In This Issue:
- Breaking News
- Trump Ends Fetal Tissue Research
- PRI in the Media
- The Artificial Womb Threat
- China is Scrambling to Save Energy
- Deepening Depopulation
- Ireland’s Shrinking Future
- How Travel Lowers Births
- Communist China
- China Shrinks Again
- China Reaps One-Child Consequences
- UN Misdeeds
- Pope Rebukes UN Agenda
- Science Gone Mad
- IVF Goes Fully Automated
- Pro-Life Around the World
- UK Targets Disabled Babies
- Zimbabwe Bishops Defend Life
- MAiD Proposed to Infants
- Pro-Life on the Home Front
- Why Funding Was Restored
- Virginia Pushes Extreme Amendment
- Pro-Lifers Cleared in Court
- Arkansas’s Pro-Life Record
- Good News
- Baby on the Way
Breaking News
Trump Ends Fetal Tissue Research: The Trump administration announced it is ending all NIH funding for research using tissue from aborted babies, effective immediately. The policy applies across all NIH grants and programs, expanding on Trump’s first-term ban on intramural fetal tissue research. NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya said ethical alternatives now make such research unnecessary. According to NIH data, 77 projects using aborted fetal tissue were funded in fiscal year 2024, a number that has steadily declined since 2019, as advances in organoids and other technologies offer ethically acceptable alternatives.
PRI in the Media
The Artificial Womb Threat: This week, an article co-authored by PRI President Steven Mosher and PRI team member Chiara McKenna was featured on LifeSiteNews, warning that artificial womb technology could become the next major battleground for the pro-life movement. Drawing parallels to Brave New World, they expose how advances in IVF and ectogenesis threaten to industrialize human reproduction, normalize embryo destruction, and sever the bond between mother and child. Artificial womb research risks unprecedented ethical, medical, and legal consequences, ultimately reducing vulnerable human lives to disposable scientific material in the pursuit of profit and technological control.
China is Scrambling to Save Energy: This week, Mr. Mosher appeared on Fox News Radio to discuss his New York Post article on U.S. strategy toward communist China. Mr. Mosher explained that China is resource-poor and heavily dependent on foreign supplies, making it vulnerable to pressure when access is cut off. He argued that U.S. actions against Venezuela’s Maduro regime—whose oil China relies on—could curb Beijing’s aggressive behavior and weaken its influence over Cuba. He also noted that Trump-era tariffs are squeezing China’s export sector, as the Chinese economy continues to falter, with reports of roughly 75 million empty apartments underscoring its deepening collapse.
Deepening Depopulation
Ireland’s Shrinking Future: A new report from the Iona Institute warns that Ireland’s plunging marriage and birth rates have put the country “on the wrong course,” with serious demographic consequences ahead. The report shows Ireland’s fertility rate has fallen to just 1.5 children per woman and is quickly declining. Births have declined across all age groups except those over 40, a rise insufficient to offset wider losses. While the marriage rate dropped from 5.2 per thousand adults in 2004 to 3.8 in 2024, which is below the EU average.
How Travel Lowers Births: A new analysis by the Institute for Family Studies suggests that the rise of leisure travel may be quietly contributing to falling birth rates. The share of Americans holding passports has surged from about 6% in the 1970s to 54% today, while the rate at which women move from childlessness to a first birth has fallen 28% since 2007. The data shows that having children significantly reduces travel, meaning family formation increasingly carries cultural and personal costs, which in turn discourages marriage and parenthood unless travel were to become more family-friendly.
Communist China
China Shrinks Again: China’s population fell for the fourth consecutive year in 2025 as births plunged 17% to a record low of just 7.92 million—the lowest since records began in 1949. According to official data, China’s total population shrank by 3.39 million, leaving the population standing at 1.405 billion, while deaths rose to 11.31 million. The fertility rate now hovers around one child per woman, far below replacement level. Despite childcare subsidies and proposed coverage of childbirth costs, rising living expenses, delayed marriage, and the long-term effects of the one-child policy continue to drive China’s deepening demographic crisis.
“China’s accelerating population decline is a reflection of many factors,” says Mr. Mosher. “The stifling atmosphere of repression within the country, the lack of job opportunities for young people, and the anti-natal attitudes the Communist Party instilled in the people during the long-running one-child policy. The result: within the century America’s population will exceed that of China.”
China Reaps One-Child Consequences: A new analysis criticizes the demographic logic behind China’s brutal one-child policy, as the country now faces record-low birth rates after years of population decline. Enforced for 35 years through forced abortions, sterilizations, and heavy fines, the policy radically reshaped family life and accelerated demographic collapse. Sterilizations fell sharply after the policy was eased, dropping from 1.4 million women in 2014 to just 190,000 by 2020. China is now grappling with the long-term consequences of decades of coercive population control.
“China’s one-child policy was celebrated for decades as a success of social engineering,” says Mr. Mosher. “The demographic devastation it has caused is now recognized for the train wreck that it in fact is. Even the abortion-loving media is now having to recognize this fact, long after the evidence was clear to any reasonable observer—or yours truly.”
UN Misdeeds
Pope Rebukes UN Agenda: In his annual address to diplomats, Pope Leo XIV criticized the UN for drifting away from true multilateralism and becoming increasingly driven by ideology. He warned that coercive diplomacy, censorship disguised as “inclusivity,” and the imposition of contested terms—such as so-called “sexual and reproductive health” and “gender ideology”—undermine the dignity of human life. The Pope condemned many of the things the UN prioritizes, such as abortion, gender ideology, and surrogacy. He also warned that freedom of conscience, religion, and speech, especially for Christians, is being eroded within the international system.
