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SANTA BARBARA, California, February 14, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A commentator for a California population control group has issued a scathing indictment of the 19-child Duggar family, calling their openness to new life “bad behavior” that contributes to the overpopulation of the planet.

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The Duggars, who welcomed their youngest daughter, Josie, last year, are the stars of the TLC reality show “19 Kids and Counting.”

“‘Don’t Try This at Home.’ That should be the disclaimer at the beginning and end of ‘19 Kids and Counting’ … the reality show about the Duggars, the Arkansas couple whose fecundity would make even rabbits and rats blush,” wrote Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) Senior Writing Fellow Maria Fotopoulos in a Jan 28 post on the group’s blog.

Fotopoulos ridiculed the Duggars’ reasons for no longer taking the birth control pill: after suffering a miscarriage four years into their marriage, the couple learned that the synthetic hormones in the pill can prevent a newly-conceived child from implanting in the uterus, causing it to starve to death. “Undoubtedly grief can lead to many things, but this may be a unique example of it leading to out-of-control breeding,” Fotopoulis wrote.

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The CAPS writer called Michelle Duggar’s choice not to artificially manipulate her reproduction “in stark contrast to established science on reproduction,” and cited the work of Margaret Sanger, America’s birth control pioneer and the eugenicist founder of Planned Parenthood.

Fotopoulos suggested that an “unsustainable and morally indefensible” large-family philosophy was responsible for Michelle’s developing preeclampsia during her latest pregnancy, which led to Josie’s premature delivery. “Obviously neither parent has enough sense to cease compromising the health of the mother or future child, or, children, if they try to run out the biological clock. Hopefully early menopause will shut down the baby factory soon,” she wrote.

Jenn Giroux of Large Families of America and FourorMore.org called Fotopoulos to task for discriminating against families who choose to have many children.

“The mocking of large families is shameless and offensive,” said Giroux in an email to LifeSiteNews.com. “It highlights the pervasive attitude that has become the secular norm in America which has lost sight of our greatest national treasure: children.”

In response to the Sanger quotations praising birth control as having “enabled the survival of women and children,” Giroux said, “Tell that to the thousands of women who have met an early death due to breast cancer, as a result of taking the Pill, or the multitude of children who are lonely and desire the brothers and sisters that their parents willingly prevented.”

“The clearest glaring revelation in this article is that those who are in favor of birth control and abortion are ‘pro-choice’ only if you choose to contracept or abort.  The rest of the time they are intolerant and repelled by any lifestyle that honors God by accepting His beautiful gifts of children,” she added.

Giroux also pointed out the discredited foundation for Fotopoulos’ criticism: the claim that the earth is overpopulated. While population control advocates have predicted the imminent demise of the world from lack of resources since the early 19th century, many social scientists now warn that the current population free-fall threatens to plunge the globe in a “demographic winter” that promises catastrophic economic and social consequences.

“Margaret Sanger ushered in the birth control era which has led to what we are experiencing 70 years later: a demographic nightmare and the destruction of the family,” said Giroux.