Not long ago the National Center for Health Statistics at the Center for Disease Control released data showing that the total number of live births in the United States in 2006 hit a nearly half-century high, approximately 4.3 million. The last time as many children were born in the U.S. was 1961, at the tail end of the baby boom.
With the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade darkening observed Jan. 22, the NCHS data might seem like welcome news, but before we uncork the champagne, let’s take a closer look. First, we should not be surprised to see the total number of annual births on the rise when, because of immigration, the total population of the United States is at an all time high: 301 million. Indeed, Hispanics, who bear more children than Americans of European decent, account for some, but not all, of the increase. Further, in 1961, the population of the United States was only 60 percent of what it is today. In other words, fertility rates, which peaked in 1957, have a long way to go before we start comparing ourselves to the America of fifty years ago.
More troubling is the illegitimacy ratio, which less than a decade ago looked like it might be leveling off at around one third of live births but is now approaching 39 percent. In 1961 the illegitimacy ratio was 5 percent. What is worse, if demographers were to calculate illegitimacy rates based on pregnancies instead of on live births the illegitimacy rate today would be nearly 50 percent because the vast majority of babies who are killed in the womb are not conceived by parents married to each other.
I am not defending the murder of the yet-to-be-born, only showing that illegitimacy, a social and moral pathology that begets countless more social and moral pathologies is even more common than we think. Before offering anti-abortion arguments rooted in utilitarian economics (“people are our greatest resource”), pro-life activists should understand that even the most dimwitted eugenicist can defend abortion on the grounds that it saves the State money since illegitimate babies are “terminated” before they become high-school dropouts, welfare dependents, and criminals.
If we want to consider the economic costs of the sexual revolution, we should look not for an abortion deficit but a contraception deficit. Since 1961, contraception has cut marital fertility by more than half, and it is the children who grow up in intact, married-couple homes that contribute to, rather than take from, the public coffers. Let’s summarize this sobering data and ponder the implications for the future of civilized life in America: Half a century ago, only 5 percent of pregnancies were the fruit of fornication. Today, that figure is nearly half.
A reason to hope, albeit not much of one, was contained in population data released last month. For the first time in 35 years the American fertility rate reached 2.1 live births per woman age 18–44. While fifty years ago it was 3.8, demographers are hailing this return to “replacement level.” At 2.1, even without immigration, the U.S. would not suffer a population implosion such as Russia is today and such as every other Western country in the world would be suffering, were it not for immigration. A population at replacement level, the demographers and economists tell us, can continue to supply Social Security and other transfers to the aged. Sounds good on paper, but remember: illegitimacy makes up a good chunk of that 2.1, and very often illegitimacy (like so much unskilled immigration) constitutes a state expense.
Mercifully, the reason to hope has nothing to do with finance. It is more profound than that. The reason to hope is that after a half-century of sexual revolution, an increasing number of women are rejecting the lie that their fulfillment depends on professional success. The latest NCHS data shows that a good bit of the recent increase in the number of births, and in the fertility rates, is attributable to American women of European ancestry in their twenties and thirties, many of whom are deliberately having babies without husbands. Without condoning this destructive behavior, we can nonetheless read it as a sign that the project to suppress American women’s understanding of their fundamental nature as mothers has failed. Even the seriously disordered do not buy lock, stock, and barrel, the revolution’s lies. Witness the much feted pregnancies of celebrity lesbians.
Women turning their backs in increasing numbers on the moral abyss of abortion and contraception, however, will not, in itself, reverse the decay. The authors of the sexual revolution’s lies (and its biggest believers), the inventors and vendors of its pills, the publishers of its pornography, the funders and performers of its abortions, in other words, men, must also recognize the misery they have wrought by rejecting their natures as husbands and fathers. Until they do, fertility rates may continue to rise, but Western civilization will continue to fall.
**
Christopher Check, a regular contributor to Chicago Daily Observer, is the Executive Vice President of The Rockford Institute