Elon Musk, Bill Maher, Mark Steyn, Ronald Reagan, and Paul VI on Demography, Life, and Murder

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

P. A. Ritzer, Volume 26

Please see Part One: “One Big Family,” and Part Two: “Truth Pierces the Veil of Propaganda” of “The Big Lie of Overpopulation and the Fear that Drives It,” and “The War on Women and Population Control.”

Nevertheless overpopulation remained one of the “macro fears,” along with others like man-made global warming, that the elitists pushed into the dominant culture to help create the “free-floating anxiety” necessary for the “mass formation” that can lead to the totalitarianism they seek, as described by Professor Mattias Desmet in The Psychology of Totalitarianism.¹ Still, I finally discovered one voice that broke into the media and intelligently challenged the overpopulation lie. It was many years ago now, maybe around 2005 or so, and I cannot find the exact article—though I have found others of the many he wrote on the subject—but as I remember it, Mark Steyn began the article in National Review by stating that a somber earth-shaking milestone had passed with no attention paid to it. That event was the moment that the population—not the fertility rate—but the actual population of Russia began to decline, a first for the developed nations.

Those of us who have spent any time reading about demographics know that once a population begins to fall, it is very difficult to reverse it. It would take a lot of women having a lot of babies to do so. In “It’s Still the Demography, Stupid,” Mr. Steyn offered, in 2016, a summary and update of his writing and concerns about the population declines in the West and what those declines portended. He pointed to his article “It’s the Demography, Stupid,” which appeared in The Wall Street Journal and The New Criterion, and also to his book America Alone.² I strongly recommend that everyone read any or all of Mr. Steyn’s writing on the subject. Mr. Steyn so clearly and brilliantly cuts through the cultural miasma generated by the godless that I fear he is too often rewarded in the way that man tends to reward prophets, think Jeremiah in the cistern. May God bless and protect him.

On the other hand, one voice that pops up on the side of the overpopulation phobia is that of Bill Maher. I do not watch Mr. Maher’s programing, but I have seen clips of his interviews and statements, and I am struck by how—despite his vulgarity and blatant anti-human views and his sophomoric and twisted humor—he sometimes evaluates things with surprising accuracy and is honest with himself and others about what he thinks (however ignorant he may be of much of the truth about the topics on which he opines) even when it goes against the grain of his liberal following. Whether he is right or wrong, I believe he states what he really believes. And he has made it clear that he believes the overpopulation lies.

Judging from some of the clips I have seen, Mr. Maher appears to be genuinely anxious about overpopulation and with a vehemence that suggests that in his own life he has taken the common steps, advocated by the population-control zealots, that assail nature and thereby tend to cement one in his error. In one famous clip from an interview with Elon Musk, Maher, who appears to consider himself an intellectual, without managing to hide some degree of insecurity in the presence of the brilliant and remarkably collected Musk, calls into question Musk’s concern about “civilizational decline” and “plummeting birthrates.” But the better informed Musk assures Maher that though he is “not suggesting complacency. . . . we’re not in any danger of resource collapse.”³

But in another rather jarring clip, Bill Maher honestly defends pro-lifers by saying that they are not anti-women and to say so is dishonest, but that they believe that abortion is murder: “I can respect the absolutist position. I really can. I . . . I . . . I . . . scold the left . . . on . . . when they say ‘Oh, you know what, they just hate women,’ . . . They don’t hate women. They just made that up. They think it's murder. And it kind of is. I'm just okay with that. I am. I mean, there’s eight billion people in the world. I’m sorry, we won’t miss you. That’s my position on that.” To the gasping response from the audience Maher questions: “What? Is that not your position if you’re pro-choice?” To Piers Morgan’s shocked reply and suggestion that Maher’s position is just because he does not like children, Maher replies, “You said you’re pro-choice; that’s your position too.”⁴

Thus with brutal honesty does Bill Maher strip away all pretense and expose—and force his audience and guests to confront—the anti-human truth of the “pro-choice” position, to which his audience responds with gasps and shocked silence, which in turn draws from Maher incredulity that they have not accepted the reality that abortion is “murder. . . . kind of” of defenseless children in their most vulnerable and dependent state. That is the choice in the “pro-choice” position, which he believes is necessary to ward off the specter of overpopulation that apparently frightens him so. Well should they gasp.

