In the 1960s Henry Kissinger completed National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200), which is more commonly referred to as the "Kissinger Report" (http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PCAAB500.pdf). Kissinger says that the greatest threat to America is not the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but the overpopulation of third-world countries. NSSM 200 discusses several mechanisms that control population growth, such as war, famine, disease, pestilence, poverty and immigration.
Dr. Al Bartlett's (http://www.albartlett.org/) says, "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function" (you can watch his famous lecture on population growth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9znsuCphHUU&playnext=1...). He then goes through the stark reality of what will happen if we continue our exponential growth against finite natural resources.
Research by economists John Donohue and Steven Levit at the University of Chicago (http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/DonohueLevittT...) showed that the legalizing of abortion started to reduce violent crime by the 1980s because would-be impoverished people weren't growing up to be criminals. You may have read about this is Levit's book, Freakonomics (http://freakonomicsbook.com/).
Abortion, one of our most controversial issues, is primarily about population control, but this rarely gets talked about. It's the establishment's pink elephant that's been sitting in the room since the 1970s (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/magazine/12ginsburg-t.html...). We argue about "right to life" and "right to choose" and most have never even considered the bigger issue because that's the way the issue has been framed.
The question we should be asking is, "Do you believe that population control is a good thing or a bad thing?"
At the end of Dr. Bartlett's lecture on population growth, he presents the "Great Challenge." He asks, "Can you think of any problem on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted or advanced by having larger populations at the local level, the state level, the national level, or globally?"
My answer to his challenge is: Yes, larger populations mean we have more of our greatest resource -- ourselves. Our creativity and ingenuity has developed solutions to our greatest problems, but we need true and accurate information so that we make better decisions and work toward a solution.