"The Abortion War Abroad"

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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...

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.

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!