In This Issue:
- PRI in the Media
- PRI President Exposes Forced Abortion
- Population Crisis Approaches
- Deepening Depopulation
- Weddings Reserved for the Wealthy
- Taiwan’s Baby Bust Persists
- Housing Market Fuels Fertility Collapse
- Births Rise in South Korea
- Communist China
- CCP Bans Online Evangelization
- Science Gone Mad
- Lawsuit Exposes Transition Mills
- Pro-Life Around the World
- Polish Children at Risk
- Walk for Life Demands Change
- Pro-Life on the Home Front
- Coerced Abortions on the Rise
- Planned Parenthood is Replaceable
- DOJ Weaponized Against Pro-Lifers
- Washington Funds Abortion Giant
- Good News
- Thousands Rally for Life in Germany
PRI in the Media
PRI President Exposes Forced Abortion: Last week, PRI President Steven Mosher was the keynote speaker at the Focus on Life Dinner in Michigan, hosted by the Downriver affiliates of Right to Life of Michigan. Drawing from his firsthand experience in China during the brutal One-Child Policy, Mosher exposed how mothers—even nine months pregnant—were forced into abortions. Mr. Mosher warned that U.S. tax dollars and UN programs have long fueled abortion and sterilization worldwide. He praised President Trump’s pro-life leadership, from cutting UN abortion funding to appointing justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, and urged reforms like making childbirth free to help young married couples have children.
Population Crisis Approaches: This week, PRI President Steven Mosher was quoted in The Epoch Times. He warned that collapsing fertility rates worldwide will trigger “a gradual implosion of the world’s economy as the population ages and dies.” Mr. Mosher also cautioned that once underway, the decline will be “difficult, if not impossible, to reverse.” Global fertility has fallen from between 4–5 children per woman in 1960 to just 2.2 today, with countries like China and South Korea dropping below one. Mr. Mosher cautioned that the world must act decisively before population decline reaches a point of no return.
Deepening Depopulation
Weddings Reserved for the Wealthy: Marriage, once the cornerstone of adulthood, has become a “capstone” reserved for the financially secure. Census data show the median age for first marriage has climbed to 30 for men and 29 for women—up from 28 and 26 just 15 years ago. Between 2008 and 2023, first-marriage rates among 22–45-year-olds dropped 9%, with the steepest declines among the less educated and lower-income. Today, 59% of 37-year-olds from wealthy families are married, compared to only 30% from the poorest quartile. As Krista Westrick-Payne of the National Center for Marriage & Family Research notes, marriage has become a “status symbol” for the affluent, while the working class is left behind.
“Marriage and childbearing must be made affordable, if America’s ongoing fertility decline is to be reversed,” says Mr. Mosher. “We must start by ‘Making Birth Free,’ and then move from there to sheltering young couples willing to have children from all taxes. Those who are pouring their hearts and souls into raising little images of God—also known as future taxpayers—should be exempt from taxation.”
Taiwan’s Baby Bust Persists: Taiwan, now a “super-aged society” with over 20% of its people over 65, is scrambling to reverse one of the world’s lowest birth rates. The government approved new subsidies of $3,320 per newborn (nearly $7,000 for twins), replacing smaller payouts. Regionally, Hong Kong offers $2,500 per baby, and South Korea $2,200 after two children. Over 120,000 families may benefit. Yet with fertility at just 0.87 births per woman in 2022, experts warn that subsidies alone cannot save Taiwan from demographic collapse.
Housing Market Fuels Fertility Collapse: The U.S. fertility rate has plunged below 1.6 births per woman in 2024, after nearly two decades of decline. Experts now link the crash partly to soaring housing costs. Recent data have revealed that median home prices jumped from the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $343,800 in 2006 to $410,100 in 2024, putting family-sized homes out of economic reach. Research shows that a 10% rise in housing prices cuts births among non-homeowners by 1%. As costs outpace wages, couples delay having children, or have none at all—driving America deeper into demographic decline.
Births Rise in South Korea: South Korea, long at the center of the world’s fertility collapse, is showing tentative signs of recovery. Births rose 7.4% in the first half of 2025, lifting the fertility rate from 0.72 in 2023 to 0.76 by June. Marriages also rebounded, rising from a record low of 192,000 in 2022 to 220,000 in 2024. Analysts credit expanded family policies such as free childcare, extended paternity leave, and generous childbirth support funds for shifting attitudes among young women, who now report greater willingness to marry and have children. Though experts caution the effects may be short-lived, the trend shows that strong pro-family policies and renewed cultural optimism can begin to turn the tide.
Communist China
CCP Bans Online Evangelization: The Chinese Communist Party has tightened its grip on religious freedom with new regulations banning priests and clergy from teaching or evangelizing online. The regulations, issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, forbid preaching through live broadcasts, short videos, or online meetings. Clergy are required to pledge loyalty to the Communist Party and its socialist system. Priests may only preach on state-approved platforms run by registered religious bodies and with government approval. The crackdown comes as Pope Leo XIV signals openness to revisiting the Vatican’s controversial deal with Beijing, even as Chinese Catholics endure escalating persecution.
“As the crackdown on Catholics and other Christians continues, it is clear that Pope Leo is rethinking the controversial deal with China that was made by his predecessor,” says Mr. Mosher. “Instead of creating a ‘safe space’ for religious believers in Communist China, the deal has been used by the CCP to tighten its controls over the Church. The new regulations are only the latest example of this.”
