France's health ministry urges young adults to have children

France's health ministry is sending letters to 29-year-olds in the country, urging them to have children before it is "too late."

Key Takeaways:

• The French government is set to launch a campaign in which 29-year-old citizens will receive a letter from the health ministry urging them to have children while they still can.

• The move is part of a 16-point-plan looking to reverse the country's falling birth rates.

• In recent years, the number of deaths outweighed the number of births in France.

The Details:

The French Health Ministry issued a press release this month outlining a 16-point-plan to boost fertility. The 16 points are divided into four areas:

• raising awareness

• early detection and diagnosis

• providing support

• turning France into a global fertility leader

While some of these efforts are focused on infertility, the government also is hoping to encourage young adults to have children earlier rather than later, through "[d]issemination of targeted, balanced information on both sexual and reproductive health, aimed at all French men and women aged 29."

According to Sky News, the letter will confer "scientifically sound information" to young adults, including issues such as "sexual health and contraception" and "will also reiterate that fertility is a shared responsibility between women and men."

Disturbingly, part of the reason the letters will be sent to 29-year-olds is because this is the age limit at which a woman can freeze her eggs without needing a doctor's approval first; France is looking to boost egg freezing clinics.

Freezing eggs, however, is not a guarantee of future fertility.

Why It Matters:

Last year, it was revealed that deaths outnumbered births in France, with the lowest birth rate in the country since World War II. The fertility rate in France is 1.56 children per woman, far lower than the 2.1 required to maintain a stable population. And this number has been steadily falling.

"This is something that demographers had known for a long time, but the fact that there were more deaths than births in France last year created a shock effect," Professor François Gemenne, who specialises in sustainability and migration at HEC Paris Business School, told Sky News.

And though France is making efforts to reverse the falling birth rates, it is quite possibly too little, too late. The country also heavily promotes abortion and has begun the process of legalizing assisted suicide as well. Abortion was enshrined as a "right" in the constitution in 2024, and the French National Assembly is taking steps towards making assisted suicide legal, despite already struggling with significant suicide rates.

The Bottom Line:

France can launch campaigns aiming to boost fertility, but if the country also continues to value death over life, those campaigns will likely fail.