From LifeSiteNews

By Emily Mangiaracina

As data analyst Stephen Shaw has documented in his film ‘Birthgap,’ declining birth rates in the U.S. and around the world are being driven by an ‘explosion’ in women choosing not to have children.

The U.S. birth rate hit a record low last year of 1.62 births per woman according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), part of a worldwide trend of declining birth rates that have been shown to stem from rising childlessness.

The U.S. has had birth rates mostly below replacement level since 1972, according to United Nations (UN) data, with a minor brief respite from 2006 to 2007, when birth rates were just at replacement level. Birth rates hovered near replacement level from about 1989 to its recent peak of 2.11 births per woman in 2007. Since then, the birth rate has steadily declined.

The new CDC data shows that the birth rate for women ages 20 to 24 has seen a particularly steep decline of 47% since 2007. From 2022 to 2023 alone, the number of births for this age group dropped 4%.

As data analyst Stephen Shaw has documented in his film “Birthgap,” declining birth rates not just in the U.S. but around the world are being driven not by smaller family sizes but by an “explosion” in childlessness.

By comparing statistics on first-time mothers and the number of children they go on to have with national fertility rates, Shaw found that childlessness rates skyrocketed within only a few years in many countries.

For example, in Japan in 1974, one in 20 women were childless. By 1977, this ratio was one in four, and by 1990, it had reached one in three, a statistic that held in 2020. While Shaw doesn’t give specific numbers for most countries, he shares that most have become, like Italy and Japan, “childless nations,” where one-third or more people will become “childless for life.”

And according to the Pew Research Center, by 2010, “Nearly one-in-five American women end(ed) her childbearing years without having borne a child, compared with one-in-10 in the 1970s.” As of 2018, 41% of women between the ages of 25 and 44 were single and childless, and that number is projected to spike to a whopping 45% by 2030.

Just as remarkable as this trend is the finding in a Dutch meta-analysis, cited by author Jody Day in Shaw’s “Birthgap” film, and using data from the early 2000s, that only 10 percent of such women are childless “by choice,” and another 10 percent are childless due to “known” medical reasons, including infertility.

Institute for Family Studies (IFS) confirmed in December 2022 that the majority of childless women actually desire children. Thus, as Shaw summed up in his film, the main driver of childless women around the world now is failing to “find the right partner at the right time.”

Shaw highlighted what appear to be contributing factors: childbearing is delayed until a woman’s fertility window closes; women tend to want to settle with men at least as educated as they are, and everywhere, significantly more women are attending college than men; there are “too many options;” a number of young men are staying at home playing video games instead of pursuing women (or have given up on that).

Many speculate that increased pornography use and addiction is disincentivizing young men’s pursuit of women, and that overuse of technology is leading many young men and women to live isolated from each other.

The increasing secularization of society may also lead to growing numbers of childless women (and men) through a whole slew of hard-to-quantify factors, including by diminishing young people’s sense of purpose and happiness, and depriving them of character formation and a meaningful, effective way to select a mate.

Commentators such as Elon Musk have warned that if global birth rates continue to decline at their current projected rates, “human civilization will end.”

From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

Four of the five girls filed a lawsuit against the Harrison County Board of Education protesting the ban while Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said, ‘I will do everything in my power to defend these brave young girls. ‘This is just wrong.’

Five West Virginia female middle school athletes who refused to throw the shot put against a boy after a circuit court exempted him from a state law that prevents males from competing on female sports’ teams have been banned from participating in their next competition.

On April 18, the five girls attended the 2024 Harrison County Middle School Championships track and field meet where they were scheduled to compete in shot put.

The five students stepped out of the shot-put circle without throwing, forfeiting in protest of the participation of an eighth-grade male student presenting himself as a girl during the competition.

After four of the five girls filed a lawsuit against the Harrison County Board of Education protesting the ban, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey stepped in and wrote an amicus brief on their behalf.

“I will do everything in my power to defend these brave young girls,” Morrisey wrote Monday on X. “This is just wrong. We must stand for what’s right and oppose these radical trans policies.”

“The only thing this decision does is teach these children to keep their mouths shut and not disagree with what they saw as unfairness,” said Morrisey, according to a statement from his office. “That is outrageous and it tramples these students’ rights to freedom of speech and expression.”

“Their actions at the earlier track meet were not disruptive or aggrandizing. They were the quiet demonstration of the student-athletes’ evident unhappiness with the competitive consequences of a federal appellate court’s decision,” said Morrisey, a Republican candidate for governor.

“Rather than being punished for their conduct or being sidelined in an effort to score points, all should commend these young athletes for putting their personal performances aside to demonstrate their discontent with an unjust result that affects them personally and within that event,” he said.

Other conservatives took to X to express support for the banned girls.

“How many young girls are losing opportunities because cowardly liberal and RINO politicians are caving to mental illness?” the Travis Media Group asked.

JUST IN: The 5 girls from Lincoln Middle School in West Virginia who protested a trans student participating in shot put by refusing to participate, have been banned from school sports.

Harrison County Board of Education made the decision, and now they’re being sued by the… pic.twitter.com/t6dannzqhg

— 🇺🇸Travis Media Group🇺🇸 (@TM1Politics) April 30, 2024

“Girls banned from girls’ sports instead of a male being banned from girls’ sports,” wrote Greg Scott, vice president of policy for the Center for Arizona Policy’s, noting, “and this isn’t California or New York. This is Wild and Abominable West Virginia.”

Girls banned from girls' sports instead of a male being banned from girls' sports.

And this isn't California or New York.

This is Wild and Abominable West Virginia. https://t.co/oTB0xwovh7

— Greg Scott (@GScottSays) April 30, 2024

“You can’t participate in this meet until you admit girls don’t exist,” said the Redheaded Libertarian, “unless you want abortions, because it’s your rights as girls.”