History tells us that all freedoms are conditional. In 1920, the Soviet Union became the first country in the world to legalize abortion, as part of a socialist commitment to women’s health and well-being. Sixteen years later, this decision was reversed once Stalin was in power and realized that birth rates were falling.
The pressure on all nations to maintain their population levels has never gone away. But in 2025, the demographic crisis will become even more serious – and women’s rights will be the victims. In both cases UNITED STATES and the United Kingdomthe rate of births has been in free fall for 15 years. In Japan, Poland and Canada, the fertility rate has already fallen to 1.3. In China and Italy, it is 1.2. South Korea has the lowest rate in the world, at 0.72. A study published by the medical journal The Lancet predicts that by 2100, almost all countries on the planet will not produce enough children to maintain its population size.
This is largely because women have more access to contraception, are more educated than ever, and are pursuing careers that mean they are more likely to avoid or delay having children . Parents invest more in each child they have. The patriarchal expectation that women should be little more than child-makers is mercifully collapsing.
But the initial dilemma remains: how do countries have more children? Governments responded with calls and incentives to encourage families to procreate. Hungary has abolition of income tax for mothers under 30 years old. In 2023, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un was seen cry on television as he urged the National Mothers’ Conference to do their part to halt falling birth rates. In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has backed a campaign aimed at reaching at least half a million births per year by 2033.
However, as these measures fail to have the desired effect, the pressure on women takes a more sinister turn. Conservative pro-natalist movements promote old-fashioned nuclear families with lots of children, achievable only if women give birth earlier. This ideology This at least partly explains the devastating crackdown on access to abortion in some American states. Anyone who thinks that the right to abortion has nothing to do with people’s concerns should note that in the summer of 2024, Republicans in the US Senate also voted against the right to abortion. contraception a federal right. This same worldview fuels the growing backlash against sexual and gender minorities, whose existence for some poses a threat to the traditional family. The most extreme pronatalists also include white supremacists and eugenicists.
The more nations worry about birth rates, the greater the risk to gender rights. In China, for example, the government has taken a resolutely anti-feminist position over the last few years. President Xi Jinping said at a meeting of the All-China Women’s Federation in 2023 that women should “actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and childbearing.”
For now, most women are at least able to choose if and when they will have children, and how many they will have. But as fertility rates fall below replacement levels, it is unclear how far some countries will be able to go to support their population levels. 2025 is shaping up to be a year where their choice could well be taken away from them.