Lives not worthy to be lived, some 60 million of them brutally aborted since 1973 in the United States alone, for what?

Ronald Reagan had come to the same conclusion about the nature of abortion and articulated it most eloquently in his last campaign for the presidency against Walter Mondale in 1984. The Republican Party today could take a lesson from Reagan’s clear, principled, and fundamental position. Remember, Reagan won forty-nine states, losing only Mondale’s Minnesota. In President Reagan and Vice President Mondale’s first debate in 1984, President Reagan said:

I have believed that in the appointment of judges that all that was specified in the party platform was that they respect the sanctity of human life. Now, that, I would want to see in any judge, and with regard to any issue having to do with human life. . . . With me abortion is not a problem of religion; it’s a problem with the Constitution. I believe that until and unless someone can establish that the unborn child is not a living human being, then that child is already protected by the Constitution, which guarantees life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to all of us. . . . I know there was weeks and weeks of testimony before a Senate committee . . . and at the end of all of that, not one shred of evidence was introduced that the unborn child was not alive. . . . All the evidence so far comes down on the side of the unborn child being a living human being. . . .

The laws regarding that always were state laws. It was only when the Supreme Court handed down a decision that the federal government intervened in what had always been a state policy. Our laws against murder are state laws; so I would think that this would be the point of enforcement. . . .

Now, it is a sin if you’re taking a human life. At the same time in our Judeo-Christian tradition, we recognize the right of taking a human life in self defense. And therefore, I’ve always believed that a mother, if medically it is determined that her life is at risk if she goes through with the pregnancy, she has a right then to take the life of even her own unborn child in defense of her own. . . .

Well, with regard to this being a personal choice, isn’t that what a murderer is insisting on, his or her right to kill someone because of whatever fault they think justifies that? Now, I’m not capable, and I don't think you are, any of us, to make this determination that must be made with regard to human life. I am simply saying that I believe that that’s where the effort should be directed to make that determination. I don’t think that any of us should be called upon here to stand and make a decision as to what other things might come under the self-defense tradition. That too would have to be worked out then, when you once recognize that we’re talking about a life, but in this great society of ours, wouldn’t it make a lot more sense, in this gentle and kind society, if we had a program that made it possible, for when incidents come along in which someone feels they must do away with that unborn child, that instead we make it available for the adoption? There are a million-and-a-half people out there standing in line waiting to adopt children who can’t have them any other way.⁵

Contrast that with Bill Maher, who, in an almost endearing sincerity, defends the position of pro-lifers and then admits that he is OK with “kind of” murdering unborn children because there are eight billion people in the world, which he thinks are too many. He would rather we savagely “murder” millions of innocent children in utero now to avoid imagined problems that may arise if the population increases. Does Mr. Maher, who is obviously an intelligent man, not realize the profound evil in this position and the company this position puts him among. There have been others who believed that murdering millions would make life better for those deemed worthy enough, according to varying subjective criteria, to live: Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Pol Pot, just to name a few. Mr Maher, and other supporters of abortion, might well heed the words of Dr. Leo Alexander, a Boston psychiatrist who was consultant to the Secretary of War working with the office of Chief American Counsel for Nazi war crimes in Nuremberg. He said of the Nazi’s slaughter of at least eleven million people: “It started with the acceptance of the attitude, basic in the euthanasia movement, that there is such a thing as a life not worthy to be lived.”⁶

Lives not worthy to be lived, some 60 million of them “terminated” since 1973 in the United States alone, for what? What is Bill Maher, and those who think like him, so afraid of that he would support this? So afraid of that he prefers mass murder “kind of”? It is apparent that Mr. Maher makes a high income, has no children, and can afford all the comfort he would need and a great deal of luxury. So it would make little sense for him to fear that he will not have enough. Does he fear that others may not have enough? If so, why would he place the well-being of strangers who may not have enough over strangers whom he is just OK with being kind of murdered in the womb so that other strangers have enough? That makes no sense. So what is it that he and those who think like him fear?

