Free Republic

To those who've declared European civilization dead due to demographics, I've often replied that in Europe, there are ents. In J.R.R. Tolkein's "The Lord of the Rings" series, ents were extremely long-lived tree-like creatures who thought in terms of centuries, not years. They were painfully slow to act, but amazingly forceful when they do. What we're witnessing in Europe is a rebound of birth rates that is slow and incomplete, yet highly significant and growing. These rebounding birth rates are not due to Islamic and African immigrants. In many nations, the number of Islamic immigrants is much lower than perceived...

Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad presents The Polar Express in Durango, Colorado.The Polar Express

A speech by Don Feder at Ave Maria University, September 20, 2011 Hollywood has a penchant for blowing things up – especially the world. Since the 1950s, apocalyptic movies (which come with a variety of special effects) have been all the rage. We’ve met our doom through nuclear war (“On The Beach,” “The Day After”), a worldwide super-plague (“Twelve Monkeys” “The Stand”), global warming (“The Day After Tomorrow,” “Waterworld,”), the earth’s core over-heating (“2012,” “The Core”), overpopulation (“Soylent Green”), a comet striking the earth (“Deep Impact,” “Armageddon”), sentient machines taking over (the “Terminator” and “Matrix” series), rampaging simians (the “Planet...

Canadian doctors are considering a policy that would bar obese women from trying to have babies through fertility treatments – provoking debate over whether the fat have the same reproductive rights as the thin. Some studies find obese women face higher risks of medical complications while trying to become pregnant through in-vitro fertilization (IVF). The science is not certain and some believe a ban would be tantamount to discrimination, yet a growing number of fertility doctors worldwide already bar treatment based on a woman’s Body Mass Index. “We’ve had many angry patients say to us, ‘This is discriminatory’ and I...

As if the new York Times couldn’t sink any further down the hole of warped and twisted pro-abortion activism, the Gray Lady is out with yet another “news� piece that moves the newspaper further beyond the pale.Ruth Pawder is out today with a new story titled “The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy,� that focuses on “selective reduction� – the euphemistic phrase given to name the destruction of one or more unborn children in a multiple pregnancy situation where a mother has more than one baby resulting from an IVF pregnancy involving the implantation of multiple human embryos.The Times never makes it past the...

(Translation from Swedish into English:) Stockholm: More and more Swedish families have a third child. "Trebarnstrenden," - The "three children trend" which has become increasingly manifest since the 1990s, was unexpected by demographers at Statistics Sweden (SCB), which lies behind the study. - We had expected a reduction of third child births given that women become older when they have their first child, about 29 years, and therefore would have a hard time getting a third child, says Lotta Persson, demographer at Statistics Sweden who carried out the study. Even in the early 1990s there were many who got a...

Moms give birth to sons or daughters - pretty straightforward stuff. But when one English toddler grows up and starts a family, her child will be her own half-sibling. At least that's the plan. The toddler, two-year-old Mackenzie Stephens, was born without ovaries, so her 25-year-old mother, Penny Jarvis, intends to freeze her own eggs so that Mackenzie can use them someday to start her own family, the Daily Mail reported. Jarvis, of Sheffield, England, told the paper she was devastated when she learned that Mackenzie would be infertile - the result of Turner Syndrome, a female-only genetic disorder that...

We can thank Providence that the earthquake was not 150 miles closer to Tokyo, else Japan's dead might number in the millions. Prime Minister Naoto Kan calls it the worst crisis since World War II. Yet, horrendous as it is, it does not, thus far, compare with that. For the earthquake dead are not 1 percent of those who perished in World War II. Between 1942 and 1945, Japan was stripped naked of an empire that embraced Formosa, Korea, Manchuria, the entire China coast, all of French Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia), Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia),...

