Both the original promise versions of the Obama administration’s health insurance mandate (the HHS mandate) coerce people into paying, either directly or indirectly, for other people’s contraception. The policy may have been pushed along by exigencies of Democratic Party constituency politics, but I suspect there’s also a worldview dimension to the mandate, one embodied in one of President Obama’s more controversial appointments—Science and Technology Policy Director John Holdren.

Holdren, as far as I know, wasn’t involved in crafting President Obama’s healthcare plan or the HHS mandate, but the appointment and the mandate both fit the same anti-natalist pattern that has characterized President Obama’s political career at least as far back as his votes against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act when he was an Illinois state senator.

How the Holdren appointment fits the es to light with only a little digging. In the 1970s, Holdren pushed various population control schemes, not all of them voluntary. Here’s a sampling from his co-authored textbook Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment:

“It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions, perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption, depending on the society.” (P. 786)

“A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men. This of course would be feasible only in countries where the majority of births are medically assisted. Unfortunately, such a program therefore is not practical for most less developed countries.” (P. 787)

“The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.” (P. 787)

According to Washington Times reporter Amanda Carpenter, Holdren’s office issued a statement distancing him from the forced sterilization policies outlined in the book, while Holdren’s co-authors defended him and themselves by saying the textbook was over 30 years old and that the many unsettling excerpts cited in the media were “description … misrepresented as endorsement.”

Yes, the book is 30 years old; but spending a little time in the pages of the book suggests that, at the time, Holdren and his co-authors meant what they said. Take page 838. If you have time, read the whole page, but here are three passages that stand out:

“Individual rights must be balanced against the power of the government to control human reproduction.”

“The law regulates other highly personal matters. For example, no one may lawfully have more than one spouse at a time. Why should the law not be able to prevent a person from having more than two children?”

“Thus, while the due-process and equal-protection limitations preclude the passage of capricious or discriminatory laws, neither guarantees anyone the right to have more than his or her fair share of children, if such a right is shown to conflict with other rights and freedoms.”

The chapter title that contains this page: “The Human Predicament: Finding a Way Out.”

I realize the HHS mandate is a far cry from the extreme measures suggested in these quotations, but the policy proposals then and now do seem to flow out of the same view of the human person—as a burden rather than as a blessing and potential creator who is able to solve problems and create new wealth and resources.

If you view fertility as a “human predicament” from which we desperately need to find “a way out,” you’re more likely to go looking for some politically feasible policy to limit the number of mouths. The Obama administration may have found just such a politically feasible policy in the mandate to coerce Americans to cover the costs of other people’s contraception. Time will tell.

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