Steven Mosher isn’t sure if his nine children are a burden to the planet or a solution to the problem of depopulation.

“Are we being socially responsible by having all these children . ?” Mosher said at his lecture Tuesday night. “Are we helping to solve the depopulation crisis that faces us, or are we contributing to the overpopulation problem in which human beings threaten to breed themselves off the planet?”

Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, discussed the global issues of overpopulation and population control in the Molecular Biology Auditorium. He shared his thoughts on the “myth of overpopulation” with more than 100 people.

“In over half the countries on the face of the Earth, the birth rate is below replacement levels,” Mosher said. “The real crisis is depopulation – not overpopulation.”

Mosher said one of the largest supporters of population control in China and other countries is the United Nations Population Fund. In turn, Mosher said the main contributors to this fund are “dying countries,” meaning countries with lower birth rates than death rates.

“Some of its largest supporters are countries like the United States who will be faced with the prospect of depopulation,” Mosher said.

The information Mosher provided was contrary to the ideas of overpopulation Sarah Gavin, who attended the lecture, had held.

“You’re brought up thinking that overpopulation is a huge problem, resources are scarce, and we’re all going to die,” said Gavin, senior in management information systems. “Mosher helped me realize it’s not such a big problem.”

Mosher spoke of his extensive experience in China conducting research on the country’s one-child policy. Mosher said women were asked to have abortions if they were pregnant with “over-quota children” when the policy was first initiated.

“For the good of China as a whole, women were asked to abort,” Mosher said. “Women who were as far as eight and nine months along were pressured into abortion through threats of large fines and those that resisted were jailed until they `voluntarily’ complied.”