Writing on a popular online blog, the anonymous whistelblower, said that colleagues in his force had been ordered not to use the expression on “diversity” grounds. The blogger, who writes under the pseudonym Inspector Gadget, after the cartoon character, is understood to be a serving inspector in a county force in southern England, which he refers to only as “Ruralshire” – “a county in England, not too far from Metrocity”. [snip] In his latest posting, he dismissed the alleged ban on the phrase as “another nonsensical, empire-building, silly, frothy, pathetic and downright insulting example of political correctness gone mad”. "We...

December 12, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The socially liberal Economist magazine is admitting that the Japanese economy is in deep trouble due to low fertility rates and an aging population, which threaten to bankrupt the social security system and lead to perpetual economic stagnation. In a special section devoted to Japan appearing in the November 20-27 edition, the Economist laments that “Japan is heading into a demographic vortex. It is the fastest-aging society on Earth and the first big country in history to have started shrinking rapidly from natural causes.” However, the causes that the Economist calls “natural” include artificial birth...

Overpopulation panic is back. Concerns about a world too full of “filthy human children” motivated eco-terrorist James Lee when he held employees of the Discovery Channel hostage at gunpoint in September. But the deranged Lee is far from alone when it comes to worrying about overpopulation. The May-June cover of the progressive magazine Mother Jones asked, “Who’s to Blame for the Population Crisis?” British journalist Matthew Parris wrote an op-ed in September in the London Times asserting, “If you want to save the planet, stop breeding.” Parris further coyly suggested that we study “China’s example, for lessons good and bad.”...

In 2010, a surge in the Israeli Jewish fertility rate is a long-term, unique, global phenomenon, while fertility rates decline sharply in the Third World in general and in Muslim countries in particular. In 2010, there is a 66% Jewish majority in 98.5% of the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean (without Gaza) – and a 58% Jewish majority with Gaza. That Jewish majority benefits from a demographic tailwind and from a high potential of aliyah (Jewish immigration) and of returning Israeli expatriates.

Taipei, May 14 (CNA) Taiwan's birth rate has been dwindling over the last few decades and had dropped to an average of 1.03 births per woman last year from 3.09 recorded in 1976, according to data released Friday by the Ministry of the Interior (MOI). The number of births in 2009 fell to 191,310 from 425,125 recorded in 1976, while the crude birth rate -- the annual number of births per 1,000 of the total population -- was only 8.29 last year, a big drop from 25.92 in 1976. Both figures are new record lows, the MOI statistics show. The...

ROME – On Good Friday, two days before Easter, a prayer titled “Let us Pray for the Conversion of the Jews” was recited in Latin by traditionalist Catholic congregations in Italy, plus 16 sections of the Society of Saint Pius. The ultra-conservative society, whose excommunication was lifted by Pope Benedict XVI last year, has yet to be fully reintegrated into the Catholic Church, because of its refusal to accept the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. In 2007, in an effort to bring the traditionalist elements of the Church back into the fold, Benedict issued a “Motu Proprio” declaration allowing...

LONDON (AFP) – A British fertility clinic said Sunday it was raffling off a human egg this week to promote its "baby profiling" service, which it insists is legal under UK law. The winner can select the egg donor by education, upbringing and racial background. The London Bridge Fertility, Gynaecology and Genetics Centre said the treatment actually takes place in the United States. Women interested in having a baby by in vitro fertilisation are invited to attend a seminar on Wednesday, which is organised by Bridge's US partner, the Genetics and IVF Institute (GIVF), based in Fairfax, Virginia.

Monday February 1, 2010 The Sooner Marriage, the Better: 88% of Women's Eggs Gone by 30 by James Tillman Monday, February 1, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- A new study from the Universities of St. Andrews and of Edinburgh is offering a more accurate understanding of fertility and its decline with age, which researchers say is steeper than previously thought. The study, which involved about 325 women of different ages from the United States and Europe, investigated the number of eggs that remain in the ovaries over time.  This number, said the researchers, peaks at about 20 weeks after conception and subsequently drops...

