Anyone who’s ever got into a debate about abortion will have heard the argument “well, there’s too many people in the world, anyway”.

Some people who make this argument will be genuinely concerned about the world’s population and the allocation of resources; but more often, it’s just a way of avoiding the real issues. After all, when considering whether abortion is morally right or wrong, the truth about overpopulation is irrelevant. Anyone arguing that abortion is a solution to overpopulation has to explain why culling the unborn is more justifiable than culling any other segment of the population. What it comes down to is whether the unborn are human and worthy of protection – which is the fundamental issue in the abortion debate.

What overpopulation?

However, what makes the overpopulation line even more annoying is that it simply isn’t true. Predictions that the world’s resources would be unable to cope with a growing human population have been proved wrong time and time again, ever since the clergyman Thomas Malthus proposed the idea back in 1798. In fact, it has become increasingly clear that the opposite is true: declining populations are the real threat to humanity.

This was highlighted in a BBC article last week, which talked of a “Jaw-dropping” global crash in the number of children being born. Research published in the Lancet found that falling fertility rates mean nearly every country could have a shrinking population by the end of the century.

The ageing population that will result from this crash will have significant social consequences. As the article says: “Who pays tax in a massively aged world? Who pays for healthcare for the elderly? Who looks after the elderly? Will people still be able to retire from work?”

Researcher Prof Murray says: “I find people laugh it off; they can't imagine it could be true, they think women will just decide to have more kids.

“If you can't [find a solution] then eventually the species disappears, but that's a few centuries away.”

Priorities?

So, this is clearly pretty serious stuff. Potentially species ending stuff. But what’s the researchers’ concern? “The researchers warn against undoing the progress on women's education and access to contraception.”

Prof Stein Emil Vollset said: “Responding to population decline is likely to become an overriding policy concern in many nations, but must not compromise efforts to enhance women’s reproductive health or progress on women’s rights.”

As I said, the rights and wrongs of abortion are independent from population concerns. But is it not a little strange to be so concerned with the rights of women to end the lives of their children that you won’t even contemplate compromising them even to, I don’t know, save the species?

Consequences of the culture of death

I don’t believe that many women are having abortions because they’re scared about overpopulation. But this is where the anti-life agenda has brought us. Society is now conditioned to think that children are a burden, an inconvenience -- yes, desirable at some point, but only if they fit in with our plans. Children are expensive, time-consuming and bad for the environment. I know that many of my friends have had to justify having multiple children. One particular friend was getting negative comments about having too many children - and she only has two!

It has led to a situation where “women’s rights” have become synonymous with aborting and contracepting the next generation out of existence. Of course, any true conception of women’s rights does not come into conflict with promoting motherhood and childbearing.

As the experts say, migration will only go so far to solve the declining population problem. Clearly, if we want to avoid the catastrophic effects of an ageing population, we need other answers. Can the conception of “women’s rights” provided by these researchers provide it?

Either way, it is clear that declining populations is the challenge the world faces now, not overpopulation. Can we drop that argument now please?