How I Learned to Love the Bomb

Abstract

Chapter 5 explores Europe countries’ rapid abandonment of efforts to boost their birth rates and the dramatic shift of natalist attention to the global South. Uncovering the origins of a new discourse on population, this chapter demonstrates how the concept of development was melded with the newly created problem of high fertility in the postcolonial world. It looks at the role of scientists, doctors, academics, and military leaders in driving a massive expansion of Western development efforts in the area of reproduction and the creation of modern birth control techniques. In addition, this chapter highlights how an extremely broad range of Western-based, organizations from the World Bank to the CIA and Planned Parenthood, became involved in encouraging Third World governments to lower the fertility of their populations.