One of the most outlandish claims in the European Commission’s neo-socialist Gender Equality Strategy is the assertion that abortion and contraception will lead to economic growth and prosperity. Of course, the opposite is true: people who have no children have no future. Even those who have no moral objections to abortion should be able to grasp this much.
To put it quite plainly: the reason we oppose abortion is moral, not pragmatic: killing a small child for the sole reason that it is ‘unplanned’ is one of the most abhorrent acts imaginable, and it is a frightening thought that we live in a country whose legal system permits such a thing with impunity and where politicians and the media even refer to it as a ‘right’ that should be guaranteed by the constitution. Unfortunately, however, moral decay has already progressed so far in most European countries, and the consciences of so many people have become so numb, that many apparently have no qualms whatsoever about innocent children being killed, provided they stand to gain some practical benefit from it. These people are the target audience of the Commission’s five-year plan, which does not mention the moral aspects of abortion and contraception with a single word (it does not even occur to the Eurocrats who have drafted it that anyone might have moral objections to the killing of children!), but instead fantasises that easier access to abortion and contraception will lead to economic growth and prosperity. That is, of course, utter nonsense. Contraception and abortion – setting aside all moral objections to them – are in fact one of the root causes of the economic, cultural and social decline that Europe is currently experiencing, and which may well be irreversible.
First and foremost, we must bear in mind one fact: the fertility rate required to maintain a country’s population at a constant level is approximately 2.1 children per woman. Since the mid- or late 1960s, the birth rate in almost all European countries has fallen well below this figure, and the correlation between this demographic trend and the introduction of the contraceptive pill or the legalisation of abortion is so clear that no reasonable person will dispute the causal link: The contraceptive pill and abortion have caused a dramatic decline in birth rates, and as long as the pill and abortion are regarded as normal and morally acceptable, these low birth rates will not change. These low birth rates have been a defining factor in social development in almost all Western societies for more than 50 years now, and have since become a factor in many other parts of the world as well.
Initially, falling birth rates lead to (apparent) economic benefits: one avoids the considerable costs and effort associated with raising children. Couples with two incomes and no children are better off financially than couples with only one income and two or more children. With more money and fewer expenses, life is comfortable: the money that would otherwise have to be spent on children can be invested in consumption. Women who do not have to look after the home and children are available to the labour market as employees: this leads to a reduction in wage costs, which benefits the economy. The state also saves a great deal of money on schools, nurseries, teachers, less houses and infrastructure have to be built, etc. This is also why, in development aid policy, drastically reducing birth rates in developing countries was regarded as one of the most important objectives (and, as the UN’s Millennium Development Goals show, continues to be considered so).
After about a generation, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that the children who were prevented from being born or aborted in large numbers are missing. They are missing as consumers. They are missing as workers. Above all, they are missing as the people who will secure a country’s future and ensure the continued existence of society. They are missing as the people who will not only pay the pensions for the ‘double-income, no-kids’ generation, but will also provide the actual care services. Choosing not to have children can only work as a life choice if others have enough children to keep the welfare state running in the future. Anyone who consciously decides against starting a family and having children is banking on the fact that there will always be a welfare state to look after them when they grow old and frail. They accumulate pension entitlements, they put money aside for their old age… but in the end it will turn out that none of this will be of any use if the next generation just isn’t there or when the balance between the working and non-working populations becomes skewed.
Economic growth means that the total amount of what is produced and consumed is increasing. For this to happen, at least one of these two conditions must be met, but ideally both: the population should grow, or the standard of living should rise, but ideally both at the same time.
It is therefore clear to everyone that a policy which – by normalising and promoting contraception and abortion – leads to falling birth rates will, at least in the long term, have a negative rather than a positive impact on economic growth. (We have already seen above why, in the short term, the impression may initially be different.)
It should also be noted that not every increase in the number of jobs leads to genuine economic growth, and not every statistically recorded economic growth leads to a genuine improvement in living standards. Two examples can illustrate this. If unclear or superfluous laws in a country lead to an increase in disputes that are settled in court, this does indeed have positive effects on employment (it leads to more jobs and greater earning potential for lawyers, as well as more permanent posts for judges), and is also recorded in the statistics as economic growth (because lawyers must be paid by their clients), but in reality it tends to have a detrimental effect on the national economy because (apart from legal pleadings and judgements, which nobody actually likes to ‘consume’) nothing additional is produced.
