The consequences of devaluing children and families is being felt across the globe as fewer women give birth and many choose to abort their unborn babies.
This week, a study in The Lancet predicted the global fertility rate will drop drastically through 2100 – with devastating consequences on the whole of society.
According to the BBC, the study predicts a “jaw-dropping” global crash in the number of children being born, with 183 of 195 countries expected to have a fertility rate below replacement level by the end of the century.
“I think it’s incredibly hard to think this through and recognize how big a thing this is; it’s extraordinary, we’ll have to reorganize societies,” said Professor Christopher Murray, one of the lead researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which conducted the study.
Murray told the news outlet that he is worried about the future for his 8-year-old daughter, and he and his fellow researchers believe society is not well prepared for the impending population crash.
The global fertility rate is about half of what it was in 1950. According to the report, women had an average of 4.7 children in 1950, compared to a 2.4 average in 2017. By 2100, the researchers predicted it will fall below 1.7.
The study suggests the global population will continue to increase until about 2064 and peak at about 9.7 billion, Breaking News Ireland reports. Afterward, they predicted it will begin to fall rapidly, especially in Asia and eastern Europe.
The BBC claimed the falling fertility rates are a “success story” because more women are working and achieving higher education and a smaller human population is supposedly “great for the environment.”
But dropping fertility rates could be catastrophic as the population ages and fewer young people are alive to care for them or support them financially.
“While population decline is potentially good news for reducing carbon emissions and stress on food systems, with more old people and fewer young people, economic challenges will arise as societies struggle to grow with fewer workers and taxpayers, and countries’ abilities to generate the wealth needed to fund social support and health care for the elderly are reduced,” said Professor Stein Emil Vollset, the lead author of the study.
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According to the researchers, the declining population also could cause a shift in economic power based on “dramatic declines in working-age populations in countries such as India and China.”
Abortion is closely linked to population issues, and the researchers made it a point to emphasize that they support “reproductive health services,” which include abortion on demand.
“… a very real danger exists that in the face of declining population, some countries might consider policies that restrict access to reproductive health services, with potentially devastating consequences,” Murray said. “It is imperative that women’s freedom and rights are at the top of every government’s development agenda.”
Vollset told the BBC much the same thing, claiming, “Responding to population decline is likely to become an overriding policy concern in many nations, but must not compromise efforts to enhance women’s reproductive health or progress on women’s rights.”
For centuries, people have been predicting that overpopulation will lead to global disaster. None of the predictions have come true; humans have adapted, improvised and invented new ways to care for themselves and their offspring, and quality of life has improved vastly in many parts of the world in the past century.
Still, many believe there is such a thing as overpopulation, and these beliefs have been linked to some of the worst human rights abuses in history, including forced abortions and sterilizations in China. Some of the richest men in the world, including Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, donate billions of dollars to the abortion industry supposedly because they fear overpopulation. With their support, about 42 million unborn babies were killed in abortions in 2019 alone.
Now, activists are pushing for legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide, not just for the terminally ill but for people with Alzheimer’s and dementia.
The consequences have been devastating, but the research suggests an even bigger catastrophe could be ahead as long as society continues to ignore the value of every human life.