What may make sense is that, according to Wikipedia: “Owing to his disagreement with the Catholic Church’s doctrine about birth control, Maher's father stopped taking Maher and his sister to Catholic Mass when Maher was thirteen.[17]”⁷ Bill Maher stated the same in an interview with Harry Smith on The Early Show on CBS some fifteen years ago.⁸ If it is true that Maher was born on January 20, 1956, Maher would have turned 13 in 1969. That would be less than one year after Pope Paul VI published the encyclical Humanae Vitae on July 25, 1968, reasserting the Church’s teaching that contraception (artificial birth control) is unlawful. The pope began the encyclical: “The transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God the Creator. It has always been a source of great joy to them, even though it sometimes entails many difficulties and hardships.” And then after recognizing that the modern world raised new concerns, he wrote that: “This new state of things gives rise to new questions.” And he further stated that these new questions require “from the teaching authority of the Church a new and deeper reflection on the principles of the moral teaching on marriage—a teaching which is based on the natural law as illuminated and enriched by divine Revelation.”⁹

The encyclical then went on to state:

Therefore We base Our words on the first principles of a human and Christian doctrine of marriage when We are obliged once more to declare that the direct interruption of the generative process already begun and, above all, all direct abortion, even for therapeutic reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as lawful means of regulating the number of children.(14) Equally to be condemned, as the magisterium of the Church has affirmed on many occasions, is direct sterilization, whether of the man or of the woman, whether permanent or temporary.(15)

Similarly excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means.(16)¹⁰

Apparently the reaction of Bill Maher’s father to the conclusions reached from that “new and deeper reflection” “from the teaching authority of the Church” drove him to remove Bill and his sister, and presumably himself, from the Catholic Church founded by Jesus Christ on St. Peter and the Apostles, which for believers is the community through which the salvation won by Christ is ordinarily made available to the world and the entire human race. As Humanae Vitae states:

It is in fact indisputable, as Our predecessors have many times declared,(1) that Jesus Christ, when He communicated His divine power to Peter and the other Apostles and sent them to teach all nations His commandments,(2) constituted them as the authentic guardians and interpreters of the whole moral law, not only, that is, of the law of the Gospel but also of the natural law. For the natural law, too, declares the will of God, and its faithful observance is necessary for men's eternal salvation.(3)¹¹

One’s opinions or feelings about contraception must run pretty deep to cut oneself off from what one used to believe, and had some degree of commitment to, is the community through which is ordinarily made available the graces by which one can attain eternal life.

What exactly might it be about the Church’s teaching that would lead one to reject the Church? Did the Church say that it was wrong to engage in sexual relations? No, the Church held, as it has from the beginning, that “the sexual activity, in which husband and wife are intimately and chastely united with one another, through which human life is transmitted, is, as the recent Council recalled, ‘noble and worthy.’(11)”¹² Did the Church say that couples must have many children? No, Humanae Vitae clearly states:

If therefore there are well-grounded reasons for spacing births, arising from the physical or psychological condition of husband or wife, or from external circumstances, the Church teaches that married people may then take advantage of the natural cycles immanent in the reproductive system and engage in marital intercourse only during those times that are infertile, thus controlling birth in a way which does not in the least offend the moral principles which We have just explained.(20)¹³

And that is where we will wrap up Part Three. Part Four will follow shortly.

Thank you.

P. A. Ritzer

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Again, thanks.

©2025 P. A. Ritzer

1. Mattias Desmet, The Psychology of Totalitarianism (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2022), 147.

2. Mark Steyn, “It’s Still the Demography, Stupid,” Steyn Online (19 January 2016), https://www.steynonline.com/7428/it-still-the-demography-stupid; “It’s the Demography, Stupid: The Reason the West is in Danger of Extinction,” WSJ Opinion, The Wall Street Journal (online) (4 January 2006), https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122531242161281449?reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink; “It’s the demography, stupid: What do Europe’s declining birthrates say about its chances of survival?” The New Criterion (January 2006), https://newcriterion.com/article/its-the-demography-stupid/.

3. Bill Maher, Elon Musk, “Elon Musk (Full Interview),” Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) YouTube (29 April 2023), 14:15 ff.

