July 2023 marked the 55th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s promulgation of Humanae Vitae. The 1968 encyclical, which reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s teaching against contraception, was a bombshell, in part because documents had already been leaked showing that a papally-appointed commission examining the issue had advised Paul VI to change Church teaching. (The Commission’s notes were allegedly leaked by Leo Alting von Geusau, a Vatican II peritus who would go on to leave the priesthood.1)
There was rapid and organized dissent. Father Charles E. Curran’s dissenting statement, appearing one week later in The New York Times, carried signatures from over 80 theologians. The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops signed the ‘Winnipeg Statement’ on September 27. A petition from the short-lived National Association of Laymen amassed over 700 signatures.
Outstripping many of the theological efforts was the reaction of the scientists, with a dissenting statement in December with over 2,600 signatures. Some scientists had grave concerns that Humanae Vitae would exacerbate the overpopulation crisis. Peter E. Hodgson, a Catholic scientist writing for New Blackfriars, declared that “the natural law arguments are insufficient to demonstrate the intrinsic evil of artificial birth control.”2
Three biologists led the charge for “a massive and unambiguous expression of scientific opinion”.3 Jeffrey J.W. Baker (1931-2020), Ernst Mayer (1904-2005), and Paul Ehrlich (1932-) composed a 417-word letter hastily titled, “Scientists’ Statement on Birth Control Encyclical.” The statement excoriated Paul VI, implicitly accusing him of starting another Holocaust, deeming him “unenlightened,” the encyclical’s consequences “evil,” the Church “antiquated and anti-human,” and the whole situation “repugnant.”
Baker, Ernst, and Ehrlich circulated packets by mail that included their Statement, a cover letter explaining their goal, and sheets for signatures (Name, Department, Institution). The trio encouraged recipients to circulate to interested colleagues and return all signatures by December 20, to Baker at the University of Puerto Rico.
The original plan was to collect signatures until December 20, 1968, and then issue a press release at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Dallas, Texas, December 26-30. The AAAS vetoed not only the press release, but the request to set up a booth to collect signatures. At the AAAS meeting, Baker encouraged a, “nationwide economic boycott of the Catholic Church to protest the papal ban.”4
Nevertheless, Ehrlich, Mayr, and Baker released their Statement to the press on December 30, 1968. To boost publicity, they wrote articles in the New Scientist and BioScience.5 As a result of those articles, and natural delays from mail, signatures continued to pour in, prompting an extended deadline. Currently, all records pertaining to this statement are housed at Stanford University, where Ehrlich serves as an emeritus faculty member. The archival records show just over 3,000 signatures. It is unclear if anything significant was done with the signatures that came after December 1968. (In page 293 of the archival records, there is a plaintive handwritten note from Baker to Ehrlich: “Paul – reassure me – These are being counted and filed, aren’t they? Hope you plug them in your speeches. Jeff.”)
Data
I cataloged signatures from 388 pages of archival records from Stanford’s archives, looking strictly at “Department” provided by each signatory. I counted 3,097 signatures appended to the Statement. As to whether those 3,097 signatories were biologists, here we have a taxonomy question. In the spirit of academic collaboration, my data is available for download. If you reuse the data in any way, please include attribution for myself and for Stanford’s archives.
Cover letter from the organizers
November 18, 1968
Dear Colleague,
The enclosed statement is sent to you either because one of the undersigned is personally acquainted with you, you were recommended to us, or because you have in your work given indication that you might be interested in signing it.
As you can see, the statement protests the encyclical, Humanae Vitae, issued this past summer by Pope Paul VI on the topic of human sexuality and birth control. You will note that the statement is quite a strongly worded one. It was our feeling that a strong statement with fewer signatures would be far more effective than a watered-down one bearing many signatures.
If you and/or some of your colleagues and graduate students would be interested in signing the statement, please do so in the space provided and return it by December 20, 1968. Feel free to put additional signatures on the back or on a separate attached sheet. The collected signatures will then be added to those gathered at the December 26-30, 1968 meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Dallas, Texas, and turned over to the press. Since support has already been given us by some Roman Catholic scientists, we are hopeful of gathering a large number of signatures even prior to the Dallas meetings. For this reason, we ask that you do not leak the news of this statement to the press before December 30, 1968.
