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In recent years, the fertility gap by religion has widened to unprecedented levels.... With birth rates at just 1.8 or 1.9 children per woman, versus a conversion-adjusted “replacement rate” of 2.44, religious communities in America will tend to decline by about 25 percent in each generation... Virtually 100 percent of the decline in fertility in the United States from 2012 to 2019 can be explained through a combination of two factors: growing numbers of religious women leaving the faith, along with declining birth rates among the nonreligious.... Since 2002, the share of reproductive-age women who attended church weekly or more...

A popular form of contraception used by millions of women across the world has been linked to an increased risk of a rare brain tumor. Recent research published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) suggests a connection between the use of injectable medroxyprogesterone acetate — a type of progestogen used by roughly 74 million women globally for birth control — and the increased risk of meningioma, a brain tumor that affects the membranes covering the brain and spinal cord. While usually benign, meningiomas potentially lead to serious complications due to their location. The study, carried out by French researchers, used...

"I will say, he'd had multiple appointments booked to get a vasectomy to finish it off, and he'd canceled it….After she gave birth in February this year, Decker shared an update about her progress during an Instagram Q&A and confirmed that her husband does have the surgery scheduled.”

This article from the National Bank of Canada shows how immigration is outpacing available housing and infrastructure and how the Canadian standard of living is now on a downward trajectory. The article is PDF so please click on the link. Canada: housing supply deficit hits new record

Following an attempt to resurrect the Obama-era HHS contraception mandate last March, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Xavier Becerra issued a revised and final rule this week that preserves some conscience rights for Americans regarding contraception and abortion. In January 2023, HHS published a proposal to rescind the robust conscience protections crafted under the Trump administration. This action triggered a “comment period” during which CatholicVote supporters submitted 9,604 individual letters objecting to the mandate. As CatholicVote reported, the “HHS mandate” refers “to the requirement under Obamacare for employers to pay for abortifacients, contraceptives, and sterilization in their health...

The top Republican strategist spoke with Fox News Digital after meeting with a number of GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill this week to discuss what she argues is the need to promote contraception and reach a consensus on the abortion issue lest Democrats continue to use it as a "turnout intensifier" in November

Around the world, nations are creating incentives to get citizens to have more children, but their strategies don’t appear to be working. Vox claims, “You can’t even pay people to have more kids.” But are people choosing not to have children because they don’t want them, or do they not want what they’ve been conditioned to believe children are? Vox reports that Taiwan has spent more than $3 billion trying to convince its citizens to have more children. That includes the addition of six months of paid parental leave reimbursed at 80% of the parent’s salary, as well as a...

The Minister for Justice has received approval from the Cabinet to begin repealing archaic censorship laws. Helen McEntee told Government colleagues that in the almost 100 years of these laws being in place there has been a dramatic shift in societal values. The current law still allows for the censorship and prohibition of books, magazines and newspapers that are considered indecent or obscene, or have too great a focus on crime. The Censorship of Publications legislation was originally recommended by a body called “The Committee on Evil Literature”, which had been appointed in 1926. There have been changes over the...

[Catholic Caucus] Fernandez: new custodian of faith contradicts Humanae VitaeIn 2006 Msgr Victor M. Fernández published a criticism of Msgr Livio Melina: his position on contraception was too inflexible and uncharitable. However, this was the position of the Magisterium of the Church.The new Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has already repeatedly complained that he has received specious accusations against his person; i.e., he alleges that his book about kissing has been used to debase his theological preparation, in support of which he talks about his books and articles of high standing.Objection accepted. But perhaps it...

[Catholic Caucus] Archbishop Paglia on relevance of 'Humanae vitae' today The President of the Pontifical Academy of Life offers his thoughts on a bioethical perspective that he says calls for a worldwide alliance among all the sciences for the future of the planet and humanity.By Vatican NewsA two-day Congress organized by the Jérôme Lejeune International Chair of Bioethics opened on Friday, 19 May on the subject “Humanae Vitae, the audacity of an Encyclical on Sexuality and Procreation”. In his introductory greeting to the assembly, Cardinal Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, emphasized...

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:..And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. (Genesis 1:26, 28) And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave...