4. Bill Maher, Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) YouTube, (12 April 2024), cited by Ben Kew, “‘I’m Just Okay With That’: Bill Maher Admits Abortion is Murder and He Still Supports It (VIDEO),” The Gateway Pundit (13 April 2024),https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/04/im-just-okay-that-bill-maher-admits-abortion/; including clip from Citizen Free Press (@CitzenFreePress) on X (13 April 2024), https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1779084349196878042.

5. Ronald Reagan, “User Clip: DEBATES: Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale Debate Potential Abortion Policies: President Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale debate potential abortion policies in the first presidential debate of 1984,” (Program ID: 124723-1) C-Span (6 October 1984), accessed 31 December 2024, https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4761011/user-clip-debates-ronald-reagan-walter-mondale-debate-potential-abortion-policies.

6. Dr. Leo Alexander, “Medical Science Under Dictatorship,” New England Journal of Medicine (4 July 1949, as quoted by Malcolm Muggeridge in “The Humane Holocaust,” in the Afterword of Ronald Reagan’s Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation (New York: Thomas Nelson, 1984), 86.

7. “Bill Maher.” Wikipedia, “Last edited on 29 December 2024, at 23:46 (UTC),” accessed 30 December 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Maher. (Footnote 17 reads: “"Getting Blasphemous in the Presence of Bill Maher". Media.www.diamondbackonline.com. Archived from the original on December 21, 2008. Retrieved October 18, 2010.)”

8. Bill Maher, “Bill Maher’s ‘Religulous,’” CBS YouTube (29 September 2008).

9. Paul VI, Humanae Vitae (Vatican: The Holy See, 25 July 1968), Introduction, 3, 4, accessed 31 December 2024, https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae.html.

10. Ibid., 14 (including endnotes 14-16 in original):

“(14) See Council of Trent Roman Catechism, Part II, ch. 8; Pius XI, encyc. letter Casti connubii: AAS 22 (1930), 562-564; Pius XII, Address to Medico-Biological Union of St. Luke: Discorsi e radiomessaggi, VI, 191-192; Address to Midwives: AAS 43 (1951), 842-843; Address to Family Campaign and other family associations: AAS 43 (1951), 857-859; John XXIII, encyc. letter Pacem in terris: AAS 55 (1963), 259-260 [TPS IX, 15-16]; Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the World of Today, no. 51: AAS 58 (1966), 1072 [TPS XI, 293].”

“(15) See Pius XI, encyc. letter Casti connubii: AAS 22 (1930), 565; Decree of the Holy Office, Feb. 22, 1940: AAS 32 (1940), 73; Pius XII, Address to Midwives: AAS 43, (1951), 843-844; to the Society of Hematology: AAS 50 (1958), 734-735 [TPS VI, 394-395].”

“(16) See Council of Trent Roman Catechism, Part II, ch. 8; Pius XI, encyc. letter Casti connubii: AAS 22 (1930), 559-561; Pius XII, Address to Midwives: AAS 43 (1951), 843; to the Society of Hematology: AAS 50 (1958), 734-735 [TPS VI, 394-395]; John XXIII, encyc.letter Mater et Magistra: AAS 53 (1961), 447 [TPS VII, 331].”

11. Ibid., 4 (including endnotes 1-3 in original):

“(1) See Pius IX, encyc. letter Oui pluribus: Pii IX P.M. Acta, 1, pp. 9-10; St. Pius X encyc. letter Singulari quadam: AAS 4 (1912), 658; Pius XI, encyc.letter Casti connubii: AAS 22 (1930), 579-581; Pius XII, address Magnificate Dominum to the episcopate of the Catholic World: AAS 46 (1954), 671-672; John XXIII, encyc. letter Mater et Magistra: AAS 53 (1961), 457.”

“(2) See Mt 28. 18-19.”

“(3) See Mt 7. 21.”

12. Ibid., 11 (including endnote 11 in original):

“(11) See ibid.(Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the World of Today), no. 49: AAS 58 (1966), 1070 [TPS XI, 291-292].”

13. Ibid., 16 (including endnote 20 in original):

“(20) See Pius XII, Address to Midwives: AAS 43 (1951), 846.”