Lee Kuan Yew Quotes
We must encourage those who earn less than $200 per month and cannot afford to nurture and educate many children never to have more than two... We will regret the time lost if we do not now take the first tentative steps towards correcting a trend which can leave our society with a large number of the physically, intellectually and culturally anemic.
Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore, 1967
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The Clinton Administration decided not to issue the directive. To do so would have embroiled the administration in a huge abortion debate as the NSC has previously observed that no nation has ever reduced its population growth without using abortion as one of the techniques. India, for example, utilized both abortion and sterilization—both offensive to segments of American public opinion.
History has shown that as girls and women get educated and learn about family planning, their children are healthier and have better chances of survival and despite the lower death rate the population trend slows as a result of family planning.
In Burundi, family land is divided among the male children of a family. The average Burundian woman has 6.3 children, nearly triple the international fertility rate. With this fertility rate, the plots of land for each person inevitably get smaller and smaller over time. At 10,745 square miles, Burundi is slightly smaller than the U.S. state of Maryland, but it holds nearly twice as many people: about 10 million. The small plots of land are inefficient to farm and provide subsistence. So the nation was in a crises as there was little industrialization and land was essential for existence for most Burundians. See {35808} and {35809}.
In Burundi, family land is divided among the male children of a family. The average Burundian woman has 6.3 children at that time, nearly triple the international fertility rate. With this population growth rate, the plots of land for each person inevitably get smaller and smaller over time. At 10,745 square miles, Burundi is slightly smaller than the U.S. state of Maryland, but it holds nearly twice as many people: about 10 million. The small plots of land are inefficient to farm and provide subsistence. So the nation was in a crises as there was little industrialization and land was essential for existence for most Burundians. See {35807} and {35808}.
Despite the obvious benefits of family planning, there are a number of religious forces which see abortion and contraception as the same immoral act—the terminating of a life or potential life. This view is held by most clerics who are Orthodox Jews, Fundamentalist Protestants, Roman Catholics, and fundamentalist Muslims. The members of those religions however, do not always agree with their clergy. For example, the majority of American Catholics practice Birth Control as do many modern Muslims, most protestants and most Jews.
One of the most contentious activities in all political history is a government trying to regulate the number of children which its citizens can have. When a government tries to do this, they run into opposition by some religious people who oppose birth control in general or some birth control methods (eg abortion). In addition it is opposed by many people who do not want the government involved at all in a decision that is so personal. Yet many governments, under the press of perceived overpopulation, or in an effort to limit mental retardation, have attempted such regulation and that includes the United States where 40 states have at one time or another practiced forced sterilization of people who the state believed were unfit to bear children. China and India—the largest nations of the world—have both maintained government policies and practices to control population with China making it illegal to have more than 1 child. These programs have reduced the population counts, but at a terrible ethical cost and resentment of the affected people.
The Job Corps was planning allowing poor girls to enter as well the program which had been so successful for the boys. The immediate issue of the supply of birth control devices faced the program. Shriver, then the Poverty Czar with the concurrence of President Lyndon Johnson authorized the use of Federal moneys to pay for birth control devices for the female Job Corps members. This appears to be the first time that the Federal Government officially used public funds for birth control. Even with the voluntary ability of the girls to obtain birth control, pregnancy was still one of the major reasons for dropping out of the program.
Lee Kuan Yew GCMG CH SPMJ, often referred to by his initials LKY, was a Singaporean statesman and lawyer who served as Prime Minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990. As one of the founding members of the People's Action Party, Lee is recognised as the nation's founding father, credited with rapidly transitioning the country from a "developing third world country into a developed first world country within a single generation" under his leadership. Lee died of pneumonia on 23 March 2015, aged 91. In a week of national mourning, about 1.7 million Singaporean residents as well as world leaders paid tribute to him at his lying-in-state at Singapore's Parliament House and at community tribute sites around the country.
