Happy Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary!
In This Issue:
- PRI in the Media
- Babies Decrease, Immigrants Increase
- America Needs Babies
- Starving the Communist Dragon
- A Suspicious Power Outage
- Kissinger’s Double Life
- Deepening Depopulation
- A Tear-filled Address
- The DINK Dilemma
- Communist China
- Forgery and Trafficking
- Zero-Covid App Returns
- Science Gone Mad
- Issues With Ectogenesis
- An Elderly Mother
- Pro-life Around the World
- Both Pro- and Anti-suicide
- 900 Lost Lives
- Pro-Life on the Home Front
- Cosmo Promotes Satanic Ritual
- Attorney Targets Pro-Life Centers
- Good News
- A Rare Set of Triplets
PRI in the Media
Babies Decrease, Immigrants Increase: The estimation for the United States’ total fertility rate in 2023 was released and it doesn’t look good. The number of children American women will have over the course of their lifetimes is currently 1.784. This is close to the lowest fertility rate the nation has ever seen. While we didn’t hit a record low this year, PRI President Steven Mosher points out that the U.S. is set to hit a different kind of milestone, but not the kind worth celebrating. This year the number of migrants arriving in America will eclipse the number of children born to Americans. These are two major demographic issues that leaders of the nation need to address.
America Needs Babies: Many adults in the United States are discouraged from getting married and starting families, because of the burden of student loans that weigh upon them. In this piece for The Epoch Times, Mr. Mosher looks at how we can ease this burden in a way that will ultimately benefit the United States. Democrats want to fully erase the 1.7 trillion in debt, while many Republicans are determined that young Americans pay back every cent even if it costs the nation future generations. Mr. Mosher suggests a third approach. One that would motivate couples to have children and reward them for doing so. For each child, biological or adopted, that a couple raises, a percentage of their student loans would be forgiven. Couples willing to have, or adopt, three or more children would have their debt completely forgiven. This could reverse the United States’ falling fertility rates, bring hope back to young couples who dream of having a family, and provide for the future of the nation as a whole.
Starving the Communist Dragon: In order to assuage the United States, the CCP has pledged to build an open and inclusive industrial chain. It also pledged a steady supply of high-quality goods for the worldwide market. But can the CCP’s pledges ever be trusted? American Family News turned to Mr. Mosher’s expertise for guidance on where to go from here. He makes it clear that the United States has to stop “feeding the dragon.” “If you stop sending over trillions of dollars in investments, if you stop buying Chinese-made goods, if you stop allowing them to beg, borrow or steal our technology, including our military technology,” he says, “the Chinese system run by the Chinese Communist Party will collapse.” While the Biden administration has publicly announced that it will not decouple from China, future presidents may take a different approach to protect our nation.
A Suspicious Power Outage: At the end of November, the CCP performed a massive emergency power outage simulation in the city of Wuhan. Immediately, concerns were raised that this simulation is a predictor for the future, as coronavirus simulations were in the months before the global outbreak of COVID-19 in the same city. Life Site News referenced Mr. Mosher’s own opinion on the matter which corroborated these concerns. “The various actions of the CCP, from simulating a power outage in Wuhan to locking down entire cities during Covid, have multiple explanations,” Mosher said. “The Covid lockdowns were never justified medically, since they did not stop the spread of the virus and caused many deaths and ancillary damage. Like the present Wuhan power outage, they were in part civil defense drills, intended to instill obedience in the population in the event of domestic unrest or foreign war.”
Kissinger’s Double Life: Upon Henry Kissinger’s passing, Xi Jinping himself sent condolences saying, “Kissinger’s name will forever be associated with U.S.-China relations.” This comes as no surprise when one looks at Kissinger’s involvement in Chinese business affairs. As Mr. Mosher writes, Kissinger was the “chief apologist for a brutal Chinese Communist regime.” The diplomat found ways to defend even the most heinous of CCP abuses in order to keep his most lucrative connection. Kissinger defended the massacre of thousands in Tiananmen Square by asserting that no government would have tolerated a main square being occupied for so long. He also claimed that there were “good demographic reasons” for the one-child policy, ignoring the forced abortions and sterilizations. He was a man who financially benefited from the suffering of millions, and all he had to do was publicly defend the authority and actions of a totalitarian government.
