Coercive pronatalism – pressures to compel women to have more children – inspired by nationalism, xenophobia, militarism or market fundamentalism is at an all-time high, and is a threat to reproductive rights everywhere. On a planet facing numerous ecological and social catastrophes, bemoaning a decline in national fertility rates is a reprehensible distraction.

The world’s population is set to grow to 9.8 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100, according to the United Nations. A nonprofit based in Saint Paul shares its solutions to combat human overpopulation and overconsumption.

India’s population has just reached 1.4 billion people, surpassing China as the world’s most populous nation four years earlier than projected. Spurring this growth is a traditional patriarchal culture in which women’s identity is constrained by the social expectation they bear children.

“Globally, we’re still adding about 80 million people every year to the planet. That growth stems from pronatalism, which is all of the cultural and institutional pressure that promotes or even coerces childbearing. Climate change, biodiversity loss, growing scarcities of freshwater are all bigger problems than “the bizarre claim that we’re not producing enough babies,” Bajaj said.

Pronatalism and baby-bust alarmism ignore the gains in women’s empowerment and reproductive autonomy that lead to lower fertility rates. Pronatalism commodifies women, babies, and immigrants as economic inputs that benefit only the corporations that rely on a never-ending supply of workers and consumers for their products.

“The fact that after fighting for personal and reproductive liberation for centuries, women in some countries are finally able to break free from their prescribed biological and gender roles and authentically exercise their right to have no or fewer children is something to be celebrated,” Bajaj said. “It’s a hallmark of a liberated society. It’s neither a loss of humanity nor selfish.”