Thanks for writing this. You might want to connect with Black Tea News, and Feminists Choosing Life of New York, which are both on YouTube, if you haven't already. The key demographic you have identified, white, college-educated men, have multiple vested interests in the supply-side of abortion, as tax payers, employers and as careless reproducers. This is why the media class has very little to say about the demand-side, and why technologically advanced societies have millions of unwanted pregnancies each year.
Thanks for the comment and for the recommendations. I've bookmarked the websites of Black Tea News and Feminists Choosing Life of New York.
The fact that technologically advanced societies have millions of unwanted pregnancies each year is the focus of a research project of mine. During 2024 I put several hundred hours into the quantification of unintended pregnancies in the United States. In 2025 I've switched to using my free time to do weekly Substack articles because trying to do quasi-academic work on nights and weekends is pretty exhausting. I'll get back to it eventually.
It's always struck me as a fundamental flaw of modern society that we can put a man on the moon, but can't figure out how to live without impregnating millions of women every year who don't want to be impregnated. That is why I always described my research project as "reproductive responsibility."
I had the same thought: the mechanics of conception are well understood, but there has been remarkably little advancement in contraception technologies since the 1960s.
My belief is that because abortion is available as a backstop, its cost-effectiveness compared to the state raising a child is beyond doubt, and men don't have to have one, it has been an impediment to resolving the epidemic of unwanted pregnancies at source.
I'm planning a series of articles on abortion as the driver of international migration, which will upset just about everyone. I'm just following the facts where they lead.
Exactly that. There has been no novel contraceptive technology since the 1960s (just a repackaging into different modalities). Before I did my statistics degree, I tried to do a lab biology research career with a focus on contraception. There is little demand, just some basic science research here and there. There is certainly not the kind of funding that it takes to bring a new product to market (which is currently in the billions of USD).
A friend of my wife's who works in pharma said there is a widespread perception in pharma that the contraceptive technologies we have now are "good enough." This is despite how ineffective they are, how many side effects they come with, and how prone they are to user error. "Good enough" was caused by the destigmatization of abortion in the 1970s.
I suspect if we ever see innovations in contraceptive technology, they will come from India or Thailand or somewhere. Of course, countries outside the U.S. in particular and the Western world more generally spend a lot less money on R&D, so we shouldn't hold our breath.
I look forward to reading your articles on abortion as the driver of international migration.
Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately I don't anticipate better contraception research being funded in Asia because sex-selective abortion guaranteeing male births is widely used there. I believe this is a 'push' factor in global migration because there are now tens of millions of males (according to United Nations estimates of femicide) who don't have marriage potential in their local communities as a result of this practice.
In societies which are structured by family and being a single man or gay is considered a failure, this is a straightforward matter of supply and demand. I recently spoke to a Sri Lankan man who joined the priesthood and migrated to Europe for this exact reason; he just couldn't find a wife at home.
The 'pull' factor in migration is that abortion has biased Western demographics in favour of those born before abortion liberalisation, the so-called 'baby boomers'. As there were more people born than normal from 1945 to 1960, that should result in native populations continuing to grow over successive generations, but it seems abortion liberalisation stopped that.
Using a generational cycle of 28 years and an average of 3 children per straight couple without abortion being available, we could estimate an opposite sex pair of abortions in 1967 meant three fewer children by 1995 and perhaps five fewer grandchildren by 2023. That's ten people who don't exist in the post-boomer generations. This estimate is crude, of course.
People seem to think that being single is a choice, but my estimate illustrates that there are just fewer potential long-term partners of family-forming age to choose from in a typical Western community. Demand is also reduced, of course, but because the pool is reduced in size, individual choice is limited, particularly in depopulated rural areas. Hence the phrase "I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on Earth".
However, cities have significantly higher abortion rates (in the United Kingdom data I have looked at) and so moving to the city to find a partner doesn't necessarily result in a live birth. I have looked into correlations between annual gross domestic product and abortion rates which suggest that in the UK, women have more abortions when companies are hiring, not because those women lack income. The economy and nature compete for access to women's bodies.
So, with a trend towards city living caused by the mechanisation of agriculture and the current availability of food imports, there just aren't enough native-born people in the West to sustain economic growth or public services, and the effect is compounded in each generation.
In the UK, the Labour government of 1997 to 2010 perhaps understood this, and created a more or less open border policy for low-wage service workers. I believe the US Democratic administrations which have close ties to Labour may have done the same. A bonus was that new migrant voters were presumed to vote on the Left, to continue open border policies and thereby bring their relatives and new partners to join them.
Anyway, my current draft is 18 pages which I believe is too long for typical Substack readers, so I'm going to break it down into a series.
