Health
South Korean president declares low birth rate a ‘national emergency,’ plans new ministry to address it

From LifeSiteNews
President Yoon Suk Yeol announced that he would ask for the parliament’s support to establish a new Ministry of Low Birth Rate Counter Planning after the country reached a new low with an average number of babies per woman of 0.72 in 2023.
South Korea’s president has declared the country’s low birth rate a “national emergency” and announced a new government ministry to address the problem.
In a televised press conference on May 9, President Yoon Suk Yeol said, “We will mobilize all of the nation’s capabilities to overcome the low birth rate, which can be considered a national emergency.”
He announced he would ask for the parliament’s support to establish a new “Ministry of Low Birth Rate Counter Planning.”
South Korea has had the lowest fertility rate in the world for years, and the average number of babies per woman dropped to a new low of 0.72 in 2023, down from 0.78 the previous year.
Despite the government’s efforts to increase the birth rate by spending over $200 billion on initiatives meant to encourage larger families, including infertility treatment, cash subsidies, and childcare services, the country’s birth rate declined for the fourth year in a row in 2023.
A Korean Construction corporation made headlines this year for offering employees $75,000 for each baby they have. “If Korea’s birth rate remains low, the country will face extinction,” Lee Joong-keun, chairman of the Booyoung Group, warned.
READ: New ‘Birthgap’ film shows how explosion in childlessness is driving population collapse
According to YouTuber Stephan Park, who grew up in South Korea and runs the YouTube channel Asian Boss, Korean men face the additional problem of being expected to own a house when they marry, which is very difficult under the country’s current economic conditions.
“There are all the societal pressures that if you get married, guys are the ones that are supposed to buy the house, to have the house ready, which is impossible to have if you are a 30-year-old guy … with the average house prices you’ll never be able to afford one in your lifetime,” Park explained.
“So that’s the most common thing we hear: ‘I cannot afford to get married,’” he added.
According to some projections, South Korea’s and multiple other Western and Asian populations are expected to be cut in half by the year 2100 if the current trends continue.
Red Deer
Historic Gift to Transform Cardiac Care in Central Alberta

The Red Deer Regional Health Foundation is honored to announce a historic $10 million donation that will bring life – saving cardiac care to Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre.
This extraordinary gift, generously contributed by Joan Donald, John and Heather Donald, and Peter and Kathy Lacey, is the largest donation in the foundation’s history and will play a critical role in establishing the previously announced interim cardiac catheterization lab at Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre.
“For too long, Central Albertans have faced an unacceptable reality—if you suffer a heart attack in Red Deer, you must be transported to Calgary or Edmonton for the care you need,” said Manon Therriault, CEO of the Red Deer Regional Health Foundation. “And when every second counts, that distance can mean the difference between life and death.
Thanks to this transformational gift, more lives will be saved, and more families will be spared the fear of waiting for a transfer.”
The impact of this generosity is profound. With the interim cardiac catheterization lab, it is estimated that 160 lives will be saved in the 5 years leading up to the establishment of a permanent lab. Patients will receive timely, specialized care closer to home, significantly improving outcomes and reducing the burden on families.
“A gift like this does not happen by chance—it takes vision, leadership, and an unwavering commitment to community,” Manon added. “Joan, John, Heather, Peter, and Kathy have set a powerful example of what philanthropy can achieve. Their generosity is not just a donation; it is a legacy of life-saving care for generations to come.”
This milestone underscores the crucial role of philanthropy in advancing healthcare. The Red Deer Regional Health Foundation extends its deepest gratitude to the Donald and Lacey families for their remarkable generosity and commitment to a healthier future for Central Alberta.
Health
Oxford study finds transgender surgery increases depression, suicide ideation rates

