted unlawfully.

China's higher courts have agreed to hear the plea - the first time this has happened in a case of this kind.

Yang Zhongchen, her husband, tried to prevent the abortion by wining and dining officials in Hebei province. He also agreed to pay a fine of £650, but none of this prevented Changli county family planning officials arriving on Sept 7, 2000.

Mrs Jin said: "I got on my knees and begged them after they took me to the clinic and said I wanted to give birth to my daughter. I had already named her Yang Yin."

In the clinic, she was injected with a large syringe. Her husband arrived in time to witness the removal of the dead foetus with forceps two days later.

Mrs Jin lost blood, and was hospitalised for 44 days. Her husband was charged for the medicine she needed. He said that his wife is now infertile as a result of the abortion.

Mr Yang has demanded £85,000 to cover medical expenses, psychological distress and Mrs Jin's inability to conceive.

China woman in legal first over abortion case [Telegraph]
Related: Enemies of the State [TIME]