Science Gone Mad
Lawsuit Exposes Transition Mills: A Philadelphia man has filed a malpractice lawsuit after being rushed into hormone therapy and irreversible gender transition surgery with little psychiatric evaluation. Andrew Razny claims doctors diagnosed him with gender dysphoria after a 20-minute consultation, pressured him toward surgery despite his objections, and falsely assured him that procedures were safe and reversible. Razny suffers “severe physical, emotional, and relational harm.” His legal team warns that trusted institutions are turning into “transition mills,” prioritizing ideology over patient safety. This case highlights the urgent need for laws to protect vulnerable patients from coerced, life-altering interventions.
Pro-Life Around the World
Polish Children at Risk: Poland’s pro-abortion Tusk government is using unlawful “mental health” guidelines to permit abortion on demand—in violation of the Constitution. Even adjustment disorders now qualify as grounds for abortions up to the moment of birth, sparking protests among psychiatrists. Doctors who refuse to “poison, dismember, or suffocate babies during a forced premature delivery” face heavy financial penalties. Since December 2023, Ordo Iuris has fought the government’s abortion propaganda, working to prevent Poland from following the UK’s path, where “mental health” exceptions justify hundreds of thousands of abortions each year.
Walk for Life Demands Change: On Saturday, September 20, 2025, Sydney’s Walk for Life will take place to mark “the anniversary of NSW parliament passing revised abortion laws in 2019.” This year’s theme is “Love the next generation,” to commemorate life and highlight the human cost of abortion. In a statement cited by Christian Daily International (CDI), Jodie Pickard, founding director of Love Australia, stated, “A quarter of the next generation of Australians are missing because their lives ended through abortion.” Sydney’s Walk for Life will send a clear message: abortion has robbed Australia of a quarter of its next generation, and the time has come to protect the unborn.
Pro-Life on the Home Front
Coerced Abortions on the Rise: Across the U.S., women are increasingly being forced into abortions through easy access to abortion pills. In Texas, a man faces capital murder charges for allegedly slipping mifepristone and misoprostol into his girlfriend’s food, killing their unborn child, after the woman refused to have an abortion. Similar cases in Illinois and Houston show the same pattern of coercion and abuse, leading to the murder of unborn babies. The Biden-era deregulation of abortion pills has only fueled this crisis, enabling traffickers, abusers, and partners to destroy lives in secret. As Dr. Ingrid Skop of the Charlotte Lozier Institute warns, abortion has “always been an instrument of coercion.”
Planned Parenthood is Replaceable: Planned Parenthood is losing Medicaid funds after the Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic decision and President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, and its claim of being “irreplaceable” doesn’t stand. In 2021, Planned Parenthood served only 11% of Medicaid family planning clients. By contrast, 5,500 federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) and 3,300 rural health clinics already serve millions of women nationwide, delivering 2.2 million pap tests and 1.9 million mammograms in 2024—services Planned Parenthood barely provides. Meanwhile, 2,750 pregnancy centers offer free ultrasounds, STI tests, material aid, and counseling. States that defunded Planned Parenthood prove that women continue to access real health care without America’s largest abortion chain.
DOJ Weaponized Against Pro-Lifers: The Functional Government Initiative has obtained government emails through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, revealing that pro-abortion activists were working hand-in-glove with the Biden Department of Justice (DOJ) to target Catholics and pro-life activists under the FACE Act. This law was weaponized to imprison elderly pro-lifers for peacefully praying outside abortion clinics. President Trump pardoned many of these activists, exposing the DOJ’s bias. The revelations show how the Biden administration colluded with abortion groups to persecute the pro-life movement—proof that government power was twisted into a tool against America’s faithful.
“The National Abortion Federation testified to Congress that it had no influence over the Biden FACE Act prosecutions,” says Mr. Mosher. “But the evidence gathered by the Functional Government Initiative shows that they worked closely together on a number of cases. Thank God President Trump has now pardoned those who peacefully demonstrated against abortion. Otherwise these political prisoners of the lawless Biden administration would still be in jail.”
Washington Funds Abortion Giant: Last week, a federal appeals court upheld the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” cutting Planned Parenthood off from Medicaid funding. Washington state, however, has rushed to keep the abortion giant afloat. Governor Bob Ferguson pledged to replace more than $11 million in lost federal dollars with state funds, ensuring Planned Parenthood’s 30 clinics continue operations. At the same time, abortion advocates are lobbying to restore $8.5 million slashed from Washington’s Abortion Access Project, created after Roe V. Wade was overturned. Rather than propping up America’s largest abortion chain, states should redirect resources toward life-affirming care that truly helps women and their children.
Good News
Thousands Rally for Life in Germany: Germany’s annual March for Life drew thousands of peaceful pro-life demonstrators in both Berlin and Cologne on September 20, joined by bishops who publicly affirmed the dignity of every human life from conception to natural death. Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer and Auxiliary Bishop Matthias Heinrich marched in Berlin, while Cologne’s march opened with Mass celebrated by Bishop Dominik Schwaderlapp. Speakers highlighted conscience protections, the sanctity of unborn children, and opposition to assisted suicide, with testimony from late-term abortion survivors and families proclaiming that every life is a gift.
Quote of the Week
“Women, I have a challenge for you, too. Be virtuous. Our strength is found in God’s design for our role. We are the guardians. We are the encouragers. We are the preservers. Guard your heart. Everything you do flows from it. And if you’re a mother, please recognize that is the single most important ministry you have.”
~ Erika Kirk
