Source: Donald T. Critchlow in Intended Consequences: Birth Control, Abortion, and the Federal Government in Modern America. (Oxford University Press, 1999). Pages 186-187. Italics his, bold ours.
The letters he cites he references are:
- Mrs. Cordelia Scaife May to John D. Rockefeller 3rd, November 7, 1974, John D. Rockefeller 3rd Papers (unprocessed), RA
- Mrs. Cordelia Scaife May to John D. Rockefeller 3rd, November 24, 1974, John D. Rockefeller 3rd Papers (unprocessed), RA
Quote:
Those who argued against linking population programs to social reform did not necessarily want to maintain the status quo. Indeed, they raised a different set of criticisms that questioned the voluntary nature of the programs. Even Ravenholt, perhaps the greatest defender of traditional family planning, raised questions about whether more coercive measures might be necessary in the future. These differing perspectives sharpened divisions within the population movement between those who called for more coercive policies to constrain population growth and those who called for more coercive policies to constrain population growth and those who emphasized individual rights to contraception and abortion. This division became apparent when Cordelia Scaife May, a major donor to the Population Council, resigned from the board of trustees in 1974. Writing personally to Rockefeller to express dismay over his Bucharest speech, she declared that while her “dedication to population control is undiminished,” she disagreed that the solution to the population crisis lay in “a redistribution of the world’s wealth.” Foreseeing changes in the council’s future work in the field, she said, “I have found myself more and more often in disagreement with the policy and programs of the Population Council and have felt for some time that I should resign.” In a follow-up letter she was even blunter in her assessment that voluntary family planning would not work. “The increase in our population,” she declared, “is not being caused by the unwanted children of the poorest women in the United States or by the opposition of the Roman Catholic Church. It is caused by 40 million middle-upper class women who have all the children they wanted.” Quoting Kingsley Davis, she concluded, “If having too many children were considered a crime…. we would have no qualms about taking freedom away.”
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