Fox News Senior Medical Analyst Marc Siegel made some eyebrow-raising comments lamenting that birth rates are down among teenagers aged 15 to 19.
On Thursday, the National Center for Health Statistics reported that the U.S. fertility rate fell to another record low. The agency reported that the number of births per 1,000 women of childbearing age declined from 53.8 in 2024 to 53.1 last year. The latest figure represents a continuation of a decades-long decline in fertility rates.
Siegel joined Friday’s edition of America’s Newsroom, where Dana Perino said that while the continuing trend is not surprising, “the numbers might feel a little shocking.”
Capitalism contributes, yes. But, if humanity stays below replacement rate, humanity goes extinct.
Also, no matter how you distribute resources, there are periods of life when your productivity is less that what you need to survive. Everyone has this for many years at the beginning of their life, and those lucky enough to live long enough will have this toward the end of their lives, as aging is the disability that comes for us all. The proven method to sustain persons during those periods is to have enough people in their productive years; it generally requires more than the replacement rate. And, if that doesn’t happen, the less productive suffer and die more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk
All that said, I’m against encouraging teenage pregnancy, and for full bodily autonomy – no one should be forced to let anyone else use their uterus.
The Earth’s population has nearly doubled in my lifetime. I’m pretty sure we’re not quite endangered yet. I’ll also point out that poor countries that tend to spawn brown players are well above replacement levels if you count those as people.
Yeah, I’m not worried about running out of humans globally, and I do think immigration is a fine way for a country to choose to maintain their population.
There’s probably something to be said around cultural preservation, and maybe that’s a bit easier for “native born” persons. But, I don’t know the steelman version of that argument, if there is one.
Encouraging teenage pregnancy isn’t the problem. The problem is the encouragement in general. As said, full bodily autonomy - it should remain a right for all.
I don’t see why that’s a problem. I think it could come in the form of actual benefits, not a just verbal haranguing / extolling based on (not) having children, but that it’s good for the birth rate to be slightly above replacement and correcting any divergence should be encouraged.
You’re sabotaging your own argument here. You stated full body autonomy to be a right to then dismiss that within this statement.
Tell me, how does this relate to your current argument?
“full body autonomy” includes but is not limited to “no one [is] forced to let anyone else use their uterus”. I don’t believe I am sabotaging my own argument, but I’m an idiot, so maybe you just need to be more meticulous in explaining how I am (doing that).
I bring it up because authoritarians often try to restrict bodily autonomy, particularly around uteruses, when trying to do population control (up or down). In fact, while it may not be a acceptable, mainstream view, you don’t have to look to hard to find a USian on the right claiming that abortion must (become/stay) illegal because of the “birth rate crisis”.