Science Gone Mad
IVF Goes Fully Automated: A biotech startup, Conceivable Life Sciences, claims to have created the world’s first entirely automated IVF laboratory, using AI-powered robots to mass-produce human embryos, resulting in 19 births so far. Marketed as IVF’s “iPhone moment,” the technology is designed to standardize and scale embryo creation, with founders reportedly discussing regulatory “streamlining” with Trump administration officials. According to the CDC, IVF already results in live births only 37.5% of the time, and countless embryos are regularly discarded in the process. Automating IVF will not make it ethical but rather accelerate the commodification and destruction of human embryos.
Pro-Life Around the World
UK Targets Disabled Babies: New figures from the UK’s Department of Health show a troubling rise in abortions following a Down syndrome diagnosis. In England and Wales, 735 such abortions were carried out in 2023—a 7.3% increase from 2019—10 of which were performed at or beyond 24 weeks. UK law permits abortion up to birth for so-called “disabilities,” including Down syndrome. The organization Don’t Screen Us Out notes that 87.26% of babies diagnosed with Down syndrome were aborted in 2021, warning that current law enables discriminatory practices that deny the dignity and equal worth of children with disabilities.
Zimbabwe Bishops Defend Life: Catholic bishops in Zimbabwe are urging citizens to oppose a proposed Medical Services Amendment Bill that would vastly expand abortion access nationwide. The legislation would replace the restrictive 1977 law by allowing abortion on request up to 12 weeks and up to 20 weeks for broadly defined health and socio-economic reasons, including for minors without judicial oversight. The Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops’ Conference warned that the bill threatens the sanctity of life and rightly called abortion a “massacre of the innocent.”
MAiD Proposed to Infants: Canada’s euthanasia regime, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), is facing renewed scrutiny after Quebec’s College of Physicians again proposed extending MAiD to newborns under one year old with severe deformities or syndromes, echoing the Netherlands’ Groningen Protocol. After legalization, MAiD claimed 76,475 lives by the end of 2024, with an estimated 94,000 deaths by early 2026. Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children drafted policies in 2018 permitting euthanasia for minors without parental consent, underscoring how MAiD has evolved into a system that increasingly targets the vulnerable under the guise of compassion.
Pro-Life on the Home Front
Why Funding Was Restored: The Trump administration has drawn criticism after the Department of Health and Human Services restored tens of millions of dollars in Title X funding to Planned Parenthood, prompting the ACLU to drop a lawsuit over the withholding of more than $65 million in grants. Some pro-life policy experts say the move was strategic, warning HHS was likely to lose in court and be forced to repay the funds with interest under Biden-era rules. With the case dismissed, they argue the administration is now better positioned to pursue lasting cuts to Planned Parenthood funding under new regulations, though some note the failure to reinstate the Protect Life Rule remains a concern.
“HHS restored some funding to Planned Parenthood because the judge was obviously going to rule against them and restore the funding anyway,” says Mr. Mosher. “Not only would this create a hard-to-overturn precedent, it would force the government to pay legal fees and possibly damages to Planned Parenthood’s supporters. New Trump rules coming down will enable more and deeper cuts during the coming year. The bottom line: This was not a surrender, but a strategic retreat. Trump promised to end taxpayer funding of the abortion industry. I think he will keep his word.”
Virginia Pushes Extreme Amendment: Virginia lawmakers have advanced a sweeping abortion amendment that would enshrine a broad “right to reproductive freedom” in the state constitution, sending the measure to a statewide vote in November. Passed along party lines, the amendment contains no age limits, no parental rights, no ban on partial-birth abortion, no requirement to provide care for babies born alive after failed abortions, and no limits on taxpayer funding. Pro-life groups and Virginia’s Catholic bishops mobilized hundreds of citizens in opposition, warning the amendment’s vague language would eliminate nearly all existing safeguards.
Pro-Lifers Cleared in Court: A Pennsylvania court has dropped all criminal misdemeanor charges against six pro-life advocates arrested last year for peacefully offering roses and information to pregnant women at an abortion facility in Chester, Pennsylvania. Members of the Red Rose Rescue group were charged with defiant trespass and disorderly conduct after a July 2025 intervention aimed at stopping late-term abortions. Following a special plea hearing, the judge dismissed the charges with “time served,” requiring no fines, probation, or community service.
Arkansas’s Pro-Life Record: Arkansas has been ranked the most pro-life state in the nation for the sixth consecutive year, an announcement made during the state’s 48th annual March for Life in Little Rock. Families, church groups, and lawmakers gathered peacefully at the State Capitol to commemorate the anniversary of Roe v. Wade and to honor unborn children lost to abortion. Sponsored by Arkansas Right to Life, the event highlighted the state’s continued pro-life leadership, including testimony from Katherine Presley Herring, who shared how abortion pill reversal saved her child after she was unknowingly given the abortion drug.
Good News
Baby on the Way: Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, announced they are expecting their fourth child, a baby boy, due in late July. It marks the first known time in modern U.S. history that a sitting second lady is pregnant while her husband is in office. The Vances, already parents to three young children, have been widely praised for modeling a strong pro-family vision at a time of falling U.S. birth rates.
“It’s very rare for a President or Vice President to have a child while in office,” says Mr. Mosher. “And the fact that the Vances are having baby number four will have a greater impact on American fertility than most of the other policies that have been proposed.”
Quote of the Week
“The right to freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, religious freedom and even the right to life are being restricted in the name of other so-called new rights, with the result that the very framework of human rights is losing its vitality and creating space for force and oppression.”
~ Pope Leo XIV
