If only she'd called me about 20 years ago, I would have been more than happy to help out.
Posted on 02/17/2015 11:16:22 AM PST by wagglebee
Abortion has consequences.
The Italian health minister gave a recent interview in which she said Italy is a “dying country.” Why? Because abortion has depleted the European nation of its next generations and caused a massive baby shortage.
While some abortion advocates decry overpopulation, Italy’s birth rate has fallen to its lowest level – 8.4 per 1,000 people — since 1861.
Beatrice Lorenzin, the minister of health, said: “We are at the threshold where people who die are not being replaced by newborns. That means we are a dying country. This situation has enormous implications for every sector: the economy, society, health, pensions, just to give a few examples.”
The number of births per 1,000 people has fallen to just 8.4, down from 38.3 when Italy’s territories and kingdoms were unified a century and a half ago.
In Britain and the United States, the figures are 12 and 13 respectively.
Last year 509,000 babies were born in Italy, 5,000 fewer than in 2013.
The Catholic Herald newspaper commented on the new figures and Lorenzin’s quote:
It may seem a statement of the obvious, but there are fewer children around because people do not want to have children. The children they might have had have been aborted, or they never came to be in the first place because of contraception. Indeed, if you were to factor in all the aborted children, and to imagine for a moment they had lived, then Italy’s population would not be in decline. The invaluable Wikipedia tells us that in 2010 the abortion rate in Italy was 10 per 1000 women of childbearing age. If you look at this table, it seems that around 20 to 25% of all pregnancies in Italy end in abortion, though I am no mathematician, let alone a statistician.
So the minster’s words about the challenge posed by the declining birth rate can also be read as words about the challenge posed by the high abortion rate. And the same would be true, by extension, of contraception. The Telegraph article speaks of 40% of couples not having any children at all.
Unless this trend is reversed, Italy, as it presently exists, is doomed. Again, I am not a statistician, but I do know that trends never continue quite as you expect them to. Italy probably is not a dying nation, but whatever the future, its present is certainly problematic.
Something for the "fiscal conservative" pro-abortion libertarians to ponder.
Freepmail wagglebee to subscribe or unsubscribe from the moral absolutes ping list.
FreeRepublic moral absolutes keyword search
My prospective Italian Villa is getting cheaper by the year!
It’s really hard to conceive of a Catholic country like Italy behaving this way on abortion
A real pity
Not to worry, the Muslim “immigrants” are busy “taking up the slack.”
I guess they aren’t breeding like rabbits eh Franky?
The civilized peoples are aborting themselves, or simply declining to have children.
Barbarians are moving in and taking over.
You can kiss Social Security goodbye in about 25 years because our nation has killed almost 60,000,000 future contributors through abortion. That’s when the elderly will feel the consequences of this sin.
From my Italian friends and colleagues I can see this as less abortion and more contraception. The root cause for both of these is the country’s socialist system — young people can’t get permanent jobs for them to think of permanency. And starting your own business? Legislation won’t allow that
The culture of the West has been poisoned. Marxism, feminism (to the extent they are not one in the same), secularism, have all combined to weaken what once held it all together. Dark times are ahead. Italy is not alone in this.
It’s not abortion. They aren’t having kids. But the immigrants are.
And the bearded savages are getting on boats to go to Italy where they will NOT use birth control or practice abortion. Better go see the colosseum now before the savages use it for hangings and beheadings.
Don’t you worry Italy, millions of rabid muslims will come and breed podigiuosly in their new found territory, and all of your baby problems will be solved. All it will cost you is your country, your identity, and the lives of all of the future generations that you murdered for the sake of more personal freedom and debauchery. Of course, being from the US, I don’t have much room to lay judgement, just a warning of things to come if you don’t change your wicked ways.
Muzzies, and our illiterate and unskilled illegals are having babies, because they are paid plenty by the government to do so. At the same time, the middle classes in Europe and in the USA are now being bled dry. Of course, or solid middle, and upper middle class have become spoiled and selfish to a large extent. Killing a child is not a “choice”
Yes I perused it being ignorant
They went hog wild early on but dropped by nearly 2/3rds from almost 3%
Now they are around 1% of live births and we’re at 1.7%
Just doing what the Pope said and not breeding like rabbits. How sad
Just doing what the Pope said and not breeding like rabbits. How sad
If only she'd called me about 20 years ago, I would have been more than happy to help out.
Agreed. That and all the good wine leads to “droop”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.