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Fox News doc says not enough ’15 to 19′ year-olds are having kids: ‘The fertility is down’

Fox News doc says not enough ’15 to 19′ year-olds are having kids: ‘The fertility is down’ - Lemmy.World

Fox News Senior Medical Analyst Marc Siegel made some eyebrow-raising comments lamenting that birth rates are down among teenagers aged 15 to 19. On Thursday, the National Center for Health Statistics reported that the U.S. fertility rate fell to another record low. The agency reported that the number of births per 1,000 women of childbearing age declined from 53.8 in 2024 to 53.1 last year. The latest figure represents a continuation of a decades-long decline in fertility rates. Siegel joined Friday’s edition of America’s Newsroom, where Dana Perino said that while the continuing trend is not surprising, “the numbers might feel a little shocking.”

Capitalism contributes, yes. But, if humanity stays below replacement rate, humanity goes extinct.

Also, no matter how you distribute resources, there are periods of life when your productivity is less that what you need to survive. Everyone has this for many years at the beginning of their life, and those lucky enough to live long enough will have this toward the end of their lives, as aging is the disability that comes for us all. The proven method to sustain persons during those periods is to have enough people in their productive years; it generally requires more than the replacement rate. And, if that doesn’t happen, the less productive suffer and die more.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk

All that said, I’m against encouraging teenage pregnancy, and for full bodily autonomy – no one should be forced to let anyone else use their uterus.

SOUTH KOREA IS OVER

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Virtvirt588 15h ago

I’m against encouraging teenage pregnancy

Encouraging teenage pregnancy isn’t the problem. The problem is the encouragement in general. As said, full bodily autonomy - it should remain a right for all.

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bss03 15h ago

The problem is the encouragement in general

I don’t see why that’s a problem. I think it could come in the form of actual benefits, not a just verbal haranguing / extolling based on (not) having children, but that it’s good for the birth rate to be slightly above replacement and correcting any divergence should be encouraged.

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Virtvirt588 14h ago

You’re sabotaging your own argument here. You stated full body autonomy to be a right to then dismiss that within this statement.

no one should be forced to let anyone else use their uterus

Tell me, how does this relate to your current argument?

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bss03 14h ago

“full body autonomy” includes but is not limited to “no one [is] forced to let anyone else use their uterus”. I don’t believe I am sabotaging my own argument, but I’m an idiot, so maybe you just need to be more meticulous in explaining how I am (doing that).

I bring it up because authoritarians often try to restrict bodily autonomy, particularly around uteruses, when trying to do population control (up or down). In fact, while it may not be a acceptable, mainstream view, you don’t have to look to hard to find a USian on the right claiming that abortion must (become/stay) illegal because of the “birth rate crisis”.

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yesman 14h ago

The Earth’s population has nearly doubled in my lifetime. I’m pretty sure we’re not quite endangered yet. I’ll also point out that poor countries that tend to spawn brown players are well above replacement levels if you count those as people.

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bss03 14h ago

Yeah, I’m not worried about running out of humans globally, and I do think immigration is a fine way for a country to choose to maintain their population.

There’s probably something to be said around cultural preservation, and maybe that’s a bit easier for “native born” persons. But, I don’t know the steelman version of that argument, if there is one.

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Trainguyrom 11h ago

But, if humanity stays below replacement rate, humanity goes extinct.

I don’t think this is a real risk. And if it were, it certainly won’t be anytime soon. Fewer people means fewer mouths to feed, fewer homes to build/maintain and less consumption in general, which given how the planet is struggling to continue balance with current human resource consumption, a gradual decline in human population would probably be beneficial in the long run.

To actually threaten humanity’s continued existence the number of humans would need to dwindle so low that the societial and the medical infrastructure that permits/causes the declining birth rates would completely collapse and people would naturally start having more kids again in order to keep up with the work on the farms that most people would need to work on at that scale of society

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bss03 6h ago

it certainly won’t be anytime soon.

Agreed. I think globally we are still above replacement rate.

Fewer people means fewer mouths to feed, fewer homes to build/maintain and less consumption in general

Yes, but no. As the video I linked points out, because of the time delay you get fewer people with maximum productivity while still needed to support people that have sub-self-sustaining productivity. Eventually, you might get to a smaller population that choose to return to above replacement rate, but the demographic squeeze don’t got away for another 20-30 years. Once it starts you are stuck in a demographic squeeze, it makes it even harder on everyone, making that choice “harder”.

That is a simplification. Sub-self-sustaining productivity doesn’t exactly track with age, and how much it takes to sustain a joyful life varies based on a lot of factors; it sort of tracks downward but can also go up if economies of scale shirk or when a new essential utility is introduced by technology.