The Cato Institute

The Real-Life Handmaid’s Tale Happening Around the World Today

Global panic about population growth has led to millions of forced sterilizations that continue to this day…

This week, viewers will get another chance to submerge themselves in the dystopian future created by Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid’s Tale, based on the novel about the government forcing women to bear children to counter a declining population, resonated with audiences across the world.

However, the reverse situation — government coercing people to have fewer or no children — has been happening around the world for decades, and it ought to generate just as much outrage.

Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 best-seller The Population Bomb incited global panic with claims that out-of-control population growth would deplete resources, bringing about widespread starvation. 

Ehrlich’s jeremiad led to human rights abuses around the world, including millions of forced sterilizations in Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Indonesia, Bangladesh and India — as well as China’s draconian “one child” policy.

In 1975, officials sterilized 8 million men and women in India alone, and In 2012, India’s Supreme Court found that “unrealistic targets have been set for sterilization procedures with the result that non-consensual and forced sterilizations are taking place.”

The sheer scale of this authoritarian nightmare is difficult to imagine, but tyrannical population-control measures are not only repugnant but also senseless.

Since Ehrlich began preaching about overpopulation-induced Armageddon, the number of people on the planet has more than doubled. Yet yearly, famine deaths have declined by millions. Recent famines are caused by war, not exhaustion of natural resources. As production increased, prices fell, and calorie consumption rose. Hunger is in retreat.

The evidence isn’t on the overpopulation alarmists’ side. More people can mean more prosperity. Human ingenuity, it turns out, is the ultimate resource.

And, interestingly, many people now worry that the world will produce too few, rather than too many, children — echoing the situation in the dystopian Gilead.

So while you’re watching season 2 of , keep in mind that the reverse of The Handmaid’s Tale is just as horrifying — and it has supporters trying to make it a reality.

Learn more…

Carrie Buck and America’s Dark History of Eugenics

On the morning of October 19, 1927, the Commonwealth of Virginia forcibly sterilized Carrie Buck.

Born into poverty, on July 2, 1906, Carrie spent much of her early life with foster parents. When Carrie was 16, a nephew of her foster family sexually assaulted her. When she became pregnant, her foster family had her declared “feebleminded" and institutionalized. She was put through a kangaroo court—complete with witnesses she had never met and a lawyer who was working for the other side—before she was summarily cut open and had a section from each of her Fallopian tubes removed.

We know Carrie’s story because her case eventually made it to the Supreme Court. But, Carrie is not alone. As late as the 1970s, at least 60,000 Americans were forcibly sterilized in order to “cleanse the race” of undesirable genes.

What’s worse, Buck v. Bell—the case that made Carrie the face of America’s dark history of forced sterilization—has never been explicitly overruled.

Learn more about America’s dark history of eugenics—and how it’s still impacting policy today….

China Abandons One-Child Policy

Today, China abandoned its 35 year-old one-child policy. 

Based on the now debunked threat of overpopulation that was popularized by Stanford University scholar Paul Ehrlich, the communist government subjected the Chinese people to forced sterilizations and abortions. Many new-born babies were either killed or left to die. 

Today, the Chinese population suffers from a dangerous gender imbalance that favors boys over girls at a ratio of 117:100, and a demographic implosion that threatens future economic growth and prosperity. 

The one-child policy is a reminder of what happens when governments are allowed to interfere in deeply personal decisions of individual citizens and their families.