At least two of these recommendations proved politically abhorrent to the conservative Nixon, who responded by dismissing entirely the work of the Rockefeller Commission and removing his support for any of its policy goals and recommendations. After some acclaim for the importance of the research for government planning, the President reiterated his personal opposition to abortion and disagreed with the recommendation that contraceptive information and services be made available to minors, on the grounds that this would weaken the family. No attention at all was directed to the basic analysis of the costs and benefits of population growth and the conclusion that population stabilization was desirable. In effect, the response was narrowly political and greatly at variance with the concerns about population that the President had expressed less than three years earlier. 7 Aftermath Nixon's decision to dismiss wholesale fundamentally-sound demographic analysis because of concerns about two policy recommendations was devastating to the population stabilization movement in the United States at that time, and the chilling effects of his decision continue to be felt today.
Transportation is only one of a myriad of social problems compounded by continued growth.
First, by dismissing the Commission's recommendations, Nixon stalled a number of insufficient, but nevertheless bold, growth control initiatives, such as freezing immigration levels and offering family planning services in conjunction with population education. The United States currently has the one of the highest population growth rates of any industrialized country in the world, a reality that might have been changed had the growth control recommendations of the Commission been enacted. Second and equally damaging, Nixon's action had the effect of moving explicit demographic goals, such as population stabilization, out of the American political arena. Nixon's abandonment of a Commission of his own making discouraged congressional support, prompting policy makers to abandon population policy and focus instead on managing growth through legislation such as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. Third, Nixon quelled the desire to pursue rigorous demographic analysis of government policies.