UN Population Fund’s solution to low fertility is… to legalize abortion

(WASHINGTON, D.C. – C-Fam) The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) launched its flagship annual State of World Population report this week. While this year’s report examined the causes of low birthrates, which is becoming a crisis in many countries, UNFPA’s policy prescription, as usual, was to maximize “reproductive autonomy,” including ensuring access to contraception and abortion and allowing assisted fertility treatments for single people and same-sex couples.

One main message of the report is that people who would ideally like to have children are having fewer, or none at all.  “What we find is an unfulfilled desire” to have the number of children people would like to have, said Shalini Randeria, who served as an advisor on the report.

She said that the main reasons people cited for not having their desired larger families were economic. Others cited issues finding suitable marriage partners. Young people in particular reported their feelings of pessimism and uncertainty about the future impacting their reduced desire for children.

READ: Granddaughter romanticizes grandparents’ choice to be euthanized together

Randeria spoke at a UNFPA report launch event in Geneva, joined by ambassadors from Sweden, Spain, and Somalia.  Their remarks illustrated the deep divide between the priorities of high-income, low-fertility European nations and a low-income, conflict-afflicted African country whose birthrate has fallen but still remains above replacement-level.

When asked what his government was doing to help people have the larger families they reported wanting, the Swedish ambassador immediately cited his country’s commitment to “sexual and reproductive health and rights” (SRHR), including “access to modern contraceptives, safe and legal abortion,” and sex education. He also noted Sweden’s robust social safety net including paid parental leave and government-funded child care.

The Spanish ambassador noted his country’s fertility rate is “one of the lowest in the world,” and that the gap between that figure and women’s desired family size is one of the widest. …

Continue reading at C-Fam.

Editor’s Note: Rebecca Oas, Ph.D. writes for C-Fam. This article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-Fam (Center for Family & Human Rights), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute. This article appears with permission.