Dr. Anne Mielnik, left, founding director of Gianna - The Catholic Healthcare Center for Women, prays with patient Judith Guzman in the center’s newly opened office in New York Dec. 30. Located in midtown Manhattan, the center is dedicated to providing primary care, obstetrics, natural family planning and infertility treatment with a Catholic pro-life approach. (CNS photo/Gregory A. Shemitz) NEW YORK – “Catholic women in many communities feel they have no access to health care that is consistent with their values,” said the founding director of a new women’s medical center in midtown Manhattan that will provide “authentically Catholic” primary...

ATLANTA - THERE aren't just fewer jobs in the US recession. There are fewer babies, too. US births fell in 2008, the first full year of the recession, marking the first annual decline in births since the start of the decade and ending an American baby boomlet. The downturn in the US economy best explains the drop in maternity, some experts believe. The Great Depression and subsequent recessions all were accompanied by a decline in births, said Carol Hogue, an Emory University professor of maternal and child health and epidemiology. And the numbers have never rebounded until the economy pulled...

The quote of the week comes from pregnant Czech supermodel Karolina Kurkova: "You know, it's probably the new thing to be pregnant. It's not to have the Chanel python bag. It's to be pregnant." The 25-year-old joins fellow Victoria Secret models Adriana Lima, Gisele Bundchen and Heidi Klum, who are also expecting. As for baby names, Kurkova won't say. "There are a few names that we like. But I'm keeping them a secret. I don't want Adriana or Heidi or Gisele stealing my baby's name."

A century ago, Christians dominated the intellectual and commercial life of the Levant, comprising more than one-fifth of the 13 million people of Turkey, the region's ruling power, and most of the population of Lebanon. Ancient communities flourished in what is now Iraq and Syria. But starting with the Armenian genocide in 1914 and continuing through the massacre and expulsion of Anatolian Greeks in 1922-1923, the Turks killed three to four million Christians in Turkey and the Ottoman provinces. Thus began a century of Muslim violence that nearly has eradicated Christian communities in the cradle of their religion. It may...

snip Americans are having fewer babies snip “It’s the recession,” said Andrew Hacker, a sociologist at Queens College of the City University of New York. “Children are the most expensive item in every family’s budget, especially given all the gear kids expect today. So it’s a good place to cut back when you’re uncertain about the future.” In 2007, the number of births in the United States broke a 50-year-old record high, set during the baby boom. But last year, births began to decline nationwide, by nearly 2 percent, according to provisional figures released last week. Those figures from the...

Thousands of couples in India who agreed to put off having babies for at least two years after their wedding will collect cash payments this month as health officials attempt to curb the country's rapidly growing population. Neighbouring China shows the first signs of relaxing its strict policy of one child per couple in the face of an ageing population, India is searching for a way of restricting the size of families as the battle over scarce resources grows. The country's population stands at 1.2 billion and is expected to reach 1.53 billion by 2050. But increasing pressure on resources...

"Increasing numbers of childless British couples are being forced to have fertility treatment abroad because of patchy NHS provision and plummeting donor rates, campaigners have told Sky News. National guidelines say all primary care trusts (PCTs) should offer three courses of in vitro fertilisation (IVF), but in reality more than two in three do not. And even those who can afford to go private are finding the number of egg and sperm donors increasingly scarce. The decline has been blamed on a change in the law ending donor anonymity and the lack of any payment as an incentive. A recent...

MADRID (AP) — A Spanish woman believed to have become the world's oldest new mother when she gave birth at 66 has died at 69, leaving behind twin toddlers, newspapers reported Wednesday. Maria del Carmen Bousada, who reportedly died Saturday, gave birth in December 2006 as a single mother after getting in vitro fertilization treatment at a clinic in Los Angeles. The births ignited a firestorm of debate over how old is too old for a new mother, and how much responsibility fertility clinics have over who gets treatments. Bousada told an interviewer she lied to the fertility clinic about...