Deepening Depopulation
A Tear-filled Address: In a recent speech, North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un emotionally pleaded with the nation’s women to have more babies. His plea to boost the population as a way of strengthening the country allegedly caused audience members to cry in solidarity. As of 2022, North Korea’s total fertility rate was 1.79. While below replacement, it is still much higher than their Southern neighbors, where the fertility rate is the lowest in the world at 0.78. As the event nicknamed the National Mothers Meeting, continued, Kim went on to advise women to raise their children in a way that would enhance Communism in the country. Kim’s motives are rooted in the goals of further pushing Communism and bolstering the nation’s military. A shrinking population does not create a strong army decades down the road.
“Maybe if Kim Jong Un stopped starving the people of his country half to death, they would be willing to have more children. Maybe if he weren’t starving, beating, and imprisoning North Koreans, the birth rate would increase,” says Mr. Mosher.
The DINK Dilemma: A new segment of the population is on the rise: DINKs. These are families with Double Income, No Kids. According to Business Insider, more adults are choosing this lifestyle as the cost of living rises and climate propaganda dissuades them from having children. Their lives are financially stable but focused on material aspects of life such as traveling and pets. 34% of the nation’s population is made up of DINKs, with 5% of those cohabiting and the other 29% married. This segment of the population contributes to the falling total fertility rate in the United States, as they prioritize finances over children. It is also an indicator of how difficult it has become in the U.S. to have a family and succeed financially. A growing percentage of DINKs is not a success, it’s a sign of failure in our country to support families.
Communist China
Forgery & Trafficking: China is cracking down on baby trafficking as more evidence of illegal activity comes to light. Administrators from three separate hospitals have been arrested for forging fake birth certificates for children who are being sold. China’s National Health Commission (NHC) will supposedly begin nationwide checks to put a stop to this wave of crime. Birth certificate forgery has been an issue in China for many years, as it began prior to 2016 when parents were desperate to provide documentation for illegal second and third children. Today, the issue stems from families desperate for children in a country that has falling marriage and birth rates as a result of decades of the one-child policy.
“Baby trafficking in Communist China is not simply about stealing and selling babies to couples who wish to adopt them,” says Mr. Mosher. “That would be bad enough. Sadly, some of the babies who are going missing are not adopted at all but rather butchered for their organs for use in research or as transplant organs. Human life has always been cheap in China, and seventy-plus years of communism has devalued it even further.”
Zero-Covid App Returns: The “disease-tracking app” that the CCP used during Zero-Covid is back, but they don’t want the world to know it. News reports claiming that local governments are pushing the app once again have been censored. This development is accompanied by news of the continued spread of a respiratory disease in China that is especially affecting children. Authorities have reinstated COVID-19 testing in hospitals and transportation hubs. China’s Health Officials have officially acknowledged this sickly spread, blaming it on “a cocktail of pathogens including mycoplasma pneumonia, respiratory syncytial virus, seasonal influenza and COVID-19.” Whether this is true or not, who can say?
Science Gone Mad
Issues With Ectogenesis: Secular scientists are considering the ramifications of the potential development of fully functioning artificial wombs. Artificial wombs have so far only been tested with animals with the proposed purpose of one day being used to save premature human babies. Talk of using artificial wombs for the entirety of a pregnancy, ectogenesis, has so far been discouraged as it violates the current global legislation which bans the growth of embryos past fourteen days. But The Conversation is exploring the possibility theoretically nonetheless. Just as surrogacy created confusion over determining the legal motherhood of a child and sperm donation confused the determination of legal fatherhood, artificial wombs would open a can of worms when it comes to determining legal parenthood in general. This is one of the main dangers of ectogenesis, that it will “result in more radical changes to the way we view legal parenthood.” Though another even greater concern is the misuse of embryos, for the creation and gestation of humans until birth. It is a dystopian idea that may become a reality in the next few decades.
An Elderly Mother: A 70-year-old Ugandan woman gave birth to twins at the end of November, making her one of the world’s oldest new mothers. Safina Namukwaya underwent IVF for her babies to be conceived and implanted. The babies, one boy, and one girl, were born via Cesarean section. Namukwaya is healing well despite her advanced age and her difficult pregnancy. She was the oldest woman to bear a child at the Women’s Hospital International and Fertility Center in East Africa. The motivations behind her decision are unknown, though she claims that “God decided” she would get pregnant. This statement is at odds with the inorganic way Namukwaya conceived. She took a significant risk in undergoing IVF, which poses risks even for young and healthy women. Beyond the medical risks, IVF is still immoral as it involves the creation and destruction of embryonic humans in a lab.
