Happy Feast Day of St. Anne!
In This Issue:
- Deepening Depopulation
- Family Structures Change
- The Population Problem
- Religion & Reproduction
- Communist China
- The Population Secret
- Calls for Three Children
- Hallow Deemed Illegal
- Companionship Economy
- UN Misdeeds
- The Radical CEDAW Committee
- Science Gone Mad
- Facts About IVF
- Pro-Life Around the World
- Helping Mothers in Need
- Pro-Life on the Home Front
- Abortion Providers Back Harris
- Abortion’s Impact on Economy
- No Proper Burial
- Good News
- Mothers Band Together
Deepening Depopulation
Family Structures Change: The structure of families is going to change immensely by the end of this century. According to a recent study titled “Projections of human kinship for all countries,” the number of relatives that the average individual has is expected to decrease by 35%. In 1950, a 65-year-old woman had an average of 41 living relatives. By 2095, a woman of the same age will have an average of only 25 living relatives. This decrease is expected to be even more dramatic in South American countries and the Caribbean. The main side effect of family systems shrinking is the decrease of “kinship resources.” Smaller families and fewer relatives will mean less familial support in general, including for childcare and eldercare.
The Population Problem: Since the UN shared the World Population Prospects 2024, news outlets have admitted that we don’t need to worry about overpopulation. Even Vox Magazine has pivoted, pointing out that people are too busy arguing over the population slowdown to adapt to what is happening. However, the writers at Vox believe there is nothing to be done about the impending peak and fall of the world’s population rollercoaster. Instead, the news platform is urging its readers to accept the inevitable, dismissing pro-natal policies as a potential solution in favor of succumbing to an elderly, shrinking population.
Religion & Reproduction: In a recent interview with Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk shared his opinion on Christianity and the role that religion plays in reproduction. Musk praised Christianity, describing himself as a “cultural Christian,” despite not being particularly religious. He went on to attribute low global birth rates to a loss of religion in cultures, associating such declines with a society’s retreat from religious traditions.
“Elon Musk is more right than he knows,” says Mr. Mosher. “Christians, from the beginning of the Christian era, have always been more generous in welcoming children than the pagan peoples around them. Not only did they not practice human sacrifice nor abandon unwanted children, but they saw children as blessings from God and willingly adopted the ‘unwanted’ children of others. When you believe that babies are blessings from God, you welcome them with open arms.”
Communist China
The Population Secret: A Chinese scientist has leaked the claim that China has been overreporting its population, and in reality, there are over 100 million people fewer than officially claimed. Yi Fuxian, an obstetrician at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who conducts demography research, shared that the censuses China carries out every decade are “seriously overestimated.” The CCP has been inflating the stats to match official estimates and avoid contradicting its own predictions. In describing the implication of his claim, Professor Yi stated, “It means that China’s decades of population control policies are all wrong and that all of China’s economic, foreign, and defense policies, as well as those of the U.S. and other countries towards China, are based on faulty demographic data.”
“I have reviewed Professor Yi’s work and I wholly agree with his conclusions,” says PRI President Steven Mosher. “Chinese official statistics are always fabrications, exaggerating the good and lowballing the bad numbers is standard practice among Chinese officials. China’s population is overstated by at least 100 million people, which means that the aging and dying of China’s population will occur even more rapidly than many predicted. Communism always kills, sometimes it kills slowly and sometimes it kills quickly, but it always kills.”
Calls for Three Children: A document describing measures encouraging officials and government employees to have three children has been leaked from the municipal health authority in the southeastern Chinese city of Quanzhou. This draft lists several ways being considered by city officials to “organize and implement the three-child policy.” According to Radio Free Asia, the document “goes a little further than sloganeering” and it has sparked backlash from Chinese citizens. One major concern voiced online was the idea that the CCP may soon force people to have three children. As of yet, the CCP has not announced such measures.
Hallow Deemed Illegal: Chinese authorities have removed the #1 Catholic prayer app from Chinese app stores after deeming some of the content “illegal.” The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) did not give Alex Jones, founder and CEO of Hallow, Inc., any further details on why the app was removed or how it can return to Chinese app stores. One theory from Catholic World Report pointed out that Hallow had recently added an audio series that explores the life and works of Pope St. John Paul II, which references JPII’s staunch resistance to communism. This is not the first time that the CAC has censored religious apps. In 2021, the CAC pulled both a Bible app and a Quran app off Apple’s Chinese App Store. The CCP will use any method to persecute Christians, even in the digital sphere.
Companionship Economy: China has a growing “companionship industry.” The implementation of China’s strict zero-COVID policies left China’s younger generations socially impaired and experiencing a loneliness epidemic. This led to individuals becoming employed as “pei liao” or “conversation buddies.” China’s growing “pei ban jing ji” or companionship economy is predicted to grow to a worth of 50 billion yuan (~$6.9 billion) by 2025. This companionship industry will only continue to grow as young people forgo marriage and family amid the ongoing economic slowdown.
