On Wednesday there was an article in the UK's The Guardian about a new Catholic church appeal against birth control. The article mentions that an Austrian scientists whose discoveries helped to create hormonal birth control is having some regrets, saying that

in most of Europe there was now "no connection at all between sexuality and reproduction". He said: "This divide in Catholic Austria, a country which has on average 1.4 children per family, is now complete."

The scientist went on to say that the low birthrate in Europe is an epidemic worse than obesity in Europe, and one that receives less attention. The Catholic Church jumped on these comments as proof of thier correctness in condeming hormonal birth control. Then they went farther in thier condemnation, claiming to have proof that birth control has been found to have abortive effects and environmental effects on male fertility as well as female fertility.

There are a couple issues with this.
First, there is the obvious problem that the Catholic church is basically making up claims about birth control that  are pretty much understood to be untrue. Hormonal Birth Control only prevents fulls ovulation, if a woman is pregnant it will not give her an abortion. While there have been environmental effects found from the hormones in birth control, the few articles I could find spoke only about fish in streams where the man-made hormones have been released, not with male and female human fertility. So, of course, I call BS on the Catholic church.

But there is another thing that bothers me about this worry over European birthrates: racism. Maybe I am oversensitive, but whenever I hear panic over birthrates in Western countries, it seems to come with an implied need to keep up with developing (and generally non-white) areas of the world whose birthrates are much higher. The Austrian Church representative in the Guardian article mentioned birth control's problems as falling birthrates specifically in the West and the scientist described those who chose not have children as

"wanting to enjoy their schnitzels while leaving the rest of the world to get on with it"

At first I thought I was reading too much into the article. Then I found this blog from Law Students for Reproductive Justice, written in response to the Catholic Church's earlier outcries on birthrates last year, when the Pope visited Vienna. The author is uncomfortable with the Church's arguments for the same reasons I am, because the arguments imply

that Europe’s embracing of legalized abortion and rejection of Catholic teachings regarding birth control could threaten the continent’s existence, leaving a world where Catholicism predominates not in traditionally white European countries but in Latin American countries that are devout in the way Europe used to be

Overall, I am not sure how I think Western governments should deal with low birthrates. However, I do think that in our world, with all Western governments clamping down on immigration and issues of civil war, genocide, famine and the HIV/AIDS pandemic tearing apart countries and continents, the focus of the Catholic church on making more white Europeans have babies comes across as a bit detached, and even a bit racist.