Panel rejects overture aimed at reducing population growth By Craig M. Kibler The Layman Online Tuesday, June 29, 2004 2004 General Assembly Richmond, Virginia June 26-July 3, 2004 General Assembly news index RICHMOND, Va. – An overture that proposed a number of political steps to stem population growth – including calling upon President George W. Bush and Congress to reverse their policies and decisions that have reduced federal spending to the United Nations and other groups that promote abortion and contraceptives to control world population – has been rejected. The General Assembly Committee on International Issues on Monday night voted 35-18-5 to reject the proposal, which began with the assertion that the Biblical mandate in Genesis 1:28 – "to be fruitful and multiply" – had been exceeded. The disapproval of the overture now will go to the full General Assembly. Many of the commissioners questioned the overture's alarm over what it saw as global population growth, saying that fertility rates are plunging around the globe, although not enough yet to reduce global population. Carl Batzel, stated clerk of the Presbytery of Lackawanna which proposed the overture, spoke against it, saying, "I look in vain to find one single new thought or procedure" in the overture. "Overpopulation? Too many people is a myth," he said, adding that the overture "offers nothing new, it oversimplifies and diverts our attention from the good work already being done." Another commissioner, speaking in favor of the overture, likened it to the them of the General Assembly – "That All May Have Life In Fullness." The overture, he said, is about the fullness, indeed the very survival, of life. ... Threats come from the impact of human needs and human demands. We depend on the healthy functioning of the human System - we need more in order to life a full life." The overture included a number of proposals: Urging young women to consider remaining birth-free. "… a very substantial reduction of consumption by the comfortable and the affluent." Resisting "the temptations posed by advertising and other enticements to wasteful, injurious consumption." It called on "young people and couples – Presbyterians, those of other denominations and other faiths, and all who acknowledge responsibility to serve the common good – to make their private decisions about procreation in light of the compelling need to reduce the human impact upon the planet …" The overture also asked both the proponents and opponents of abortion "to work together to support measures that prevent unintended pregnancies, recognizing that abortions, whether legal or illegal, increase when family planning services are not available." (USA).

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