Indira Gandhi Quotes
Do you know that, until recently, poor people brought children into the world for the sole purpose of making use of them? But how can you change, by force or all of a sudden, an age-old habit? The only way is to plan births, by one means or another.
Fallaci, Oriana. Interview with History. Translated by John Shepley, Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1976.
There were few reformers who had such a long, extensive, and activist career in both England and India. She began her career as a minister’s wife but was literally turned out of her house by her husband for whom she was not religiously orthodox enough. This started her religious activism which ended with her as an atheist. She led a match-girl’s strike, founded a Hindu college in India, and was even arrested for pornography in England when she wrote a book advocating birth control. She is on many lists of “Great Indians” along with Gandhi and Nehru. She was Jiddu Krishnamurti’s teacher.
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.
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.
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.
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi was an Indian politician and a central figure of the Indian National Congress. She was the first and, to date, only female Prime Minister of India. Indira Gandhi was the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India. She served as prime minister from January 1966 to March 1977 and again from January 1980 until her assassination in October 1984, making her the second longest-serving Indian prime minister after her father.