UN Misdeeds
The Radical CEDAW Committee: The UN’s women’s rights committee has continued to push for the acceptance of abortion and transgender ideology around the world. In the past six months, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW Committee) has pressured 13 countries to liberalize their abortion laws. The committee has also urged countries to define discrimination against women as including “transgender-identifying persons” and expand access to assisted reproductive technologies. The CEDAW Committee’s next meeting is scheduled for October, when the committee’s task force on “gender and sex self-identification” will present a report on issues relating to “this quickly evolving area.”
Science Gone Mad
Facts About IVF: According to a new poll, more than six in 10 adults support protecting access to in vitro fertilization (IVF). The poll, conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, showed that 62% of Americans (including both major political parties) favor protecting immoral process of IVF. However, these results have pro-life organizations questioning if participants know all the facts about IVF, including the following four key points:
- IVF destroys human embryos at a higher rate than abortion.
- IVF classifies and rates the “quality” of human beings, and discards the ones that don’t make the cut.
- There are often too many “leftover” usable embryos. Some are left frozen indefinitely and abandoned.
- If several embryos are implanted, it can end in “selective reduction” by lethal injection.
For more information on IVF, stay tuned for the release of our comprehensive IVF fact sheet, coming soon!
Pro-Life Around the World
Helping Mothers in Need: An Italian Senator has proposed a “maternity income” bill that, if passed, would provide financial support for mothers in need who reject abortion and choose life for their unborn baby. The measure, proposed by Senator Maurizio Gasparri, would offer €1,000 ($1,084) per month for Italian women who continue with their pregnancies despite financial difficulty. These payments would continue until the child is five years old unless the family’s assets grew to exceed 15,000 euros. In addition to the €1,000, the Bill would also provide an additional €50 per month per additional child, and a €100 monthly supplement until the child is 18 if the child is disabled. This Bill aims to reduce the number of abortions in Italy, and would also contribute to increasing the country’s low fertility rate over time, if successful.
Pro-Life on the Home Front
Abortion Providers Back Harris: The biggest abortion providers in the United States have backed Kamala Harris’s bid for the presidency. EMILYs List and Reproductive Freedom for All have officially endorsed Harris, with the former planning to contribute ~ $20 million to her campaign. Though the Planned Parenthood Action Fund has not officially weighed in, its CEO and president, Alexis McGill Johnson, has openly praised Harris’s abortion advocacy. This is unsurprising as Harris has spent much of the last year pushing abortion around the nation as part of her “reproductive freedom tour.” In light of the many failures of the Biden administration, Harris is determined to ensure that the election revolves around abortion, the only issue that she perceives the Democrats as having the upper hand in.
“Abortion Inc. is a for-profit enterprise,” says Mr. Mosher. “So it’s not surprising that they would back the candidate who promises to continue subsidizing the killing of the unborn to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Kamala is the first presidential candidate in American history to actually hold a campaign event at an abortion center, actually celebrating its lethal work.”
Abortion’s Impact on Economy: Florida’s government is putting out warnings that the abortion amendment on the ballot this November could hurt the state’s economy. The “Limiting Government Interference with Abortion Amendment,” or more simply, “Amendment 4,” would mandate that “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s health care provider,” if passed. This week, Florida’s Financial Impact Estimating Conference approved a “financial impact” statement that will be printed on the ballot alongside this amendment.
The statement details an official analysis of the economic impact the amendment would have on Floridians if passed. It states that the amendment would “result in significantly more abortions and fewer live births per year in Florida,” which “may negatively affect the growth of state and local revenues over time.” It goes on to include that there is “uncertainty about whether the amendment will require the state to subsidize abortions with public funds” and that “litigation to resolve those and other uncertainties will result in additional costs to the state government and state courts that will negatively impact the state budget.”
No Proper Burial: The New York City Department of Health (NYC Health) has solidified a heinous stance that preborn babies are not human beings with its latest change in procedure. NYC Health has decided to do away with the requirement that babies aborted at or after 24 weeks (~ six months of pregnancy) be sent to funeral homes for a proper burial or cremation. Instead, the abortion facilities will be allowed to keep the bodies on-premises to do what they please with them. This move by NYC Health would enable abortion clinics to hide the evidence of babies killed after viability, whose bodies show how horrific abortion is. It would also contribute to the dehumanization of unborn children and normalization of late-term abortion. There will be a public hearing to discuss this policy change on August 15th.
Good News
Mothers Band Together: Hurricane Beryl caused widespread devastation across the Caribbean, Louisiana, Mexico, and Texas in early July, leaving many communities in disarray. In Houston, Texas, where power restoration efforts took nearly two weeks, breastfeeding mothers faced particular challenges. The power outages threatened these mothers’ stores of breastmilk, which can take great effort to build up and store. One mother, scared to lose her own supply, found an area with cell service and turned to online communities for help. Fellow mothers came to her aid, offering freezer space in areas where power had been restored to preserve her milk. These mothers came together to support each other in a time of hardship, recognizing and finding a solution to the difficulties caused by a natural disaster.
Quote of the Week
“Getting married, having children, and building a strong Catholic family is becoming a countercultural act.”
~ PRI President Steven Mosher, source
