population control. "I propose that we totally revamp our foreign aid program to give
primary emphasis to population control," he stated in the summer of 1968, adding: "In
my opinion, we have made a mistake in our foreign aid by concentrating on building
huge steel mills and concrete plants in underdeveloped nations...."
One of Bush's more important initiatives on the domestic side was his sponsorhip of the
Family Planning Services and Population Research Act of 1970, brainchild of Sen.
Joseph Tydings of Maryland. Signed into law by President Nixon on December 24, 1970,
the Tydings-Bush bill drastically increased the federal financial commitment to
population control, authorizing an initial $382 million for family planning sevices,
population research, population education and information through 1973. Much of this
money was funnelled through private institutions, particularly local clinics run by Bush's
beloved Planned Parenthood. The Tydings-Bush measure mandated the notorious Title X,
which explicitly provided "family planning assistance" to the poor. Bush and his zero-
growth cohorts talked constantly about the importance of disseminating birth control to
the poor. They claimed that there were over 5 million poor women who wanted to limit
their families, but could not afford to do so.
On October 23, 1969, Bush praised the Office of Economic Opportunity for carrying out
some of the "most successful" family planning projects, and said he was "pleased" that
the Nixon administration "is giving them additional financial muscle by increasing their
funds 50 percent--from $15 million to $22 million."
This increased effort he attributed to the Nixon administration's "goal to reach in the next
five years the 5 million women in need of these services"--all of them poor, many of
them from racial or ethnic minorities. He added: "One needs only to look quickly at the
report prepared by the Planned Parenthood-World Population Research Department to
see how ineffective federal, state, and local governments have been in providing such
necessary services. There is certainly nothing new about the fact that unwanted
pregnancies of our poor and near-poor women keep the incidence of infant mortality and
mental retardation in America at one of the highest levels of all the developed countries."
The rates of infant mortality and mental retardation Bush was so concerned about, could
have been significantly reduced, had the government provided sufficient financing to pre-
natal care, nutrition, and other factors contributing to the health of infants and children.
On the same day he signed the Tydings-Bush bill, Nixon vetoed--with Bush's support- -
legislation that would have set up a three-year, $225 million program to train family
doctors.
Bush seemed to be convinced that mental retardation, in particular, was a matter of
heredity. The eugenicists of the 1920's had spun their pseudoscientific theories around
"hereditary feeble- mindedness," and claimed that the "Kallikaks and the Jukes" by
reproducing successive "feeble-minded" generations had cost New York state tens of
millions of dollars over decades. But what about learning disorders like dyslexia, which
has been known to afflict oligarchical familes Bush would consider wealthy, well-bred,
and able? Nelson Rockefeller, Bush's friend Nick Brady, and Bush's own son Neal have