2. A COMMON VOCABULARY: WIDESPREAD, SIMPLISTIC, AND ERRONEOUS

For too long, most of the discussions about population have developed a certain universal and erroneous popular vocabulary, according to which the world is viewed as a prisoner of an "exponential", even "galloping" demographic growth, which is causing a "demographic explosion"--the so-called "demographic time bomb". The Pontifical Council for the Family, which has demonstrated in one of its publications[⁶] that this "popular vocabulary" really lacks all foundation, is pleased to note that, even in some agencies of the UN, the truth regarding the demographic situation has begun to be recognized. Indeed, for 30 years, the conferences sponsored by this organization have provoked and nurtured unfounded fears about demography, especially in the southern countries. On this alarmist basis, different agencies of the UN have invested and continue to invest huge financial resources in order to compel many countries to institute Malthusian policies. It has been proven that these programs, always imported from abroad, usually involve coercive measures of fertility control. In the same way, international aid for development is regularly granted on the condition of establishing programs of population control which include forced sterilizations, or sterilizations performed without proper informed consent. Local governments are also adopting such Malthusian policies, and non-governmental organizations--of which the most important is the well-known International Planned Parenthood Federation--are actively fostering these policies.

In the poor countries, the first victims of these programs are the innocent and helpless populations. They are systematically deceived and driven to consent to their mutilation under the false argument that it is, for them, a necessary antecedent to development.