Martin Luther King and Planned ParenthoodBy the time Martin Luther King Jr. had taken his seat in 1960 on Planned Parenthood’s committee on the study of contraception, his views on how artificial birth control could be used to reduce Black family size were well-known throughout the United States. King had been recommended to join the committee by the accomplished and influential Morehouse University sociology professor Walter R. Chivers, who had twice written to his former student (October & November), asking him to become a member. For his part, Chivers had volunteered with the Planned Parenthood Federation of America for sixteen...

When the War of 1812 broke out, the Town of Billerica, Mass., was in the middle of an extraordinary baby boom. Twelve other families in the town had 13 children. Five had 14 offspring and one had 15. Twenty-six families each had 10 children, 20 families had 11 children and 24 families had 12 children. The largest family had 21 children by two wives. That meant 90 families accounted for 1,043 children. The average Billerica family had an average of 11.6 children per family. The town’s population grew almost exclusively because of its fecundity. In 1810, the population of the...

[Catholic Caucus] There’s Yet Another Jesuit on Francis’s Team. At the Academy for Life They Know Him WellTo the squadron of Jesuits, including a good three cardinals, that Pope Francis has set up in command of the Church, there must be added at least one name that Settimo Cielo culpably omitted in the previous post.It is a name not much in use. And one that nobody in recent days has brought into the swirl of criticisms that have struck the Pontifical Academy for Life, when instead the very one who bears that name was behind them.The controversy broke out following...

[Catholic Caucus] “Humanae Vitae” Under Siege. Cardinal Müller Defends It and CounterattacksThe irrationality of many of Pope Francis’s decisions is not to be found only in the selection of cardinals, both promoted and excluded, as laid bare on August 31 between the serious and the burlesque by Milan archbishop Mario Delpini in his unforgettable commendation (at 2:14:20 of the video recording) of the bishop of the little diocese of Como, Oscar Cantoni, clad in purple unlike him.The irrationality seems to have infected even the Vatican institutes most in tune with Jorge Mario Bergoglio, including the Pontifical Academy for Life presided...

Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI's 1966 encyclical disallowing the use of artificial contraception in marriage, is expected to be overturned by Pope Francis soon. Among several things to watch out for are, failure to distinguish between contraception methods that likely involve the early abortion of a living fetal human and those which don't; ignoring the capacity of governments to use anti-birth policy as a way of tyrannizing their populations; and ignoring the tendency of contraception to lead to women being treated as objects. A traditional Christmas-time carol, the Coventry Carol, has the line: Herod the King, in his raging, charged...

[Catholic Caucus] Francis Calls Break With Faith "Development of Doctrine"On his flight back to Rome from Canada on 29 July, Francis said that "you can't do theology if you put a 'no' in front of it" - as if anyone ever said so.He added something about "theological development," referring to an immoral publication on contraception by the Pontifical Academy for Contraception and Polygamy (formerly: For Life), which doesn't contain a "development" but a break with the Catholic faith.Francis claimed that its authors had "done their duty" because they had tried to "advance" [= counteract] doctrine. Knowing he was guilty, Francis...

Why would any Republican vote for that cynical, dishonest, anti-constitutional ‘contraception’ bill?When Democrats accuse Republicans of opposing “access” to birth control, what they really mean is that Republicans oppose forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for birth control or that Republicans oppose coercing people of faith to provide birth control (including abortifacients) against their consciences.The Right to Contraception Act, a bill that passed in the House yesterday, allows reporters and Democrats to manufacture panic by claiming Republicans voted against a bill that “protects access to contraception,” even though the actual legislation was crammed with enough poison pills to kill the...

Local and international groups are rushing to get post-rape kits, emergency contraception, and abortion pills to Ukrainians amid growing evidence that Russian soldiers have used sexual violence as a weapon of war. Ukraine says it's received more than 400 reports of sexual violence, including rape, in two weeks. Existing data is unlikely to "convey an accurate picture" of the true magnitude of sexual violence in the country because rape so often goes unreported, even in times of peace, Jaime Nadal Roig, the UNFPA's representative to Ukraine, told Insider.

Dublin, Ireland, Jan 4, 2022 / 12:00 pm (CNA). Ireland is preparing to follow France in offering free contraception to women under 25 years of age. The French government introduced the measure on Jan. 1, while the Irish authorities have promised to make contraception free for women aged between 17 and 25 years from August. French officials said that the change would apply to three million young women out of a population of 67.4 million people. Contraception is already free for minors (under 18s). Along with Sweden, France has the highest total fertility rate of the 27 member states of...