Imagine an entire generation, then erase nearly a third of it. That’s not a half-hearted thought experiment. It’s a national crime scene, neatly packaged as progress. 

Recent demographic reports reveal a devastating reality. Nearly 28 percent of Gen Z in America were denied the simple mercy of daylight. Between 1997 and 2011, 19.5 million lives were ended before they began. For every classroom, every cradle, every dinner table, an empty space mourns what never was.

The global context is equally grim. Nearly one in three pregnancies worldwide ends in abortion. In England and Wales, the rate has reached an all-time high. What was once framed as a “rare and tragic choice” has become routine — a conveyor belt of convenience turning human potential into medical waste. What looks like liberation is, in reality, liquidation. 

Our culture — decadent and desensitized — plays a central role. Celebrities now speak of abortion not with grief but with pride, turning tragedy into trend. British pop star Lily Allen — one of the defining names of the 2010s — recently confessed she’d had so many abortions she’d lost count. She said it casually, almost proudly, as though ending life were an act of empowerment. Once, that kind of confession would have shocked a nation. Today, it barely raises an eyebrow. (RELATED: What Are the Consequences of Destigmatizing Abortion?)

A nation that won’t create life is already courting death.

Of course, the shift didn’t begin with Allen. It began with Roe v. Wade. From there, it swept across the West. By the 1990s, life was no longer sacred but symbolic — a battleground for autonomy. Abortion, once a tragic last resort, became a badge of modern freedom: marketed, subsidized, and passionately defended. What once whispered in back alleys now screamed from billboards. The sanctity of life yielded to the supremacy of choice. (RELATED: How Trump 2.0 Can Get Back to Trump 1.0 on the Abortion Pill)

And the trend shows no sign of slowing. In America, abortion rates are rising again, proof that the fall of Roe ended nothing. The borders of legality shift, but the outcome never does. The states that restrict it drive women to those that expand it; the killing merely changes zip codes. And all this unfolds as the nation’s population ages, its birth rate plunges, and its replacement rate collapses. The country is greying, yet instead of nurturing new life, it’s eliminating it. A nation that won’t create life is already courting death. (RELATED: The Left Has a Baby Dilemma)

Many will object — what about cases of rape, incest, or danger to the mother’s life? These are awful, gut-wrenching realities. But they remain the exception, not the norm. They are vanishingly rare, a fraction of a fraction. The overwhelming majority of abortions are not born of horror but of habit, not of desperation but of decision. And that makes them all the more tragic.

The language around abortion has always worn a deceptive disguise — sterile in tone, surgical in intent, and ruthlessly effective. We speak of “reproductive rights,” as if death were a democratic process. We call it “healthcare,” as though the illness lies in the existence of the child. Bureaucrats talk of “access” and “autonomy,” but never of aftermath — the depression, the guilt, the silence that follows when the celebration fades. Even the word fetus — Latin for “offspring” — has been repurposed to erase the human beneath the term, reducing life to a clump of cells for semantic comfort. This is not the language of liberty, but the dialect of denial. (RELATED: Activists in Michigan Move to Integrate Abortions Into Urgent Care Clinics)

Dark humor creeps in because despair alone isn’t enough to process the absurdity. America, a nation obsessed with youth and vitality, is sabotaging its future while pretending to secure it. Silicon Valley dreams of eternal life through data, while maternity wards fall silent. The same culture that fights infertility with science destroys fertility with ideology. Corporations offer to pay for abortions as a “benefit,” not out of kindness but cost-effectiveness. After all, it’s far cheaper to end a pregnancy than to honor the person who carries it. (RELATED: Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid: Bryan Johnson’s Cult of Don’t Die)

And yet, there’s still time — if only just. People have found renewal before, in the dust left by their own delusions. The same country that ended slavery and segregation can still wake from this suicidal sleepwalk. But awakening demands honesty, and honesty demands horror. We must face what we’ve allowed to happen. Not only with shame, but with the will to repent.

We’ve lost 20 million people who will never laugh, create, love, or lead. Twenty million futures extinguished, mostly by design. That’s not healthcare. That’s not freedom. That’s elimination, streamlined and sold as self-determination.

America once called itself a shining city on a hill. Today, the lights are dimmer, flickering as though mourning the souls who were never allowed to hold the torch.

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