Consider this: at a time when we’re agonising about the demographic winter and the unwillingness of Gen Z to procreate, something else is going on… There were nearly 300,000 abortions in the UK in 2023, according to the latest figures published by the Department of Health. So, whatever else the problem of insufficient babies is to do with, it’s not about a fertility crisis. Nor, does it seem, is it entirely about people not having sex. It’s rather a problem of women not wanting the natural result of sexual intercourse, pregnancy. If those pregnancies had or were to go to term, that is, if the babies in question had been born, we might have something near a million extra Brits in three years.
The spin on the figures in the papers today is that it’s a response to the economic condition of the country, that people struggling to pay the mortgage or the rent are having abortions rather than coping with a mite to feed and educate. The unthinkable option, it seems, is to have a baby and then offer it for adoption to a couple who are desperate for one.
