As birth rates plummet, women’s autonomy will be even more at risk
History teaches us that freedom is conditional. As part of its socialist commitment to women’s health, the Soviet Union was the first nation to legalize abortion in 1920. Sixteen years after that, the decision was reversed when Stalin came to power and saw that birth rates had fallen. In 2025 the demographic crunch will get worse, and gender equality may be one of the casualties. Since 15 years, both in the United States as well as the United Kingdom the birth rate has plummeted. In Japan, Poland and Canada, fertility rates are already at 1.3. In China and Italy it is 1.2. South Korea is the lowest, with 0.72. The Lancet Medical Journal published a study that predicts by 2100 that almost all countries will not be able to produce enough children to maintain their population size. Parents are investing in their children more. The patriarchal expectation that women should be little more than babymakers is thankfully crumbling.
But the original dilemma remains: How do countries make more kids? The governments have responded by offering incentives and pleas to encourage families. Hungary has eliminated income tax for mothers younger than 30. North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un wept on TV in 2023 as he asked the National Conference of Mothers (NCM) to stop decreasing birth rates. Giorgia meloni, Italy’s premier, has supported a campaign in Italy to achieve at least a half-million births per year by 2033. Conservative pronatalist movements promote nuclear families, which are only possible if women have more children. At least in part, this ideology is behind the brutal restrictions on abortion rights in certain US states. Whoever thinks abortion rights are unrelated to population concerns, should be reminded that the US Senate Republicans voted in 2024 against making contraception an federal right. The same worldview is fueling the backlash against gender and sexual minorities who, for some, are a threat to traditional families. The most extreme pro-natalists also include white supremacists and eugenicists.
The more concerned that nations become about birth rates, the greater the risk to gender rights. In China, the government took a radically anti-feminist position in recent years. President Xi Jinping told a meeting of the All-China Women’s Federation in 2023 that women should “actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and child-bearing.”
For now, most women are at least able to exercise some choice over if and when they have children, and how many they have. As fertility rates fall below replacement levels, it is impossible to predict how far some countries will go to boost their population. In 2025, their choice may be taken from them.
