Type think tank Website pop.org Headquarters Virginia, United States | President Steven W. Mosher Founded 1989 | |
Founders Paul Marx, Steven W. Mosher Similar American Life League, Population Action International, Pro‑Life Action League, Feminists for Life, Americans United for Life Profiles | ||
The Population Research Institute (PRI) is a non-profit organization based in Front Royal, Virginia, USA. PRI describes itself as "a non-profit research group whose goals are to expose the myth of overpopulation" as well as "human rights abuses committed in population control programs, and to make the case that people are the world's greatest resource." It operates programs against the advancement of contraception, sterilization, and abortion. PRI is a 501(c)(3) organization and claims contacts to pro-life groups in over 30 countries. Results are being released in an own online periodical, PRI Review.
Contents
Background
The Population Research Institute was founded in 1989 by Paul Marx (1920–2010), a family sociologist, Catholic priest and Benedictine monk who had established Human Life International, too. PRI became an independent institute in 1996. The same year, the think tank got headed by Steven W. Mosher, an anthropologist and author who studied and discovered excesses in China during the beginning of the one-child policy in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. PRI opposes such practices and asserts a causal link between the one-child policy on the one hand and China's imbalanced sex-ratio as well as its aging population on the other hand.
Family Care Center
As of 2015 PRI operates a facility called Family Care Center, a family welfare and crisis pregnancy center located in Saint Lucia, the home country of its spiritual director, Father Linus Clovis.
Defunding population control programs
According to the Los Angeles Times, PRI successfully lobbied the George W. Bush administration to withhold US$34 to $40 million per year for seven years from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the largest international donor to family planning programs. This turn had been demanded by a 2002 appeal of about 140 groups the think tank had led. The PRI says that its mission includes to "[e]xpose the relentless promotion of abortion, abortifacient contraception, and chemical and surgical sterilization in misleadingly labeled 'population stabilization,' 'family planning,' and 'reproductive health' programs". One of the institute's drives calls to end compulsory sterilizations in India, another one bases a renewed demand to defund budgets on its own investigations suggesting a lack of distance between UNFPA activities and coercive Chinese population control. PRI monitored UNFPA's involvement in controversial sterilization campaigns during the Peruvian Fujimori era, and it also investigated forceful actions against Degar women in Vietnam aimed at preventing reproduction.
Fundraising
PRI obtains the vast majority of its funding from charitable contributions, gifts, and grants, with a total revenue of 2.63 million dollars in financial year 2014. Of this, 71.5% was spent on program expenses, 3.9% on administration, and 24.4% on fundraising.
The institute has received funding from The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Inc. for conferences on human rights in China.
Criticism
PRI's stance on overpopulation and the arguments for "Overpopulation is a Myth" have been described as deceptive.
Ten Million Club Foundation further adds to criticism, accusing PRI of having a religious hidden agenda (against family planning and contraception) that motivates its (allegedly) deceiving claims, stating that those are not backed up by any original research («[PRI hasn't] as yet published a single peer review paper in any scientific journal»).
Charity Navigator classifies charities with respect to "Accountability & Transparency" and "Financial Performance". It awarded one (out of four) stars to PRI with respect to "Accountability & Transparency" and two (out of four) stars with respect to "Financial Performance" .
A rather benevolent review issued by CatholicCulture.org misses clarification from PRI in cases where the institute's website provides a research link to secular and non-Catholic contents.