The American Dream is about continuity
By Tom Quiner, Pulse Life Advocates Board President
Karen and Tom Quiner in Europe
I write this post from Budapest, Hungary. My wife and I, along with two of our grown children, are on a 5 country European river cruise. Here are the five countries we’ve visited, along with their country’s replacement birthrate:
Slovakia 1.56
Hungary 1.49
Czech Republic 1.46
Germany 1.45
Austria 1.32
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All of these countries have birth rates far below replacement level, which is 2.1. The replacement birth rate is simply the number of children each woman needs to have to maintain a stable population.
The European average is 1.4, compared to 1.62 for the United States. Their population will peak by 2026 before decline sets in, leading to a projected 20% population crash by 2100.
Typical pro-life analyses of this situation focus on the dramatic economic consequences of the contraception/abortion mindset that have led us to this precipice. But a letter in today’s Wall Street Journal is what prompted me to pause my tour for an hour and reflect on what is happening in this beautiful land.
Bethany Mandel from Washington writes:
“Economic charts can tell us birthrates are collapsing, but they can’t tell us what that actually feels like. I was recently in Greece with my six children—a country in demographic freefall—and we were treated like a traveling circus. People stared out of shock, not rudeness. They would stop us, smile and count the kids aloud. Again and again, strangers told us some version of the same thing: This is how Greece used to look. That’s how they grew up.”
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Large families in Europe are an anomaly which portends a future of loneliness and isolation, if the trend continues, writes Ms. Mandel:
“The tragedy of falling birthrates isn’t merely national decline, strained pensions or a shrinking labor force. It is the intimate, human loss. Americans talk about the country feeling “lonely,” but we rarely connect that to the most obvious cause: fewer brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles. Fewer people to whom we belong. The childhoods so many Americans grew up with—holidays packed with relatives, built-in playmates, bustling Friday night dinners—are quietly disappearing. The country feels emptier because our homes are emptier.”
She makes a thought-provoking observation, that optimism is influenced by the power of a family:
“In his column “The Great American Baby Shortage” (Politics & Ideas, Dec. 3), William Galston writes that “when Americans once again believe their best years . . . lie ahead, we may see more strollers in our parks.” But the causation may run the other direction. Our futures are bleak not simply because we lack optimism but because we are creating a society in which fewer people will have the most reliable source of meaning and joy that humans have ever known: family. No civilization in history has raised children in the isolation we’re normalizing today—without the intergenerational web that once carried people from infancy to old age.”
Author Dr. Leonard Sax spoke in Des Moines earlier this year and emphasized the value of intergenerational connections to young men and women, and value of family continuity. Ms. Mandel connects the dots that these intergenerational connections are crucial to the American Dream:
“The American dream was never merely about opportunity; it was about continuity. A belief that life is worth building because someone will inherit it. If we want to restore hope, we can’t talk about only GDP or policy tweaks. We must tell the truth about what we are losing, what Greece is already living through, and what kind of country we will become if Americans stop believing family is worth the struggle, sacrifice and extraordinary reward of a full dinner table.”
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I have seen the fruit of Western Civilization this past week, and mourn the coming collapse of this extraordinary continent. Demographic trends are hard to reverse, especially when the Continent is pushing to expand the reach of abortion. An initiative called, “My Voice, My Choice,” calls for supranational European institutions to override country-by-country abortion restrictions.
As the National Catholic Register reports:
“ The initiative, debated at the European Parliament on Dec. 2, after gathering 1.2 million signatures last year, seeks to pressure EU institutions to fund access to abortion for women who cannot obtain it in their own countries — a significant shift in a political system where health policy has traditionally remained a national prerogative.”
How sad. We need more families than ever, and more larger families than ever. Abortion kills families quickly and continents slowly.
Pulse Life Advocates will never give up the fight to save our Iowa families from abortion. We’ve seen its bitter fruit in Europe. Support our pro-life educational outreach with your gift today.