Thanks for writing this. You might want to connect with Black Tea News, and Feminists Choosing Life of New York, which are both on YouTube, if you haven't already. The key demographic you have identified, white, college-educated men, have multiple vested interests in the supply-side of abortion, as tax payers, employers and as careless reproducers. This is why the media class has very little to say about the demand-side, and why technologically advanced societies have millions of unwanted pregnancies each year.
Thanks for the comment and for the recommendations. I've bookmarked the websites of Black Tea News and Feminists Choosing Life of New York.
The fact that technologically advanced societies have millions of unwanted pregnancies each year is the focus of a research project of mine. During 2024 I put several hundred hours into the quantification of unintended pregnancies in the United States. In 2025 I've switched to using my free time to do weekly Substack articles because trying to do quasi-academic work on nights and weekends is pretty exhausting. I'll get back to it eventually.
It's always struck me as a fundamental flaw of modern society that we can put a man on the moon, but can't figure out how to live without impregnating millions of women every year who don't want to be impregnated. That is why I always described my research project as "reproductive responsibility."
I had the same thought: the mechanics of conception are well understood, but there has been remarkably little advancement in contraception technologies since the 1960s.
My belief is that because abortion is available as a backstop, its cost-effectiveness compared to the state raising a child is beyond doubt, and men don't have to have one, it has been an impediment to resolving the epidemic of unwanted pregnancies at source.
I'm planning a series of articles on abortion as the driver of international migration, which will upset just about everyone. I'm just following the facts where they lead.
Exactly that. There has been no novel contraceptive technology since the 1960s (just a repackaging into different modalities). Before I did my statistics degree, I tried to do a lab biology research career with a focus on contraception. There is little demand, just some basic science research here and there. There is certainly not the kind of funding that it takes to bring a new product to market (which is currently in the billions of USD).
A friend of my wife's who works in pharma said there is a widespread perception in pharma that the contraceptive technologies we have now are "good enough." This is despite how ineffective they are, how many side effects they come with, and how prone they are to user error. "Good enough" was caused by the destigmatization of abortion in the 1970s.
I suspect if we ever see innovations in contraceptive technology, they will come from India or Thailand or somewhere. Of course, countries outside the U.S. in particular and the Western world more generally spend a lot less money on R&D, so we shouldn't hold our breath.
I look forward to reading your articles on abortion as the driver of international migration.
Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately I don't anticipate better contraception research being funded in Asia because sex-selective abortion guaranteeing male births is widely used there. I believe this is a 'push' factor in global migration because there are now tens of millions of males (according to United Nations estimates of femicide) who don't have marriage potential in their local communities as a result of this practice.
In societies which are structured by family and being a single man or gay is considered a failure, this is a straightforward matter of supply and demand. I recently spoke to a Sri Lankan man who joined the priesthood and migrated to Europe for this exact reason; he just couldn't find a wife at home.
The 'pull' factor in migration is that abortion has biased Western demographics in favour of those born before abortion liberalisation, the so-called 'baby boomers'. As there were more people born than normal from 1945 to 1960, that should result in native populations continuing to grow over successive generations, but it seems abortion liberalisation stopped that.
Using a generational cycle of 28 years and an average of 3 children per straight couple without abortion being available, we could estimate an opposite sex pair of abortions in 1967 meant three fewer children by 1995 and perhaps five fewer grandchildren by 2023. That's ten people who don't exist in the post-boomer generations. This estimate is crude, of course.
People seem to think that being single is a choice, but my estimate illustrates that there are just fewer potential long-term partners of family-forming age to choose from in a typical Western community. Demand is also reduced, of course, but because the pool is reduced in size, individual choice is limited, particularly in depopulated rural areas. Hence the phrase "I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on Earth".
However, cities have significantly higher abortion rates (in the United Kingdom data I have looked at) and so moving to the city to find a partner doesn't necessarily result in a live birth. I have looked into correlations between annual gross domestic product and abortion rates which suggest that in the UK, women have more abortions when companies are hiring, not because those women lack income. The economy and nature compete for access to women's bodies.
So, with a trend towards city living caused by the mechanisation of agriculture and the current availability of food imports, there just aren't enough native-born people in the West to sustain economic growth or public services, and the effect is compounded in each generation.
In the UK, the Labour government of 1997 to 2010 perhaps understood this, and created a more or less open border policy for low-wage service workers. I believe the US Democratic administrations which have close ties to Labour may have done the same. A bonus was that new migrant voters were presumed to vote on the Left, to continue open border policies and thereby bring their relatives and new partners to join them.
Anyway, my current draft is 18 pages which I believe is too long for typical Substack readers, so I'm going to break it down into a series.