Ultra-fast freezing of ovarian tissue from women who have lost their fertility as a result of cancer treatment can lead to it being used in transplants with the same success rate as fresh tissue, a researcher told the 25th annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology 29 June. Dr. Sherman Silber, Director of the St. Louis Infertility Centre, St. Louis, Missouri, USA, said that freezing tissue by the vitrification method, which avoids ice formation, meant that oocyte (egg) viability was almost identical with that seen in fresh oocytes. Dr. Silber and colleagues used standard viability testing...

A mother is suing a hotel claiming her teenage daughter fell pregnant simply from using a hotel swimming pool. Magdalena Kwiatkowska says the 13-year-old conceived after coming into contact with 'stray sperm' in the water of an Egyptian resort.

Women wanting to get pregnant should find themselves an ugly man, new research suggests. Scientists have found attractive males produce less sperm during sex. Researchers think good-looking males are biologically geared to hold back their sperm in each encounter to increase their chance of impregnating more females. But unattractive males know they are not going to bed so many females — so when they do get lucky they give it all they've got.

Dead End of Secularism Secularism was to be the wave of the future. Leading secular theorists such as Peter Berger taught that secularism would be the inevitable result of the inexorable march of progress and that its many advantages would simply drive out religion in all of its forms. No serious discussion was possible or necessary. Religion would be deposited unceremoniously on the dustbin of history. But a funny thing happened on the way to the dustbin: secularism has not only failed to triumph over religion, it can’t even reproduce itself. In spite of enormous institutional advantages conferred on it...

"Janine Macallister, 27, from Newport, in Shropshire, should be entitled to IVF treatment under national guidance but has been told by her local health service that she is not eligible. Fertility charities fear that an increasing number of couples are experiencing similar discrimination due to the inconsistent approach of primary care trusts. Rationing body the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence says three full cycles of IVF treatment should be provided for women aged between 23 and 39 who have had fertility problems for at least 3 years. Individual PCTs, however, have drawn up their own restrictions, limiting treatment...

The total number of Muslims is huge, a little more than one fifth of the world's populaton. The growth rate of the Muslim population, which averaged 1.9 between 2000 and 2006, is also far higher than the world's population growth rate, which averaged 1.22% in the same period. It is also much faster than any other major religious group. Muslim Population Growth Rate Declining But Muslim population growth is declining faster than the total world population growth. For example, consider the following table of growth rates based on the figures in the World Christian Encyclopedia.

Time flies! From Reuters (02/18/09): The grandmother of California's newborn octuplets faces the threat of foreclosure on the house she has shared with her daughter and six of her grandchildren, property records revealed on Wednesday. According to a mortgage default notice filed last week with the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder's Office, Angela Suleman is more than $23,000 behind in payments on her house in the Los Angeles suburb of Whittier, an agency spokesman said. The default notice was first made public when a copy of the document, giving Suleman three months to settle her debt in order to avoid foreclosure,...

The patient, who is in her late 40s, wanted one baby. Dr. Michael Kamrava transferred at least seven embryos to her. She is now hospitalized without insurance. A few months after Dr. Michael Kamrava helped Nadya Suleman become pregnant with octuplets, he transferred at least seven embryos to another patient. She was in her late 40s and wanted just one baby. Now she's five months pregnant with quadruplets and hospitalized at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, according to several sources familiar with the situation. The new case could add to concerns about Kamrava's practice and about whether the fertility industry...

Starting a family might be a little easier with a trip to Ripley's Believe It or Not museum in Myrtle Beach... opens a month long display of its fertility statues....and within months, 13 women became pregnant. around the world... more than 2,000 women have reported becoming pregnant after touching the statues. couples wanting to have a baby can touch the statues for free during business hours.

