GUEST OPINION: America must stop funding abortions to build a healthy future economy

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in this guest post are solely those of the author.

America’s economy faces a quiet but existential threat: collapsing fertility. The U.S. total fertility rate has hit record lows near 1.6 births per woman—well below the 2.1 replacement level needed to sustain a stable population and avoid long-term economic contraction.

Provisional 2025 CDC figures show the general fertility rate falling another 1% to 53.1 births per 1,000 women ages 15–44, with roughly 3.6 million births last year. This is not the population explosion Paul Ehrlich warned of in The Population Bomb. It is the opposite: a dramatic, sustained drop in births across Western nations since the early 2000s.

The age breakdown tells the story. From 2023 to 2024, birth rates declined for every group of women ages 15–34, held steady for ages 35–39, and rose only for ages 40–44—driven largely by more than 100,000 babies born through IVF in 2024, the first time that threshold has been crossed.

Meanwhile, abortion numbers and rates have climbed. The Guttmacher Institute reports an abortion rate of 16.7 per 1,000 women ages 15–44 in 2025—the highest level in over a decade.

These trends coincide with profound shifts in the American workforce. Women now outnumber men in employment for only the third time in history, dominating growth in health care, education, and other expanding sectors. Axios has aptly described this as “a woman’s economy.” 

Many women are prioritizing careers and delaying or forgoing children—a rational individual choice, but one with collective consequences when it becomes the norm.

How taxpayers subsidize abortion

Other nations have recognized the danger and acted.

South Korea, Japan, Hungary, Russia, and China have rolled out baby bonuses, child allowances, housing subsidies, and tax breaks to encourage births.

Here in the U.S., President Trump floated a $5,000 “baby bonus” for new mothers in April 2025 as one tool to reverse the decline. Yet at the same time, American taxpayers continue to subsidize the very thing working against higher birth rates: abortion.

Federal dollars do not directly pay for elective abortions thanks to the Hyde Amendment, but they do flow to Planned Parenthood and other providers for family-planning services, reimbursements, and training.

The Ryan Residency Training Program embeds abortion and contraception instruction in OB/GYN residencies across the country. And roughly 20 states use their own Medicaid funds to cover abortions beyond the narrow federal exceptions for life endangerment, rape, or incest.

In short, public policy actively supports ending pregnancies while the economy desperately needs more of them.

An economically self-defeating plan

This is not just inconsistent—it is economically self-defeating.

Paying baby bonuses while simultaneously funding abortion providers makes zero fiscal sense. It is like subsidizing both gym memberships and fast-food chains and wondering why obesity rates keep rising.

The logical first step is to stop funding abortions at every level—federal, state, and local—until fertility rates climb back toward replacement. Redirect those resources toward proven pro-natal policies: paid family leave, affordable child care, housing assistance for young families, and targeted incentives that reward births rather than prevent them.

The question is whether scarce public dollars should underwrite abortion while the nation’s demographic future hangs in the balance. The data say the answer is no.

The Baby Boom generation powered decades of robust GDP growth, expanding the tax base and funding the social safety net. Today’s low-fertility trajectory points in the opposite direction: a shrinking workforce, slower productivity growth, and a heavier burden on fewer young workers to support retiring seniors through Social Security, Medicare, and other entitlement programs.

Fewer births today mean fewer taxpayers tomorrow. That is not a sustainable path for a superpower.

Our long-term economic health—our tax base, our innovation pipeline, our very capacity to care for an aging population—depends on more Americans being born, not fewer. It is time to align policy with that reality.

Michael Seibel is a pro-life abortion malpractice attorney based in Albuquerque. Mr. Seibel has prosecuted abortion malpractice cases on behalf of women injured by the abortion industry. He may be contacted at (505) 275-1700 or mikeseibel@qwestoffice.net. His website is: https://abortioninjury.com/