In
the past year I have traveled to Zimbabwe and Uganda. In both African
countries, I was stunned by the pervasiveness of pro-contraception
propaganda. I traveled over 1200 miles across Uganda. Everywhere I went I
encountered huge billboards stoking fear about the consequences of
unintended pregnancy and pushing all manner of contraceptive devices,
injectables, and pills. As I wrote earlier
this year, the streets surrounding the Ugandan parliament are filled
with advertisements supporting population control and pushing
contraceptives, while even the remotest villages are not free from these
propaganda billboards.
And
it’s not just billboards: the population controllers also fill the
radio and television airwaves with contraception ads. These ads are so
pervasive it’s impossible to avoid them. Such aggressive population
control propaganda would be disturbing enough if it was funded by the
country’s own government. After all, this saturation of the public space
with ads is clearly less about offering citizens the freedom to use
contraception if they wish, than it is about psychological coercion in
pursuit of someone else’s agenda.
In many cases that “someone else” turns out not to be the country’s own government...