From LifeSiteNews
This study, along with scores of others conducted in recent years, explodes the media-enforced narrative that so-called ‘gender transition’ procedures are beneficial for the gender-confused.
A study published in the Oxford Journal of Sexual Medicine found that undergoing so-called “sex change” surgery, far from reducing depression rates among the gender dysphoric, substantially increased rates not only of depression, but of anxiety, suicidal ideation, and substance use disorders.
Males who underwent transgender surgery had a depression rate of 25.4 percent, compared to 11.5 percent in those who did not have surgery. Likewise, females who underwent surgery had a depression rate of 22.9 percent, compared to 14.6 percent in those who did not.
The study notes that males undergoing “feminizing” surgeries demonstrated a particularly high risk for depression and substance use disorders.
“From 107,583 patients, matched cohorts demonstrated that those undergoing surgery were at significantly higher risk for depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and substance use disorders than those without surgery,” the researchers found.
Rather than concluding that so-called “gender affirming” surgery is a dangerous, unnecessary practice that should be discontinued because it puts patients’ lives at risk, the researchers instead suggest that that their findings show a need for “gender-sensitive mental health support following gender-affirming surgery to address post-surgical psychological risks.”
Exploding the myth
This study, along with scores of others conducted in recent years, explodes the media-enforced narrative that so-called “gender transition” procedures are beneficial or even “necessary” for the happiness and well-being of the gender-confused.
A significant body of evidence now shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically transformative, and often irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.
Studies find that more than 80 percent of children suffering gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence and that “transition” procedures fail to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide – and even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
Many oft-ignored detransitioners attest to the physical and mental harm of reinforcing gender confusion as well as to the bias and negligence of the medical establishment on the subject, many of whom take an activist approach to their profession and begin cases with a predetermined conclusion in favor of “transitioning.”
Last year, a massive, peer-reviewed study provided unequivocal evidence that those who undergo so-called “gender reassignment” surgery put themselves at a vastly increased risk of suicide – an astounding 12 times that of the general population.
The giant study, “involving 56 United States healthcare organizations and over 90 million patients,” analyzed data collected over a 20-year period, from February 2003 to February 2023, examining “suicide attempts, death, self-harm, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) within five years of the index event.”
The researchers compared the experiences of persons aged 18-60 who visited hospital emergency rooms and who had previously undergone “transition” surgery with those who visited emergency rooms without having undergone transgender surgery: A stunning 3.47 percent of those who had surgically “transitioned” were treated for suicide attempts, versus 0.29 percent for non-“transitioned” patients.
The authors of the study, like those of the one just published in the Oxford Journal of Sexual Medicine, sidestepped the obvious conclusion that attempts to surgically “transition” the gender-confused are both dangerous and futile.
Instead they concluded: “Gender-affirming [sic] surgery is significantly associated with elevated suicide attempt risks, underlining the necessity for comprehensive post-procedure psychiatric support.”
In 2016, The New Atlantis, A Journal of Technology and Society, produced a landmark report offering a summary and an up-to-date explanation of research on “sexual orientation and gender identity” from the biological, psychological, and social sciences, covering nearly 200 peer-reviewed studies.
“The hypothesis that gender identity is an innate, fixed property of human beings that is independent of biological sex — that a person might be ‘a man trapped in a woman’s body’ or ‘a woman trapped in a man’s body’ — is not supported by scientific evidence,” according to experts Lawrence S. Mayer, M.B., M.S., Ph.D, scholar-in-residence in the Department of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University, and Paul R. McHugh, M.D., professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
According to their report, the vast body of scientific evidence tells a different story from the one most have been told through mainstream media. “Sexual identity” or “sexual orientation” are so commonly used that they go unquestioned and are perceived to have been derived from biological or medical science, but they are not. These terms are merely expressions of desire, behavior, and identity, all of which are fluid and may change over time. Additionally, “gay,” “lesbian,” and “transgender” are not scientific terms. People who suffer from homosexual inclinations and/or gender confusion are not separate species of human beings.
The only thing that science actually tells us is that we are born either male or female.
One young man, Yarden Silveira, was so distraught after “sex change” surgery that he committed suicide in 2021.
Before taking his own life, Yarden wrote:
I wish I never listened to the medical and psychiatric community when they told me it was possible to change my sex. What a lie. Very dangerous and unethical. Sex reassignment [sic] surgery is a hit and miss type of surgery, but they don’t tell you that. They never do. And maybe if I didn’t have autism, maybe if my brain wasn’t so defective, I would have caught on before it was too late…
This is what I get for messing with nature… I just wanted friendship and love. I wanted life to be easier. I wanted to be a woman since I was 15. I wish I had the knowledge that I have today. I was a confused kid with no identity. I wish I could have done everything different, but it’s too late now. I’m royally screwed…
The Transgender Ideology and its lies, along with the pro-gay media, medical and psychiatric community, have killed me. The feminization of America will continue to produce outcomes like mine. It wasn’t my fault for failing. Everyone failed me, my death shouldn’t surprise anyone.
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