History teaches us that all freedoms come with conditions. In 1920, the Soviet Union became the first country in the world to legalize abortion as part of a socialist commitment to women’s health and well-being. Sixteen years later, this decision was reversed when Stalin was in power and found that birth rates were falling.
The pressure on all nations to maintain their populations has never abated. But in 2025, the demographic crisis will get even worse – and the victims will be gender rights. In both United States and the United KingdomThe birth rate has been declining for 15 years. In Japan, Poland and Canada the birth rate is already 1.3. This is the case in China and Italy 1.2. South Korea has with it 0.72. A study published by the medical journal The Lancet predicts this will be the case by the year 2100 every country on the planet will not produce enough children to maintain its population size.
Much of this is because women have better access to contraception, are better educated than ever before, and are pursuing careers that make them more likely to avoid or delay having children. Parents invest more in each child they have. Fortunately, the patriarchal expectation that women should be little more than baby makers is crumbling.
But the original dilemma remains: How do countries produce more children? Governments responded with requests and incentives to encourage families to reproduce. Hungary has Income tax abolished for mothers under 30 years old. In 2023, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un was seen Crying on TV He called on the National Mothers’ Conference to do its part to stop the decline in birth rates. In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has backed a campaign to achieve at least one goal half a million births per year by 2033.
However, as these measures fail to have their intended effect, the pressure on women is only getting worse. Conservative pro-natalist movements promote old-fashioned nuclear families with many children, which are only achievable if women give birth earlier. This ideology This is at least part of the reason for the devastating crackdown on abortion access in some US states. Anyone who thinks that abortion rights have nothing to do with public fears should note that in the summer of 2024, Republicans in the US Senate also voted against it Contraception is a federal law. This same worldview contributes to the growing backlash against sexual and gender minorities, whose existence, for some, poses a threat to the traditional family. The most extreme pro-natalists This also includes white supremacists and eugenicists.
The more nations worry about birth rates, the greater the risk to gender rights. In China, for example, the government has taken over a sharply anti-feminist stance in recent years. President Xi Jinping said at a meeting of the All-China Women’s Federation in 2023 that women should “actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and childbearing.”
At the moment, most women at least have the opportunity to decide whether and when they have children and how many they have. But as birth rates fall below replacement levels, there is no telling how far some countries will go to boost their populations. 2025 appears to be a year in which the decision could well be taken away from them.
