WASHINGTON — The Howard Centre for Families, in a release Tuesday, revealed that fully 55 percent of US married-couple families are childless. A 2003 United States Census Bureau report revealed that, of 57,320,000 married couples, 31,406,000 did not have any children eighteen years of age or younger.
The Howard Center author refers to the work of John C. Caldwell, who, in a 2004 article “Demographic Theory: The Long View,” appearing in the Population and Development Review, argued that population dynamics in the US, and arguably of all western nations, is a reflection of the change from a largely agriculturally based to an industrially based economy.
The economic advancement that attracted women into the work force became “the engine of the fertility decline” as witnessed in recent decades. “At the level of the individual in the industrial society there is no necessity for either families or fertility,” Caldwell added.
Caldwell digresses from his population colleagues, who argue that fertility has plateaued. He warns that “there [are] almost unlimited possibilities of continual social change and family disintegration,” attending the advancement in wealth of western nations.
See also:
Russian Abortion Killing and Sterilizing Millions; Demographic Collapse Likely to be Worse than Previously Predicted
MOSCOW/VLADIVOSTOK — An English language news magazine from Moscow reports that up to one third of Russian abortions result in the death of the mother. The Russian government has been alarmed for some time at the impending demographic disaster created by the low birth rate. In addition, after decades of communism which endorsed abortion as a form of birth control, the physical and psychological after effects of so many millions of abortions have yet to be completely felt. Communist Soviet Union was the first nation in the world to legalize abortion in 1920.
Conservative estimates put the Russian abortion rate at 60% of all pregnancies, approximately a tenth of which are on girls under 18. Vladimir Kulakov, the deputy director of the Russian Women’s Health Center says that of some 38 million women of childbearing age, about 6 million are infertile, and medical authorities consider abortions a major cause of infertility.
Now a new study shows that the death rate of women seeking abortion is also uncommonly high. Abortion is a dangerous invasive procedure whether legalized or not, but with much of Russian medical facilities working with antiquated equipment, many more women are dying from abortion complications in Russia than elsewhere.
Kulakov told Mosnews.com that of 3.5 million annual Russian pregnancies, only 1.5 million children are actually being born. Add to that the death rate of one woman in three and the number of women of child-bearing years who are capable of conceiving, Russia’s demographic disaster is promising to be worse even than the most sombre predictions. Kulakov said that as many as 15% of Russian couples are infertile and suggests a government funded program of artificial insemination.
A small, new missionary society of Catholic priests and sisters who do pro-life and post-abortion work in Siberia write in their latest newsletter that the official statistics are very conservative. The group runs an orphanage, crisis pregnancy center, and post-abortion counseling service in Vladivostok and runs a number of social programs for elderly people and youth.
The deliberate and calculated abolition of family values by communist government directives has resulted in massive rates of divorce, domestic violence, alcoholism, skyrocketing rates of STDs including HIV. In 1995, a report showed that almost half of all murder cases were a result of domestic violence and predicted that by the year 2000, 800,000 Rusisans could be infected with HIV.
Sister Julia Kubista of the Sisters in Jesus the Lord, wrote of a report on Russian television that said family values “had not been stressed in Russia for half a century and they lamented the outrageous divorce rates, sickening abortion rates, the amounts of orphans, and the extent of drug use.” Sister Julia reported that some Russian women have had as many as 30 abortions.
See also:
Russia Questions Widespread Abortion, Population Decline
Russia Population Decline Means Worker Shortage
(This update courtesy of LifeSiteNews.com.)