Another example is a family policy which effectively means that – in order to conform to a role model favoured by the state – both parents work and the children are placed in external care: this naturally leads to many jobs for nursery nurses etc. (and consequently also to statistical economic growth), but in reality it is clear to everyone (especially most mothers and children) that a nursery nurse who has to look after ten children provides poorer care than a mother who looks after her own children at home. The emotional stress to which children in external care are exposed is not reflected in any economic statistics, but only becomes apparent years later when development deficiencies begin to show. The European Commission’s neo-socialist gender policy thus proves to be extremely short-sighted and out of touch with reality: it is the product of a mindset in which people are not persons, but interchangeable quantities.
The same mindset is evident where politicians believe they can simply offset low birth rates through increased immigration. Why should we bother with raising and educating children when there are always enough immigrants from the Middle East, Africa or other parts of the world who want nothing more than to settle in Europe and work here?All ‘right-wing populists’, ‘fascists’ and other evil people who express criticism of mass immigration can be rebutted by pointing out that we urgently need these immigrants, given that birth rates are so low. With this, pro-immigration parties can feel not only morally superior to their critics, but also very clever.
The problem, however, is that people are not interchangeable commodities. They are not merely labour force and consumers, but individuals with a cultural and social identity. Mass immigration of poorly educated people from countries with a completely different culture will not only fail to solve the problem caused by low birth ratse, but will actually exacerbate it considerably. There is, in fact, a huge difference between someone who is familiar with a country’s culture and history, embraces both, has gone through that country’s education system from an early age, and has solidarity and an emotional connection to the people whose retirement he is expected to fund or whom he is expected to care for in old age, and someone for whom none of this is the case. Europe is not – for the most part – receiving the kind of immigrants it needs to solve its problems, but rather a very different sort who are creating new, additional problems. Due to a lack of suitable training, these people can hardly be integrated into the European labour market, yet they also show no ambition to acquire the necessary knowledge (particularly language skills) and abilities. And even if, among the many immigrants, there are a few who possess the knowledge and skills that are needed in Europe, it is wrong to lure them away from their home countries, where they were educated and where they would also be needed. The idea of wanting to replace one’s own children with immigrants also proves to be parasitic in this respect.
Yet most of these immigrants do not possess such skills and have no desire to integrate into the society that has taken them in, because they fundamentally reject and despise Europe and its (formerly Christian, now irreligious) culture. Instead, they are creating parallel societies, such as those already evident in the UK, France and Germany. They view themselves as ‘us’ and the host societies as ‘the others’. They are using the new social norm—that all cultures and religions must be regarded as equal, regardless of their content—against the historically and culturally oblivious populations of their host countries in order to demand “equal treatment”; the EU’s equal treatment directives are very helpful to them in this regard. But this reliance on ‘non-discrimination’ is just a temporary phase: already, they are demanding that their culture be recognised as the new social norm. They are happy to take advantage of all the social benefits offered to them, but will never contribute anything themselves to the funding of the welfare state: They will take over Europe, which is being offered to them by its ageing, childless populations as if it were an ownerless inheritance – but without the slightest trace of gratitude towards those who left it to them. yet once they have taken up their inheritance, it will become clear that they are simply not capable of maintaining the cultural and social standards, because they lack all the necessary prerequisites. Europe will no longer be Europe: the geographical area at the western end of the Eurasian landmass will still exist, but its cultural identity will have vanished.
Societies – and social groups – that do not have children have no future. Europe is in the process of learning this the hard way. There was no shortage of warning voices back in the 1960s and 1970s, yet people did not listen to them; instead, they preferred to revel in ‘social progress’, which was in reality a form of self-abandonment. Then, when it became clear that the birth deficit was not a temporary phenomenon, the political and cultural elites recklessly believed they could solve it overnight through mass immigration. It has long since become clear that this does not work, but merely accelerates the decline. Yet although it is now obvious to everyone that this path leads to perdition, the EU sees no necessiity to change direction, but continues with accelerated speed: contraception, abortion, female labour force participation rates and gender quotas, equality and mass immigration have become something of fetishes for the social elite, who cling to them against their better judgement.
Abortion is not only a heinous act of violence, but – when it becomes part of a deliberate social policy – it is also, moreover, extraordinarily foolish. A society that forces women into the labour market and encourages contraception and abortion is like a company that stops investing: its decline and collapse are predictable.
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