New research strengthens the link between water pollution and rising male fertility problems. The study, by Brunel University, the Universities of Exeter and Reading and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, shows for the first time how a group of testosterone-blocking chemicals is finding its way into UK rivers, affecting wildlife and potentially humans. The research was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council and is now published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. The study identified a new group of chemicals that act as ‘anti-androgens.’ This means that they inhibit the function of the male hormone, testosterone, reducing male...

PARIS (AFP) France cemented its status as Europe's fertility champion on Tuesday when fresh statistics showed women are having on average more than two children each, an increase from last year's birth rate. The second most populous country in the European Union after Germany, France began 2009 with 64.3 million inhabitants, 366,500 more than in 2008, according to the national statistics agency INSEE. While there are fewer women of child-bearing age in France, the birth rate has continued to climb, with 2.02 children on average born to every woman in 2008, up from 1.98 in 2007. Last year, more than...

If a Martian were to look at a map of the Earth’s religions, what he might find most surprising is the fact that such a map can be drawn at all. How strange--he might say to himself--that so many of the world’s Hindus are to be found in one place, namely India. And how odd that Muslims are so very numerous in the Middle East. With the disconcerting curiosity that is so typical of Martians, he might wonder what explains this geographical clustering. Do people move countries in order to be close to others of the same faith? Or do...

Regarding the Instruction Dignitas PersonaeAim In recent years, biomedical research has made great strides, opening new possibilities for the treatment of disease, but also giving rise to serious questions which had not been directly treated in the Instruction Donum vitae (22 February 1987).  A new Instruction, which is dated 8 September 2008, the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, seeks to provide some responses to these new bioethical questions, as these have been the focus of expectations and concerns in large sectors of society.  In this way, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith seeks both...

Are males becoming an endangered species? That's the question scientists and researchers have been pondering since alarming trends in male fertility rates, birth defects and disorders began emerging around the world. More and more boys are being born with genital defects and are suffering from learning disabilities, autism and Tourette's syndrome, among other disorders. Male infertility rates are on the rise and the quality of an average man's sperm is declining, according to some studies. But perhaps the most disconcerting of all trends is the growing gender imbalance in many parts of heavily industrialized nations, where the births of baby...

A study recently published in Human Reproduction demonstrated that intake of soy foods significantly reduces sperm counts in men. The study is especially significant because it is the largest study in humans to examine the relationship between semen quality and phytoestrogens (plant compounds that can mimic the physiological effects of the endogenous hormone, estrogen). Dr. Jorge Chavarro of the Harvard School of Public Health and his colleagues found that men who ate the most soy food had 41 million sperm per milliliter less than men who did not consume soy products. The normal sperm concentrations for men ranges between 80...

A RACE of half-man, half-beast “humanzees” could be created under new fertility laws, MPs were warned last night. Loopholes would let scientists fertilise animals with human sperm, the Commons was told during a debate on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. Tory MP Nadine Dorries claimed it would revive memories of Soviet tyrant Stalin’s attempt to create the “ultimate soldier” in the 1920s by cross-breeding humans and apes. Democratic Unionist MP Jeffrey Donaldson conjured up the spectre of a monster from Greek legend, saying: “The image that people find most abhorrent is of scientists producing GM babies or cloned adults...

  Infertility fear: Emma Smith, 37, with her son Oliver   Baby boy for woman in double transplantSophie Goodchild and Anna Davis 10.10.08 A woman who had a double organ transplant has defied the odds to become a mother, the Standard can reveal today.Emma Smith, 37, feared she may be infertile because of the side-effects of her anti-rejection drugs.But last week, the former secretary from Hitchin in Hertfordshire gave birth without complications to her first child 6lb baby Oliver.She is the first woman in Britain to deliver a child by Caesarean section after receiving donor kidneys and a pancreas.Her...

And here’s the fundamental reason underlying all the rage on one side and amusement on the other over Sarah Palin: it’s all about … female fertility. Human beings have extremely strong emotions on the topic of fertility. It’s an obsession — look at the celebrity gossip columns these days. ... Now, the Breeding Wars have moved into the political arena. Barack Obama launched his Presidential run at the 2004 Democratic convention by devoting the first 380 words of his speech to describing in great detail the two stocks from which he was crossbred. His message is that by uniting in...

