International
U.S. birth rate hit record low last year, signaling surge in childlessness

From LifeSiteNews
As data analyst Stephen Shaw has documented in his film ‘Birthgap,’ declining birth rates in the U.S. and around the world are being driven by an ‘explosion’ in women choosing not to have children.
The U.S. birth rate hit a record low last year of 1.62 births per woman according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), part of a worldwide trend of declining birth rates that have been shown to stem from rising childlessness.
The U.S. has had birth rates mostly below replacement level since 1972, according to United Nations (UN) data, with a minor brief respite from 2006 to 2007, when birth rates were just at replacement level. Birth rates hovered near replacement level from about 1989 to its recent peak of 2.11 births per woman in 2007. Since then, the birth rate has steadily declined.
The new CDC data shows that the birth rate for women ages 20 to 24 has seen a particularly steep decline of 47% since 2007. From 2022 to 2023 alone, the number of births for this age group dropped 4%.
As data analyst Stephen Shaw has documented in his film “Birthgap,” declining birth rates not just in the U.S. but around the world are being driven not by smaller family sizes but by an “explosion” in childlessness.
By comparing statistics on first-time mothers and the number of children they go on to have with national fertility rates, Shaw found that childlessness rates skyrocketed within only a few years in many countries.
For example, in Japan in 1974, one in 20 women were childless. By 1977, this ratio was one in four, and by 1990, it had reached one in three, a statistic that held in 2020. While Shaw doesn’t give specific numbers for most countries, he shares that most have become, like Italy and Japan, “childless nations,” where one-third or more people will become “childless for life.”
And according to the Pew Research Center, by 2010, “Nearly one-in-five American women end(ed) her childbearing years without having borne a child, compared with one-in-10 in the 1970s.” As of 2018, 41% of women between the ages of 25 and 44 were single and childless, and that number is projected to spike to a whopping 45% by 2030.
Just as remarkable as this trend is the finding in a Dutch meta-analysis, cited by author Jody Day in Shaw’s “Birthgap” film, and using data from the early 2000s, that only 10 percent of such women are childless “by choice,” and another 10 percent are childless due to “known” medical reasons, including infertility.
Institute for Family Studies (IFS) confirmed in December 2022 that the majority of childless women actually desire children. Thus, as Shaw summed up in his film, the main driver of childless women around the world now is failing to “find the right partner at the right time.”
Shaw highlighted what appear to be contributing factors: childbearing is delayed until a woman’s fertility window closes; women tend to want to settle with men at least as educated as they are, and everywhere, significantly more women are attending college than men; there are “too many options;” a number of young men are staying at home playing video games instead of pursuing women (or have given up on that).
Many speculate that increased pornography use and addiction is disincentivizing young men’s pursuit of women, and that overuse of technology is leading many young men and women to live isolated from each other.
The increasing secularization of society may also lead to growing numbers of childless women (and men) through a whole slew of hard-to-quantify factors, including by diminishing young people’s sense of purpose and happiness, and depriving them of character formation and a meaningful, effective way to select a mate.
Commentators such as Elon Musk have warned that if global birth rates continue to decline at their current projected rates, “human civilization will end.”
Crime
Europol takes out one of the largest pedophile networks in the world with almost 2 million users

From LifeSiteNews
An international group of police agencies has taken down one of the largest pedophile networks in the world with almost two million users.
Investigators from Bavaria, Germany, announced yesterday that they dismantled an online pedophile platform called “Kidflix” used to distribute child pornography that had around 1.8 million users worldwide. Police carried out raids in 31 countries and arrested 79 people in total.
The European police unit Europol coordinated the operation led by the Bavarian criminal police. Europol announced that around 1,400 suspects have been identified worldwide in “one of the biggest blows against child pornography in recent years, if not ever.”
According to Europol, the platform “Kidflix” was one of the largest pedophile networks in the world. Guido Limmer, deputy head of the Bavarian criminal police, said it was the “largest operation ever” organized by Europol. The platform’s server, with over 70,000 videos at the time, was reportedly shut down by German and Dutch authorities in early March.
The 79 people arrested were not only suspected of having watched or downloaded videos of child sexual abuse but some were also suspected of personally harming children. The police units carried out the raids from March 10 to 23 and reportedly confiscated thousands of electronic devices. In Germany alone, 96 locations were raided. Among the suspects was a 36-year-old man who not only viewed illegal material but also reportedly offered up his young son for sexual abuse. The child was given to child protection services after the man was arrested, the Bavarian police spokesman said.
Limmer also noted that one of the arrested suspects was a “serial” abuser from the United States.
According to Europol, “Kidflix” was set up by cybercriminals in 2021 and became one of the most popular platforms for pedophiles. The international police agency said that the investigation into the network began in 2022.
In October 2024, German police dismantled another large online pedophile network with hundreds of thousands of users, arresting six men associated with the platform.
Last year, Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office revealed that the cases of sexual abuse against children and adolescents had more than tripled in the past five years.
Courageous Discourse
Europe Had 127,350 Cases of Measles in 2024

By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH
US Mainstream Media Maintains Myopic Focus on Less than 1000 Cases
As the measles story in the US continues to unfold with reporting of a few cases here and there come in through mainstream media, I wondered about measles in Europe.
The WHO casually reported that the Europe Region had 127,350 cases in 2024.
According to an analysis by WHO and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 127 350 measles cases were reported in the European Region for 2024, double the number of cases reported for 2023 and the highest number since 1997.
Children under 5 accounted for more than 40% of reported cases in the Region – comprising 53 countries in Europe and central Asia. More than half of the reported cases required hospitalization. A total of 38 deaths have been reported, based on preliminary data received as of 6 March 2025.
Measles cases in the Region have generally been declining since 1997, when some 216 000 were reported, reaching a low of 4440 cases in 2016. However, a resurgence was seen in 2018 and 2019 – with 89 000 and 106 000 cases reported for the 2 years respectively. Following a backsliding in immunization coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic, cases rose significantly again in 2023 and 2024. Vaccination rates in many countries are yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, increasing the risk of outbreaks.
Many regions in Europe have lower rates of measles vaccination than the goal of 95%.
Less than 80% of eligible children in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Romania were vaccinated with MCV1 in 2023 – far below the 95% coverage rate required to retain herd immunity. In both Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro the coverage rate for MCV1 has remained below 70% and 50% respectively for the past 5 or more years. Romania reported the highest number of cases in the Region for 2024, with 30 692 cases, followed by Kazakhstan with 28 147 cases.
The WHO Report does not mention adjudication of hospitalizations or deaths. Presumably hospitalization of healthy kids is routine for contagion control. So if measles is so common and presumably well-handled by Europe, why is it such a big deal in the United States? Don’t look for Sanjay Gupta or Anderson Cooper to tell you that a similar size region and population handles >100K cases per year without much fanfare.
Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH
President, McCullough Foundation
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