As birth rates drop, women’s autonomy will be even more at risk

History tells us that all freedoms are conditional. In 1920, the Soviet Union became the first country in the world to legalize abortion, as part of a socialist commitment to the health and well-being of women. Sixteen years later, this decision was reversed once Stalin was in power and realized that birth rates were declining.

The pressure on all nations to maintain their population levels has never gone away. But in 2025, that demographic crisis will become even more acute – and the victim will be gender rights. In both United States and the United Kingdomthe rate at which children are born has been falling for 15 years. In Japan, Poland and Canada, the fertility rate has already fallen to 1.3. In China and Italy, it is 1.2. South Korea has the lowest in the world, at 0.72. Research published by the medical journal The Lancet predicts that by 2100, approx every country on the planet it will not produce enough children to support its population.

A good part of this is that women have more access to contraception, are more educated than ever before, and are pursuing careers that mean they are more likely to avoid or delay having children. Parents invest more in every child they have. The patriarchal expectation that women should be little more than babymakers is, thankfully, broken.

But the original dilemma remains: How do countries make more children? Governments responded with prayers and incentives to encourage families to procreate. Hungary has abolish the income tax for mothers under the age of 30. In 2023, the North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un was seen. crying on television as he urged the National Conference of Mothers to do their part to stop the decline in birth rates. In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni supported a campaign to achieve at least half a million births per year by 2033.

Since these measures do not have their intended effect, however, the pressure on women takes a more sinister turn. Pro-natalist conservative movements it promotes old-fashioned nuclear families with many children, achievable only if women give birth first. This ideology at least in part it informs the devastating clampdown on abortion access in some US states. Anyone who thinks that abortion rights have nothing to do with the concerns of the population should note that in the summer of 2024, the Republicans of the United States Senate also voted against doing so. contraception a federal right. This same worldview fuels the growing reaction against sexual and gender minorities, whose existence for some represents a threat to the traditional family. The most extreme pro-natalists they also include white supremacists and eugenicists.

The more concerned that nations become about birth rates, the greater the risk for gender rights. In China, for example, the government has taken over a decidedly anti-feminist stance in recent years. President Xi Jinping told a meeting of the China Women’s Federation in 2023 that women should “actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and motherhood.”

For now, most women are at least able to exercise a choice about if and when they have children, and how many they have. But as fertility rates drop below replacement levels, there is no telling how far some nations might go to increase their population levels. 2025 seems to be a year in which his choice could be taken away.