In Familaris consortio (46), Pope John Paul II, before outlining a charter of family rights, mentions "that the church openly and strongly defends the rights of the family against the intolerable usurpations of society and the state." What are the causes of these intolerable usurpations or abuses? The family, which is "the basic cell of society and subject of rights and duties before the state or any community" rather than being positively supported by the society or state, instead "finds itself the victim of society," finds "institutions and laws unjustly ignore the inviolable rights of the family and human persons" even finds itself "violently attacked in its values and fundamental requirements." Among the clearest manifestations of these unjust, violent attacks on the family are the legalization, promotion and imposition by the state of three corner stones of anti-family family

planning, or population control, programs: abortion, sterilization and contraception.

The underlying, false foundation of the family planning movement is that too many children in the family and an increasing population in the nation (or world) is the cause of misery and poverty for individual families and nations. Though this Malthusian vision has been repeatedly proved false by the facts, the family planning mentality, typified by International Planned Parenthood, continues to vigorously and, in the Pope's words, violently to promote and impose this false vision. Through a persistent and well funded propaganda, the international family planning, population control groups have succeeded to a very great extent in imposing this false vision on the world. Reducing population growth, even by objectively immoral means, rather than solving the real problems of injustice, education, mistaken theories of economic development, corruption, etc. that cause poverty in families or in nations, is the intolerable solution forced upon contemporary families.

The first level at which this intolerable usurpation is seen is on the level of the law. The legalization of contraception and sterilization was a violent attack on the fundamental requirements and values of the family. It is analogous to legalizing theft: such would be a direct attack on the requirements of economic life. Even if more moral citizens refused to practice contraception or sterilization (or theft), the law has become a teacher of moral evil and increases the opportunities or temptations to sin. Further, while contraception and sterilization are at first proposed for the sake of reducing abortions and divorce (and hence protecting human life and the family), the actual result has been a radical increase in the number of abortions and divorces in nations that have legalized contraception.

The next level at which this intolerable usurpation is seen is at the level of promotion: contraception and sterilization (eventually backed up by abortion) are not only possible choices for families, they are promoted as best choices, even necessary choices, for the common good of the state. Everywhere this positive promotion has begun, we see the nightmare of sexual promiscuity, disrespect for women, and family breakdown predicted by Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae, and the emergence of the culture of death described by John Paul II in the Gospel of Life.

At the final level, we see instances, abortion in China, sterilization in Peru and India, where the state has directly and violently attacked the family by actually forcing women to have abortions or be sterilized. This final usurpation of family rights, however, is only a logical extension of the utilitarian premises of family planning/population control: population growth is the greatest evil

facing the state, if sterilization or abortion are not evil in themselves, then women can be compelled to abort or be sterilized for the common good in the way carriers of SARS can be forced to accept

quarantine for the common good. This brings us back full circle and we understand why, before enumerating the rights of the family, the Pope speaks of these intolerable usurpations, for without a clear understanding of true nature, dignity and value of human life and of the family, and their most inviolable rights, every other kind of family right is endangered.