Preface. This article points out that unmanaged population growth tends to lead to instability, poverty, and migration to Europe and the U.S. But does not address the other overshoot factors human overpopulation are causing such as biodiversity loss, and deforestation to cook food with charcoal. The starvation also leads to revolt, violence, and migration to Europe and the U.S.
Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”, The Preservation of Knowledge, Women in ecology Podcasts: WGBH, Financial Sense, Jore, Planet: Critical, Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, Kunstler 253 &278, Peak Prosperity, Index of best energyskeptic posts
NPR (2026) The Trump team is quietly eliminating U.S. support for birth control abroad (excerpts, comments, reworded more succinctly)
Family planning had been a priority since the U.S. Agency for International Development was first established in 1961. It has been bipartisan and supported during both Republican and Democratic administrations. The U.S. has been the top contributor to international family planning and reproductive health efforts, contributing over 40% of funding worldwide — over $500 million.
U.S. support has changed millions of lives. The Guttmacher Institute — a nonprofit research organization that supports access to family planning — estimates U.S. funds gave over 47 million women and couples access to modern contraceptive care each year. That, in turn, prevented 17.1 million unintended pregnancies annually and saved 34,000 lives because women and girls did not die from complications during pregnancy or childbirth.
Not anymore.
The second Trump administration has moved to eliminate programs for contraception and other family planning work abroad. Congress actually appropriated funds for this work, but the administration has not spent it. And it has shut down programs aimed at helping people choose when to have children, such as efforts to improve access to birth control and provide resources for treating sexually transmitted diseases. The issue here is not abortion. For more than 50 years, it’s been illegal for foreign aid to fund abortions.
Asked at a Congressional hearing about appropriations for family planning in May 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said there was no plan to spend that money. Looking at the Trump administration’s budget documents and memos that show family planning has repeatedly been targeted for cuts.
the abruptness of the cuts compounded the impact on the 41 countries where the U.S. had supported family planning programs. “For the top five recipient countries — which are these very large, high-need countries mostly in sub-Saharan Africa: Nigeria, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo — the loss was very disruptive, very significant,” she says.
This article also explains that women want to have a say in how many children and when they have them, but have to keep this hidden from their husbands who want as many children as possible:
“She was swallowing [the pill] from my house,” explains Muyingo, who served as a community health worker in Mityana District for 12 years. The woman had told Muyingo that she feared her husband would beat her if he knew about the birth control. “The man is ever asking for a child,” the woman said to Muyingo. She already had three children and didn’t want another one, at least not right now. So she used Muyingo’s home as a place to store and take her pills. Muyingo has similar arrangements with many neighbors.
[ I know from anthropology and peace corp accounts that women secretly approach these outsiders to ask for birth control. Today, over 99% of global maternal deaths occur in developing nations, where mortality ratios can exceed 500-1000 per 100,000 in high-risk areas. For each birth. So with 4 children, the odds go up to 2 to 4%. Many accounts describe how mothers can barely feed their existing children, and have to choose which one to feed little to in the future so the others can survive. Who wants to make that choice? Better to wait for another child until there is enough food to keep them alive. Duh. ]