Mad Cow Rules Hit Sperm Banks' Patrons By Rob Stein Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, August 13, 2008; Page A01 When Julie Peterson decided to have a baby on her own two years ago, she picked a tall, blond, blue-eyed Danish engineer as a sperm donor to match her own Scandinavian heritage. But when she went back to the sperm bank to use the same donor to have another child, she was stunned to discover that the federal government had made it impossible. "I just cried," said Peterson, 43, who lives in North Carolina. "I was in complete shock. I...

Too many fatty foods are dangerous not only to men's waistlines, but to their sperm production. In research presented Wednesday at a meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, scientists found that obese men have worse sperm than normal-weight men. "There is a very long list of health hazards from being overweight," said Ghiyath Shayeb, the study's lead researcher at the University of Aberdeen. "Now we can add poor semen quality to the list." But experts aren't sure if that necessarily means obese men face major difficulties having children. "If you have a man who isn't fantastically...

Children of older fathers have greater risk of early death Men, listen up. No longer can you comfort yourselves with the notion that you can father a child at any time...Children of older fathers more 'likely to die early': LONDON: When it comes to fertility and the prospect of having babies, it has always been assumed that men have no biological clock — unlike women, they can father a child late in their life. But a study has dispelled this myth. Researchers in Europe have found that children are almost twice as likely to die before adulthood if they have...

"TOKYO (AFP) -- The number of children in Japan has fallen for the 27th straight year to hit a new low, the government said Monday in a sign of the country's rapidly ageing population. Children aged 14 or younger numbered 17,250,000 as of April 1, down by 130,000 from a year earlier, the internal affairs ministry said in an annual survey released to coincide with the May 5 Children's Day national holiday. The figure is the lowest since 1950 when comparable data started. The ratio of children to the total population sank for 34 years in a row to 13.5...

What is the relationship between fertility and real estate? ... Is real estate destiny? “It’s something a bunch of us have been thinking about,” said Morris A. Davis, an assistant professor of real estate and urban land economics []. “If you reduce down-payment constraints, more people can buy homes, or buy bigger homes. Does that encourage them to have more kids? I would say nobody knows.” Social scientists have long traced a connection between housing and fertility. When homes are scarce or beyond the means of young couples, as in the 1930s, couples delay marriage or have fewer children. This...

For the first time in 35 years, the U.S. fertility rate has climbed high enough to sustain a stable population, solidifying the nation's unique status among industrialized countries. The overall fertility rate increased 2 percent between 2005 and 2006, nudging the average number of babies being born to each woman to 2.1, according to the latest federal statistics. That marks the first time since 1971 that the rate has reached a crucial benchmark of population growth: the ability of each generation to replace itself. "It's been quite a long time since we've had a rate this high," said Stephanie J....

AP Medical Writer Don't count on freezing eggs to offset a ticking biological clock just yet. So say new guidelines for fertility specialists that conclude the procedure remains highly experimental even though it is increasingly offered. The recommendations are a dash of cold water for a field that proponents believe is slowly coming of age. But with perhaps 500 births from frozen-and-thawed eggs worldwide, compared with more than 200,000 from frozen embryos, it is a nascent technology. Now scientists are tweaking techniques to try to improve the odds that a woman who has her eggs removed and frozen will bear...

Regular sex boosts a man's fertility, say doctors. In a contradiction of conventional wisdom on the subject, research has shown those who do not have sex often produce sperm of lower quality than those who do so daily. This is thought to be because sperms' DNA becomes more damaged the longer it remains in the body, cutting the chances of fertilisation and raising the risk of a miscarriage in the first weeks of pregnancy. The findings, presented at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine's annual conference, will be of particular significance to couples undergoing fertility treatment. Men are currently advised...