History tells us that all freedoms are conditional. In 1920, the Soviet Union became the first country in the world to legalize abortion, as part of a socialist commitment to women’s health and well-being. Sixteen years later, that decision was reversed once Stalin was in power and realized that birth rates were falling.
The pressure on all nations to keep up their population levels has never gone away. But in 2025, that demographic crunch is going to get even crunchier—and the casualty will be gender rights. In both the United States and the United Kingdom , the rate at which babies are being born has been plummeting for 15 years.
In Japan, Poland, and Canada, the fertility rate is already down to 1.3. In China and Italy, it is 1.
2 . South Korea has the lowest in the world, at 0.72 .
Research published by The Lancet medical journal predicts that by 2100, almost every country on the planet won’t be producing enough children to sustain its population size. A good deal of this is because women have more access to contraception, are better educated than ever, and are pursuing careers that mean they are more likely to avoid or delay having children. Parents are investing more in each child that they do have.
The patriarchal expectation that women should be little more than babymakers is thankfully crumbling. But the original dilemma remains: How do countries make more kids? Governments have responded with pleas and incentives to encourage families to procreate. Hungary has .