DontSayRepeat
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Sep 2, 2026 12:23 PM
DontSayRepeat
20496
670
23
tidepool
My mom had me at 14 and should’ve had an abortion instead. I can give you a THOUSAND reasons why CHILDREN shouldn’t have babies.
TheGgreen100
But guys if children stop having babies then less destitute children will be born into desperate circumstances leading them to a severe lack of education and subsequently forced into either menial service jobs to serve the rest of us for the rest of their lives or military enlistment so they can be thrown into pointless wars for the rest of their lives so we can, I dunno, get more oil or whatever. Get to breedin, littluns.
ImmaCatImmaSexyCat
They're admitting that things are so bad that people aren't willingly having kids. And instead of making things better so people want kids, they want to have more unintentional pregnancy.
Conservatism, capitalism and neoliberalism are some of the most evil, anti-human ideologies ever conceived.
SomeDetroitGuy
"Teen pregnancy is down" is now an issue?
Soggybathroomsock
The consumer price index is the lowest it has ever been. For actual adults, that is the most important factor in their choice to procreate. Maybe get to work on improving that eh?
rockmanx853000
Being in debt with unplanned children keeps the economy going for the gop. Work 2-3 jobs, max out credit cards, struggle suits their corporate overlord needs.
Iblamemyparentstoo
To be clear they're referring to white babies not being born....it's throwing a wrench into their great white replacement plans
Thisisbullshitalready
https://media0.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1NTFkb24wcmt6aTE3MDZibHowbGEzY29mdWEzdjNmaHYxczBjcXZzMyZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/GVezwI9lRuul6q4dD6/200w.webp
MasterBountakun
GOP Politician: Teen pregnancy is a serious problem.
Sane Person: Yeah, teens aren't ready for parenthood.
GOP Politician: What?! I meant teen pregnancy is too low and I am not getting to do enough of the impregnating.
ilovetraveler
Brought to you by the party of "christian values" that formerly emphasized abstinence only and if you get pregnant, it's your fault and you don't deserve any government support. Me thinks they're just terrified of losing "unskilled" laborers.
weidermeijer
Conservatives have always been the problem… for millennea.
Hovencl00f
Well yeah, because of constant changes in both the climate, other acts of nature and technology, change is essential for progress to occur.
KR1570F
change is essential for just basic survival to occur.
Bystandr
Hm maybe try lowering the cost of living price index while paying a living wage to true entry level jobs?
cabalin
Across the country Republicans are trying to reduce the age of consent
cjandstuff
This, after spending DECADES crying, screaming, and whining about the problem of teen pregnancy.
KerryCoder
...wait a minute. that's literally teen pregnancy. Teen pregnancy is down 70%. WHA
albakSPrince
maga pedophile worshiping morons. all getting in line to feed out of his shit filled diaper
SomeGeek75ygh
Isn't this the same political party that for decades slut shamed teen pregnancy and fought against it tooth and nail?
chewmaca2
The pedophile party is saying louder now.
jeips
a decline in teenage pregnancies is a GOOD THING. the majority of underrage pregnant girls get pregnant from ADULT males, with the averages something like 13-16yo girls "impregnated" (ie: raped) by adult men aged 21-25. Its disgusting. So anyone who ever says that there should be MORE teenage pregnancies is straight up advocating for abuse and child rape.
cabalin
Yeah, so? - Republicans
Imademyselfsquirtle
Not to Republicans they love raping kids.
SansAandAnguS
I remember growing up in the 80s and 90s and the focus on sex education to bring down teen pregnancies - wich has been highly successful. So now this creep is suggesting we need to bring it back?! WTF?!
SteelyDad
I wonder if he's concerned about *all* teen birthrates, or just the birthrate in certain demographics... is he really concerned about the average birth rate of women (must be over 2.1 to grow the population) over their entire lives? or do they just happen to need a bunch of young parents in a specific demographic for some "unknown" reason?
wazeewa
It makes my skin crawl seeing a dude, clearly in his late 50s to mid 60s, talking about fertility rates in CHILDREN. Yes, 18 is legally an adult, but when I was 18, there was no way in hell I should have been thinking about having kids! It wasn't until I was in my 20s before I started to mature enough to be able to care for another human.
ShowUsTheMemesAndNoOneGetsHurt
telling WOMEN they have no control over their own body is going to have some adverse long term side effects like declining birth rates, less free love fucking, and increasingly angry incels. Congratulations conservatives
CobainsSarcoma
because a 15 year old is living in a world that is completely fucked and getting worse
some of them happen to know the world is completely fucked and have zero desire to force someone else into experiencing it
Djones06236
Can we just fire up the ole penis flattener already?
SerialChickenLover
There is no real fertility “crisis” in this country. Birth rates have fallen off because children stopped having babies. We should continue that trend until it’s an anomaly when a child gives birth. Don’t let the natalist weirdos tell you this country needs more babies. They’re selling a poison pill.
bobgunrunnersmith
Why don't republicans just say "prime breeding stock" and be done with it. I'd never realized how many old men are obsessed with teenage sex, sexual orientation and gender. Weirdos.
my1rstlaptopwas34inchscreenup
weirdos? man, you're polite
BeaverOnFire
TypicallyVigo
They already say "fertility rate" which makes my skin crawl everytime they misuse that term for "birth rate." There's just something so fucking creepy about that to me.
stabbermcshooty
You didn’t think that walking skeleton talking about fertility rate was a good look?
