Profamilia, the Association for the Welfare of the Colombian Family, was begun in 1965. It includes the largest Planned Parenthood clinic in the world. Profamilia's acceptors have increased from 83 in 1965 to 73,000 in 1972. In addition to the Profamilia service center, Pilot Center, there were 43 clinics in 29 Colombian cities in 1972. In that same year, Profamilia's Education Department carried out 15,265 talks for 208,159 prospective family planning users and gave 6116 film presentations to 163,709 people in urban areas. In rural areas some 6893 conferences and 2542 film presentations were given to over a quarter million people. In 1971 Profamilia began a nonclinical contraceptive distribution project in Risaralda. There is also a voluntary sterilization program. 2000 vasectomies have been performed and they are now averaging 100 per month. 398 family planning information centers were attended by 20,000 individuals in 1972. Profamilia has been a member of the International Planned Parenthood Federation since 1968.
As government increasingly recognizes its own obligations to support and provide family planning as a health and social measure, serious questions are raised as to the proper role for Planned Parenthood World Federation as a private organization. Federal programs both at home and abroad tend to make private fundraising more difficult, whatever the role of this organization may be. Contrary to common impression, experience thus far indicates that the existence of governmental programs does not decrease demands on Planned Parenthood as a private agency. A wide gap also exists between public acceptance, which has been realized, and public conviction, which still has not been accepted. Only those who feel distress at the vision of an all-encompassing megalopolis, only those with concern for the qualify of life in the crowd, and only those who see finite limits of resources recognize that the US must someday plan a halt to population growth. As the gap between the developed and the underdeveloped world widens, economists point out that the US, with less than 6% of the world's population, already consumes some 50% of the world's available raw materials. Business and government leaders are beginning to understand the rate at which an industrial and affluent society consumes the world's substance and threatens the environment. If the assumption is correct that the population explosion constitutes a major threat to life on earth, then America's own attitudes and actions at home, as well as abroad and in the developing countries, are vital. In the next few years Planned Parenthood faces the task of converting the tide of public acceptance into one of conviction and effective action on a giant scale both at home and abroad. In its effort, Planned Parenthood has continued to expand its own service functions. It now has 157 local affiliates with an additional 30 in the organizational stage. In 1967 Planned Parenthood affiliates operated 470 family planning centers, 71 more than in the previous year. Beginning in 1964 an attempt was made to quantify the needs and the costs of bringing birth control services to all who need it in the US. The partnership with government has been more intimate than simple parallelism of effort. Planned Parenthood initiated or helped to administer nearly half of the family planning projects sponsored by the War on Poverty. It has served as a consultant on family planning programs to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and assisted affiliates and other community agencies in developing project applications for federal funds totalling about $4 million, of which about $2 million for 25 projects has been funded. Planned Parenthood World Population has undertaken the planning function and has for that purpose established a national technical assistance center and program.
During the last few years Taiwan had made steady progress in family planning and has ambitious plans for the future. Newly projected by the Taiwan Provincial Government is the Taiwan Family Planning Research Institute, which will combine functions of the Taiwan Family Planning Committee and the Taiwan Population Research Center. The Institute will undertake research and implement its findings. Computers will be utilized in a program that aims to reduce the birthrate to less than 2% annually before the end of 1972. Family planning workers will be trained to work with Taiwan's 300,000 married women aged 20-30 in spacing births and limiting families. All aspects of the program are voluntary. Public and private agencies cooperate well and further programs are expected to continue this partnership. General awareness exists of the importance of family planning in densely populated Taiwan.
Most governments that have considered the population problem have been doing a part time job, working to stabilize the population by spreading knowledge of oral contraception (OC) and other contraceptive devices. An inadequate job is being done in promoting the reduction of the birthrate. What is needed is an all out effort from all countries concerned. It was only in 1965 that a President of the US for the 1st time made a positive statement about the government's position and support for family planning programs. Until then all government agencies were careful to avoid discussing this matter in opening meetings. Thereafter, President Johnson repeatedly indicated that he recognized the seriousness of the problem and the need for intelligent and direct action. Yet, the appropriation and distribution of funds for population control in the US and developing countries has failed to keep pace with the superlative statements made by national and responsible individuals on the importance of the problem. Family planning is more than a program just for the distribution of contraceptive devices. Where knowledgeable personnel are available, they try to identify the broad social problems resulting from large familles. They try to influence the behavior of the individual couples with regard to family size. Yet, even in the US the number of personnel is inadequate to carry out this large educational program. The Committee on Population of the National Academy of Sciences stressed several points: a zero rate of population growth may prove essential in the long run but as a goal within the time horizon of present policy it has little support in either the developed or developing countries, certainly not among governments; a need exists for exploration of a broader range of measures for their potential contribution to the easing of population pressures, particularly in the developing countries where rapid population growth is particularly threatening; programs of social change need to operate within the framework of existing values, and few governments are yet prepared to adopt stringent economic or social means to bring down birthrates.
Various bourgeois theories, including the reactionary Malthusianism and its variants, challenge the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory on the growth of population. Bourgeois science maintains that unchanging biological laws of proliferation form the foundation of social life. Malthus, in his "An Essay on the Principle of Population," contends that population increases in a geometric rate, while means of subsistence tend to increase only in an arithmetic rate: neither the way of production nor social conditions but this law of nature in control of proliferation had been the cause of overpopulation, which again leads to misery, hunger, and unemployment. From this follows the possible conclusion that the working classes should be concerned not about how to change the social order but how to reduce the number of childbirths. Progressive science views the laws of social life in a totally different way. Marxism-Leninism teaches that population size, despite the markedly important role played by it in historical progress, fails to represent that main force of social progress which determines the mode of production and of the distribution of material goods, but just the reverse: the mode of production determines the growth of population, the changes in its density and composition. Marxism-Leninism teaches that each historical stage of production (slavery, feudalism, capitalism) has its own special, historically valid demographic law. Bourgeois science maintains that humankind faces an absolute overpopulation caused by the means of production lagging behind the growth of population. Actually this is only a relative overpopulation due to the fact that capitalistic production is subjected to the interests of increasing capitalistic profit and not to those of meeting the demands of population. In socialist countries, production is incessantly developing and expanding, and employment of the entire productive population is ensured. Consequently, the problem of relative overpopulation is eliminated. This represents the primary difference between the demographic law of socialism and the law of capitalism. In the Soviet Union a gradual decrease of the birthrate and the growth rate of population is evident. The industrialization of the country and collectivization of the peasant farms carried into effect within a short time by the Soviet rule ensured quick progress in economy. The high standard of economic and cultural development achieved in the Soviet Union soon affected the indices of the population's production. The birthrate in the Soviet Union was affected essentially by the causes acting toward its decrease as in the western countries, but under socialist conditions of production these asserted themselves largely in a different way. The experience of the Soviet Union demonstrates that by making use of the scientific and technical knowledge at the command of humankind, industrialization can be realized.
