Italy faces a crisis. Its declining birth rates that have fallen far below what is needed to sustain a population and an economy.
So it’s government has found a solution: Financial incentives to encourage women to not have abortions. Banning abortion and protecting unborn children would make more sense. But Italy’s solution could help women, save babies and help the European nation’s population at the same time.
And it involves paying women $1,000 Euros a month if they reject abortion and keep their baby. Here’s more:
Prime minister Georgia Meloni (of Fratelli d’Italia) made headlines in June when she managed to exclude abortion from the final declaration of the G7 summit, despite the reluctance of countries such as Canada and France, which have made voluntary terminations of pregnancy an untouchable policy issue.
In the Mediterranean country, abortion is regulated through the Law 194 of 1978, which gives free access to a voluntary termination of pregnancy in the first 90 days of gestation.
Although the Italian leader said she does not plan to change the law, she has also underlined the “prevention of abortion” as a priority. Since April, pro-life groups are allowed to share their views in health centres.
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Now, the leader in the Senate of Forza Italia (a minor party in the Meloni’s government coalition) wants to try another pro-life initiative.
Maurizio Gasparri presented the idea of supporting women who decide not to end their pregnancy with 1,000 euros a month during the first 5 years of life of the child.
The “Maternity Income Bill” would only apply to women who earn less than 15,000 euros a year.
The goal, said Gasparri, is to develop Article 5 of the Italian law on abortion, which states: “[…] When the request for termination of pregnancy is motivated by the impact of economic, social, or family circumstances upon the pregnant women’s health, to examine possible solutions to the problems in consultation with the woman”.
Italy just reported another drop in its birth rate to its record low, decreasing by a startling 34.2% since 2008. There were nearly twice as many deaths as births in Italy last year, and the average number of children per woman has declined to only 1.2, far below the 2.1 necessary for a population to survive.
“Every year I look at the birthrates and it’s kind of depressing,” Elon Musk told Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome last year. “One can’t depend on other countries for immigration. Italy is the people of Italy. Please make more Italians.”
The United States is not far behind. The American birth rate declined by nearly 25% between 2008 and 2022, to only about 1.6 per woman today.
Demographic trends are very difficult to reverse, as children from small families tend later to have small families or no children themselves. Political leaders in Italy and many other countries recognize the plummeting birth rates as a crisis.
Beginning in 2019, Hungary addressed its declining births by providing a $30,000 loan to newlyweds that is forgiven if they have three children, which makes more sense than Biden’s trillion dollars in student loans. Conservative policies by Viktor Orbán, the pro-Trump leader of Hungary, have increased its birth rate, which used to be the lowest in the European Union when he started and now exceeds the EU average.
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