In fairness, Hitler wasnt the most recent German to try and get German population increases. Its been at least one time since and, if memory serves, twice. The German economic miracle was in danger of floundering for this reason and they started paying for second and third children.

I find it hard to believe that someone who claims to be pro-life would disagree with Italy’s birth encouragement program with such intemperate language as to equate it with Hitler’s policies.

For that matter, the emperor Augustus was the first to have the idea, and instituted several privileges that were reserved for women who had born three children.

RU-486 is not the morning-after pill

The best possible solution to these problems for Europe is to allow completely unfettered immigration to Europe from Latin America. Latin American culture is heavily influenced by European culture and most Latin Americans have partial or full European ethnicity. They’re also very predominantly Christian and have higher birthrates than Europeans on average, and they’d likely be as willing to take the lower level jobs that Muslims immigrated to Europe to do. It seems win-win for every body to me, especially since many Americans don’t seem to be too keen on having poor Latin Americans come to the US.

Viewed objectively, a lower birth rate may merely reflect the desires of individuals for greater freedom in what they do with their time and money. Obviously, that freedom can be abused by indulgence in hedonism, or used productively in wealth-creating or intellect-expanding pursuits, but the desire for the freedom seems itself value free. It certainly will abate the over-population problems foretold by many, and may also encourage the flow of labor from poorer regions of the globe to the wealthier areas. See Thomas Barnett and his website, e.g., for why this is a development to be encouraged. The fears for the “disappearance” of various cultures are, it seems to me, childish and neurotic – “the times they are a’changin’”, and we should look forward to changing with them. Our story is that of the whole human race.

Would you want to have a family if you were scared to death of the economic and political security situation where you come from? Europe is politically unstable for any number of reasons, let alone Moslem immigrants. Just remember, if there is an uptick in births, those babies will grow up and be competing tooth and nail for whatever jobs are available. If there aren’t enough jobs to go around, look for political destruction. One must think ahead and not rely on bumper stickers for philosophy!

It is obvious from comments here and around the internet that the secular mind is locked into a mentality that seems to be self-genocidal.

So there are parentless children all over the world who need homes and they’re going to start paying women to have children? How does that make sense? Oh my gosh! We’re going to have less people and that will mean… we’ll have less people! We have to stop this and now! Foolishness.

The people worried about declining births would do well to ponder what kind of births aren’t happening, due to freedom of choice: the unwanted ones. I live in an area of where generation after generation of unplanned teen pregnancies has resulted in a nice fat underclass of people for whom writing bad checks and cooking meth is seen as a viable option in life. This is not the kind of activity or culture Europe wants for itself, I hope.

I may have been mistaken. Maybe it isn’t a secular contempt for life that will exterminate the current peoples of Europe, but gross elitist snobbery directed at some supposed underclass of unwanted humans. On the other hand it is probably both trends coalescing–the secular and the elitist contempt for human life that isn’t perfect enough or middle-class enough.

Hey Deacon, because I want people to have choices in life, and not get painted into a corner and kneecapped by circumstances into an actual-not-supposed underclass, does that mean I have contempt for them? I don’t. Nor do I want them exterminated; nobody’s going to get exterminated because they have access to legal contraception and/or abortion. You, on the other hand, seem to want to force them to have children they clearly don’t want, yes? Why? It would appear to me that you have contempt for their lives and their freedom of choice.

It’s pretty simple, to me: Europeans (I’m generalizing here, obviously) feel like they don’t NEED children to the same degree as people in other parts of the world. Africa, Asia, even America… if you don’t have children, who will take care of you when you’re old? Europeans figure “the government” will do it, so why bother having a bunch of kids. One or two will do, and maybe not even that. A niece or nephew is good enough. I seriously doubt that any restrictions on abortion will change any of this…

While living in Europe, one of the problems I encountered more often than I would ever have imagined was women who were willing, but actually unable to conceive, particularly in the middle north (countries like the Netherlands, Germany, and Poland). I don’t know whether it is due to the heavy and polluting industry that was in these areas for so long, but the number of women I met who either couldn’t have children or had spent years undergoing fertility treatments was astonishing.

Jess, that is a good point. I am one of these Euro women, trying to conceive a child for 7 years now with minor success (have been pregnant 2 years ago for only 9 weeks ) That Europeans reproduce only below the replacement rate is not a problem of too many women not having children, though. I read an interesting boook on this topic lately that pointed out that the rate of childless women has been quite constant over the last 100 years in Germany, around 20-25%. The low birth rate is mainly due to the fact that the women with children have fewer children nowadays, which is obviously due to the recent development in society that people tend to get only as many children as they really want … I don’t think that women in Europe are more infertile than women in the US, though. What you have observed could perhaps be because many women in Europe marry only when they are well into their 30ies, when fertility is naturally on the decline already.

The highest fertility rate in Europe (2.01 in 2006) is found in France, a notoriously secular and lay country where abortion has been legal for over 30 years. And, thank God , the right to abortion is not losing ground in Europe, but may even be voted for by Portugal (one of the last four European countries where it is still illegal) tomorrow. Regarding incentives for women having children, I don’t find it shoking, but I don’t think it’s the right solution: good and affordable, if not free, day care for the youngests and good public schools should help more than this. And Mageen, “Europe is politically unstable”? Really???

Ich denke, dass die Erw gungen pro/kontra Abtreibungen von hnlichen Gedanken getrieben werden wie in den Vereinigten Staaten und berall auf der Welt: Hier der Schutz des ungeboreren Lebens, dort das Recht der Frauen auf Selbstbestimmung. Der Gedanke, durch ein Abtreibungsverbot mehr “Volksdeutsche” oder “Volksfranzosen” zu schaffen, ist perfide. Allerdings gibt es sicherlich einige Randgruppen, denen dies erstrebenswert erscheint. Trotzdem erscheint der ewige Hitlervergleich hier nicht angebracht. Gru ber den Atlantik!