Pro-life Around the World
Both Pro- and Anti-Suicide: In an ironic turn of events, Canadian Leader Justin Trudeau has launched a suicide hotline. This raised questions of how Trudeau’s government could maintain both a pro- and anti-suicide stance. Since 2016, when Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) passed, Canada has become more and more lenient with who can qualify for assisted dying. Killing individuals who wish to die is no longer a moral issue, according to the Canadian government, but a bureaucratic one. From a cold, calculating government view, assisted suicide provides an easy solution, rather than working to help an individual, whether they struggle in any area including physically, mentally, and financially. Canada’s pro-assisted suicide stance is so well-known, that launching a new suicide hotline will do little to convince the world that the country, or country’s leaders, cares about human life.
900 Lost Lives: A doctor in India has been arrested for performing around 900 sex-selective abortions. It is estimated that Dr. Chandan Ballal aborted 20 babies a month for three years. He was not alone in the arrest, both the hospital manager and other members of staff were also arrested. Their main motivation for murdering these children for the crime of being girls was most likely money, as each abortion cost about 30,000 rupees ($350). We at PRI have researched and exposed the practice of sex-selective abortion in India in the past decade. However, the crime persists as cultural preference for sons continues to put pressure on mothers. The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, affirming PRI’s own findings, stated, “Unborn girls are the number one target of abortion around the world, especially in India and China, while mothers also come under huge pressure to abort babies labeled ‘undesirable’ by society. At a time when human beings are increasingly treated like commodities, unborn babies considered to be faulty in some way, or just unwanted, are coming under even greater threat from abortion.”
Pro-Life on the Home Front
Cosmo Promotes Satanic Ritual: In the November/December 2023 issue, Cosmopolitan magazine promoted the use of abortion as a satanic ritual. The piece praised The Satanic Temple’s virtual abortion center, which ships abortion pills by mail to pregnant women, up to eleven weeks gestation, after only a Zoom call. The center, named Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic, encourages women to perform a ceremonial “Satanic abortion ritual.” It offers a step-by-step process on how to do so, which is the content that made its way into Cosmopolitan. The well-known magazine has now promoted actions that will harm women’s bodies and souls, along with killing an innocent, unborn baby.
“Satanism is not a ‘religion’ but a death cult,” says Mr. Mosher. “Like the ancient Canaanites who sacrificed their children to Baal, modern-day Satanists celebrate human sacrifice as a way of placating their diabolical deity. Mail-order abortion pills, whether or not accompanied by a ‘Satanic abortion ritual,’ should be banned.”
Attorney Targets Pro-Life Centers: A chain of pro-life pregnancy centers in the Pacific Northwest has been targeted by a pro-abortion attorney. In May 2022, Washington’s Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed Civil Investigative Demands (CIDs) to Obria Group and Obria Pacific Northwest without any evidence of complaints or wrongdoing. Ferguson ordered the entire chain, twenty-two pro-life centers across six states, to submit massive amounts of documentation, including sensitive information. Obria obliged and submitted over 1,500 pages of documentation, but Ferguson continued to harass the chain. In November of this year, Alliance Defending Freedom filed a case on Obria’s behalf to end the harassment, which clearly violates the organization’s Fourth Amendment rights.
Good News
A Rare Set of Triplets: A couple from Montana brought home a set of rare triplets this year, just in time for Thanksgiving. Sami and Theo Hampton were shocked to learn that they were expecting triplets because they didn’t “check any of the boxes” for multiples. This was the young couple’s first pregnancy and neither had a family history with twins, much less triplets. Sami’s egg had split into three parts, two of the babies shared an amniotic sac and all three shared a placenta. Despite the risks that came with the pregnancy, Sami and Theo remained positive and rose to the occasion. With the help of their doctor, they planned for the birth and all three of their baby girls are doing well, despite being born early at 32 weeks.
“They were born with no complications and they are all ahead of schedule from what we anticipated. We were honestly expecting to take them home more like mid-December, so even that got pretty quick,” Theo explained. “So, they’ve just been doing really great every step of the way. And for all their benchmarks, they’ve been killing it.”
“I know just that these girls are just the biggest blessing, and I can’t imagine our lives without them,” Sami said. “I’m so thankful and so excited and looking forward to this, and it’s really helpful to have such a supportive partner and amazing dad to help us. It’s just wonderful.”
Quote of the Week
“Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future.”
~ President John F. Kennedy, source
