MEDICAL, LEGAL, PHILOSOPHICAL AND SOCIO-ECONOMICAL PREREQUISITES OF DECREASE OF THE FERTILITY RATE IN EUROPE

Abstract

During less than a century number of our population halved. Fertility rate in Europe as well as in the whole World decreases constantly. There are numerous prerequisites because of which we can observe an aforementioned tendency. We are emphasizing here namely medical, legal, moral, philosophical and socio-economical ones. Not to underestimate remain postulates that separate a vision that we deserve to reach as a society i.e. equity, equality, personal freedom, zero discrimination etc., and tendencies, biases and prejudices that slow us down every single day and make those goals impossible to reach with our current state of mind. On one hand, there is number of reasons which explain an actual decrease of fertility rate clearly enough. Among them we are emphasizing high level of domestic violence, violence against women, weak abortion legislation which enslaves human rights of women in most of European countries, and, therefore, voluntary or forced sterilization, child-free tendencies, moral traumas, victim syndromes because of personal weakness and inability to do as we/or particularly woman pleases to. Additionally, rich black market of illegal abortions which consequences are often lethal or acutely dangerous for a female reproductive system, alongside with female organs mutilations committed by perpetrators of domestic violence etc, all these prerequisites lead to a visible decrease of the statistics that were mentioned before. However, at the same time, the modernly promoted desire to “live one’s life in full”, to “enjoy life without special responsibilities being husband/wife/parent”, lack of desire to create a family “until the studies will be completed, house will be bought, financial stability will be reached, all dreams will come true and so on, also keeps the idea of family life and parenthood on distance, as individuals want to maximize their happiness and pleasure with minimizing worries and “pains” at the same time. In addition, because of child-free tendency lovers and children’s haters, along with childfree hotels, restaurants, flights and other services make parents actually into outcasts from the other “proper society, that knows how to live this life without worries”. Parents of small children cannot obtain some services, are limited from visiting some places (and most of the times not because of rational reason, but rather in the aim of protecting other people’s tranquillity), experience a high level of moral pain and feeling “non-normal” when their life is different from of those, who “properly knows what and how to do”. At the same time, we shall claim that as long as the parenthood become popular and societally accepted again, and will not be associated with becoming outcasts anymore, and as long as the abortion legislation will not be optimized and become pro-feminine, along with anti-violence practical tools of fighting with perpetrators, we will not be able to talk about successful overcoming of the fertility crisis in Europe.