It is too late, of course, to prevent the Papal Encyclical. We hope, however, that it is not too late to lend a hand to those both inside and outside the Roman Catholic Church who are working diligently to nullify at least some of its potentially tragic effects.
Yours very sincerely,
Jeffrey J. W. Baker,
Professor of Biology,
University of Puerto Rico
Paul R. Ehrlich,
Professor of Biology,
Stanford University
Ernst Mayr,
Professor of Biology,
Harvard University
Return the statement with signatures, mailed so as to arrive BEFORE DECEMBER 20, 1968, to Jeffrey J. W. Baker, Professor of Biology, Estudias Generales, Ciencias Biologicas, Universidad de Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras – San Juan, Puerto Rico 00931
The full text of the 1968 Scientists’ Statement on Birth Control Encyclical
Scientists’ Statement on Birth Control Encyclical
The undersigned scientists strongly protest the July 29, 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae of Pope Paul VI concerning birth control. More than half the world is hungry and our environment is deteriorating rapidly and perhaps irreversibly. The threat of worldwide pestilence increases as malnutrition and overcrowding increase and as transport systems make transmission of disease to the far corners of the Earth more rapid. Population pressures are contributing to political tensions and increasing the probability of biological or thermonuclear warfare. Any action which impedes efforts to halt world population growth perpetuates the misery in which millions now live and promotes death by starvation of millions this year and many more millions in the next few decades.
How far removed must an individual be to remain innocent of the results of his actions? The realization that six million Jews were murdered in World War II stunned the civilized world into a more direct affixing of blame on those not directly involved in the actual executions. But what of the crippled lives or the slow and lingering deaths of an equal number of persons who do not get enough to eat? Does the fact that the Pope believes himself forced to his stand by personal religious convictions make these deaths any less horrible than those caused by political motives? We think not. It has been stated by Roman Catholics that the Pope is not evil, but simply unenlightened, and we must agree. But, whatever the motives, the evil consequences of his encyclical are manifest.
The world has long tried circumspection with Rome in the hope that the antiquated and anti-human policies of the Church toward sexuality would be discarded. Humanity took heart when the Pope’s own birth control commission advised him to change these policies. Now hopes for change have been totally destroyed.
It is high time, therefore, that we make our stand on the birth control encyclical perfectly clear. We pledge that we will no longer be impressed by pleas for world peace or compassion for the poor from a man whose deeds help to promote war and make poverty inevitable. The world must quickly come to realize that Pope Paul VI has sanctioned the deaths of countless numbers of human beings with his misguided and immoral encyclical. The fact that this incredible document was put forth in the name of a religious figure whose teachings embodied the highest respect for the value of human dignity and life should serve to make the situation even more repugnant to mankind.
- von Geusau, Leo Alting. “International Reaction to the Encyclical Humanae Vitae.” Studies in Family Planning 1, no. 50 (1970): 8-12. https://doi.org/10.2307/1964800. ↩︎
- Hodgson, P. E. “Scientific Reactions to ‘Humanae Vitae’: Some Preliminary Comments and Questions.” New Blackfriars 50, no. 587 (1969): 338-42. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43244820. ↩︎
- Robertson, Thomas. “The Malthusian Moment. 7. Strange Bedfellows: Population Politics, 1968–1970.” In Global Population Growth and the Birth of American Environmentalism, 152-75: Rutgers University Press, 2012. ↩︎
- “Scientists Oppose Birth Control Encyclical, Propose Boycott.” Catholic News Service, December 30 1968, 8-10. https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=d&d=cns19681230-01.1.8&srpos=1.
↩︎ - Baker, Jeffrey J. W. “Appeal to Scientists.” New Scientist 42 (1969). Prescott, David M. “Editorial: Food, Overpopulation, and Irresponsibility.” BioScience 19, no. 2 (1969): 111. Baker, Jeffrey J. W., Ernst Mayr, and Paul Ehrlich. “Encyclical Protest.” BioScience 19, no. 5 (1969): 400. https://doi.org/10.2307/1294472. Baker, Jeffrey J. W. “Science, Birth Control, and the Roman Catholic Church.” BioScience 20, no. 3 (1970): 143-51. https://doi.org/10.2307/1295037.
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