« The New Politics of Climate Change | Main | The Third Runway »

The Pill: A demographic catastrophe?

Karl Djerassi, one of the three scientists who did the breakthrough research on the earliest contraceptive pill for women, would, at 85 years of age, appear to have gone a bit bonkers. He has described the consequences of hundreds of millions of women benefitting from the Pill as a "demographic catastrophe", "a horror scenario", "an epidemic worse than obesity".

In an extraordinary broadside, this very grumpy old man has castigated couples in Austria (where average fertility is now down to 1.4 children per family) for "wanting to enjoy their schnitzels whilst leaving the rest of the world to get on with it". Worst of it all, apparently, he feels deeply aggrieved that there is now "no connection at all between sexuality and reproduction".

The Catholic Church can’t believe its luck. One bona fide gift-wrapped apostate leaping into polemical action in such a way as to justify all their own miserable anti-contraception prejudices. Just at the time when people are at last waking up to the near impossibility of securing dignified, free and genuinely sustainable lives for the 9 billion people who will inhabit the planet by 2050, along comes one of the men who might justifiably claim to have done as much to liberate women as any other to repent of his wicked, ungodly genius.

So let’s try and get the balance sheet straight here. If I was Karl Djerassi, I would like my epitaph to include reference to the number of unwanted births that had been averted through the use of the Pill over all these years. That would remind people just how much we have to thank Karl Djerassi and his colleagues for. In the meantime, I suppose we’ll have to forgive him his latter-day lapse into pro-natalist lunacy.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on January 13, 2009 11:44 AM |

Comments (2)

Let's hope and pray that Djerassi sees the error of his ways before the Vatican makes too much of a 'propaganda victory'.

I can only hope that a similarly prestigious expert in the field will come forward to refute this thoroughly irresponsible and misguided outburst.

He would do better to look at the rapid rates of population growth in the Middle East,South America and Africa,rather than castigating Austrians.

Posted by wendy kellett | January 15, 2009 11:19 AM

Agreed, that it seems crazy for this man to think of his work as a disaster. Perhaps if he is lucky enough to make his centenery, he may live to see the crash and change his mind back again.

On the point about losing the connection between sexuality and reproduction, I think it is not only sad that this really has happened, but that it must be at least partly responsible for the 'problems' countries like the UK still have with 'teenage pregnancy' (one would have thought that goverments forever complaining about 'democratic deficits' would welcome this but, logic seems to be in short supply in main stream demographic argument.).

I wouldn't go so far as to say I was "deeply aggrieved" about it, but I do think that the 'currency of human sexuality' has been greatly devalued, and that something very important and humane has been lost that cheapens all our lives. Perhaps the sex/porn 'wave' that is sweeping over humanity will eventually break and spend itself, and we may then go on to treating sexuality as a gift rather than an obsession, so that we can enjoy the best of both worlds.

Hope so.

S

Posted by Spamlet | January 25, 2009 3:14 PM

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)





TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.jonathonporritt.com/jpblog/mt-tb.cgi/84

Subscribe to this blog's feed
[What is this?]