One of the most powerful movements of the last half-century directed its energeis toward avoidance of what it termed the “population explosion.” Some leaders in the movement were ideologues driven by contremporary environmental theories. Others were leftward thinkers with a basic antipathy toward large families and “pro-natalist” worldviews.

Chen Guangcheng is blind, but the 34-year-old activist is taking on the Chinese government’s “one child only” policy. This man sees what others cannot or will not — the true horror of the Chinese government’s anti-human policy. He is organizging Chinese peasants in a brave effort to mount a legal challenge to the government’s policy.

Here is evidence of cultural disaster: Russians, whose lives are shorter and poorer than they were under communism, have more abortions than births to avoid the costs of raising children, Bloomberg.com reported Tuesday quoting the country’s highest-ranking obstetrician. About 1.6 million women had an abortion last year, a fifth of them under the age of 18, and about 1.5 million gave birth, said Vladimir Kulakov, vice president of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. “Many more” abortions weren’t reported. [See Moscow News]
In 1991, the International Herald Tribune reported: “An entrenched ‘abortion culture’ in Russia and Eastern Europe has outlived the collapse of communism by more than a decade.” More from the article: The most startling statistics come from Russia, where abortion is used more than anywhere else in Europe — measured both in absolute terms and per capita. According to the World Health Organization, Russian women in 1990 registered 1,971 abortions for every 1,000 live births — or roughly two abortions for every childbirth. A decade later, the ratio stubbornly remains at 1,696 abortions per 1,000 births.

Those who think demographic statistics should be of interest only to social scientists and policy wonks should pay close attention to Stanley Kurtz’s recent article, “Demographics and the Culture War,” published in the current edition of Policy Review. A Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, Kurtz is one of the most thoughtful observers of social trends on today’s scene.