Peace Without Poison

The depopulation program was accelerated and intensified once President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle took office in 1994 and by the time he left office in 2000 Chile had nearly reachedreplacement level fertility. His successors, Ricardo Lagos (200-2006), Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010) Sebastián Piñera (2010-2014) and then again Michelle Bachelet, who is the incumbentpresident, have placed the depopulation program in a holding pattern once the country reachedsub-replacement level fertility in 2002.Surprisingly, since the inception of Chile’s depopulation program in 1964, only General AugustoPinochet, who ruled as a brutal dictator, was kind to his people in terms of protecting theirreproductive rights, their health, and the integrity of their minds, all of which are usurped byendocrine disruptors.Chile has been rewarded for waging war on fertility with a growing GDP. As the countryreached near replacement level fertility in 1990 the GDP per capita began rising rapidly and hascontinued to rise as the total fertility rate has continue to decrease.Chile’s drop in fertility has little or nothing to do with the country’s contraceptive prevalencerate, which has never exceeded 61% and was below 30% during the 1960s and 1970s whenfertility dropped fastest.Chile also has an extremely low abortion rate of 0.5 per 1,000 women, a statistically insignificantfigure. The drop in fertility, therefore, is unrelated to the abortion rate.Chile is in the fourth stage of the demographic transition.158 | P a g e