Protect children in the womb as MacIntyre ties abortion to fertility

Children in the womb have a right to life, and that conviction does not depend on any fertility chart. On October 21, Auron MacIntyre posted on X that abortion, not fertility, drives the West’s fertility crisis¹. He added that if Western women were not having abortions on the scale he described, “most countries would be above replacement.”

MacIntyre’s post quoted Charlie Downes’s October 20 post. Downes’s post then said, “Today, there are around 11 million foreign nationals living in the country.” Downes ended the post with “Food for thought.”

Two totals of about 11 million do not measure the same thing. Downes’s abortion figure is a cumulative count since 1967, while his second figure is a stock of foreign nationals living in Britain today². The ONS migration figure measures arrivals over a year: 813,000 people immigrated to the UK long term in the year ending December 2025³. The ONS puts the UK total fertility rate at 1.40 children per woman in 2024, down from 1.91 in 2012. The ONS defines replacement fertility as 2.075, the level at which a population replaces itself without migration⁴.

Completed family size fell from 2.22 children for women born in 1945 to 1.90 for those born in 1975. The ONS expert panel said the cost-of-living crisis will reduce period fertility in the short term. The ONS short-term assumption is 1.38 children per woman by 2029, rising to 1.42 by 2049. Even its high-fertility variant sets the long-term UK rate at 1.62 children per woman, still far below 2.075⁴.

The ONS figures chart a decline in family size across birth cohorts⁴, and MacIntyre’s post never addresses that decline.

The right to life belongs to every child in the womb, whatever the fertility rate. That is why Family Brief supports the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act and the unborn child tax credit, and opposes government funding of Planned Parenthood. A country that wants more families should protect the children already conceived and back the parents who are expecting them.

Sources

1. @AuronMacintyre on X, 2026-10-21: The fertility crisis in the West has nothing to do with fertility and everything to do with abortion If western women weren’t murdering their babies on a scale that makes the Holocaust look quaint most countries would be above replacement, 2026-10-21
2. Charlie Downes on X: "Since legalisation in 1967, there have been over 11 million abortions in Britain.
3. Long-term international migration, provisional
4. National population projections, fertility assumptions: 2024-based