OddlyPacific
Fertility rate would take the kind of research they wish to conduct. Let’s make sure that never happens.
ps238principal
And for their next trick, they'll decry "teen pregnancy" under "liberal" leadership, and they won't acknowledge the doublethink even to themselves.
AyatollahBahloni
Of course they'll say it was biden's fault.
itdweeb
https://media2.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1OGc0NndtcTBmcjVnc3Y1cjBjYzZrb3NiMXJzZXk0YXZyNmMyb2c5eCZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/12O2XuGsIx1OvK/200w.webp
AyatollahBahloni
https://media0.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1Ync1bHNhZmM1eHN4MGwwdXNybjN5eGMybTJjdHN1ano3dGp4aXppcSZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/11aitZSSRhHYuQ/200w.webp
swedeonamoose
Didnt conservatives just a few years ago scream about teen pregnancy being a sign of moral decay or something like that ?
DontYouHateWhenAllUsernamesAreAlreadyTaken
If they didn't have double standards, they would have no standards at all.
EaNasirsExcellentHighGradeCopper
while ignoring the fact that teen pregnancy rates have, historically, been significantly higher in red states, to boot.
CuntCrotchula
But thats *unwed* teen pregnancy. They just want the mothers to be child brides
LokilairTTV
Exactly, theyre just mad that their isn't some man there to "own" them.
swedeonamoose
Things were so much better when people had to have 6-8 kids just in case half of them dropped dead before adulthood huh.
georgejimmydoodle
Only if they're white.
camn333
Don't worry, without vaccines, you'll get there again.
FuzzyX
That was common in the days before vaccines, antibiotics, antiviral and more. Illnesses in those days were either recovery or burial.
Then you have big cases like the Black Death killing up to 60% of everyone. So if you value your family line more kids meant more chance of future survival.
Modern medicine is not all good news though when our current 8.3 billion population would be under 1 billion without but in most cases this is just the world adjusting.
JimmyWalkerTexasRanger
My father was the last of 14.
I heard my grandfather would call them "spares."
Yeah, he was a piece of work, too. https://media4.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1NmFvNXdvOTVsa2JyemRlM2Flc3Q2am9scWEwZjRqZW1sdDZxOWl2aiZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/w0mylo7p4OXUQ/200w.webp
Imademyselfsquirtle
Fucking gross
JimmyWalkerTexasRanger
Yeah. My dad's side is pretty fucked up.
But hey, most of them are dead now,
so there's that.
Freakscar
To us it certainly is. But just for context, historically children weren't meant as 'glowing, fuzzy, little poopmachines everyone adores' - they were meant to first help in and sooner or later take over the family business, whilst also caeing for their now no-longer-able-to-work parents.
It was still a gross and fucked up system, sure - but not having (enough) children until retirement would spell poverty and sooner or later death because of no social security in any form - other than family.
choppedliveraldente
Everyone adores? No. Ohnononono. N0.
Freakscar
Hyperbole. It "[...] is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech."
Jimthebutler
Birth rates are encouraged by a strong economy and everyone having enough and even excess. If you want to raise the birth rate, make it possible to have a child without bankrupting yourself or putting yourself at an extreme disadvantage.
PragmaticPrimate
Are you sure about that?
pgdave
That's not exactly true, or rather, it is true but it's more complicated than that because strong economies which *also* have more gender equality and *also* have access to birth control see significantly lower boosts in birth rates, as people who could otherwise be pregnant choose themselves. I tend to think that's a good thing, I'm not arguing against it, but I am saying that it's not quite as simple as "good economy -> higher birth rates"
ROFLtheWAFL
I mean, it's good for the people who choose themselves in that moment, for a few generations anyway. Then as the population decline becomes terminal and there aren't enough young people paying into the social services that supported retirees, it becomes a very not good.
The Republican "teens need to start having babies" BS is fucking gross, but pretending like falling birthrates aren't a problem or won't affect us in our lifetimes is profoundly naive.
pgdave
Falling birthrates leading to economic decline can be avoided through dramatic increases in productivity per workerhour, which technology can produce, but it definitely needs to be something society considers and is aware of, rather than something dismissed out of hand.
Daliena06
"But the whole reason we want higher birth rates is so that there'll be more desperate slaves to exploit! The free market demands an infinite supply of labor so that we can make it clear to every one of them that if they get uppity and start demanding the basics of living, we'll just replace them with the next peon!"
-What they are definitely thinking, even if relatively few of them are bold enough (yet) to say it out loud.
CurbYourClassWar
pgdave
The issue isn't wanting an infinite supply of labor (for those of us who are reasonable) but that an inverted pyramid of ages is bad and dangerous, as it increases the number of people each working person needs to support.
crazyspelling
It's only "bad and dangerous" because the system is designed tax young people to pay for old people. Except the rich people have spent 45 years creating an economy where young people can't even support themselves. The overall productivity is more than high enough. We just have to either (1) pay the young people enough so that their taxes can support the old people, or, (2) tax the rich. We proved the economy can work with 1 person carrying the burden for 2-4. The rich destroyed that.
pgdave
That's not really true - in any population you have "working people" and "not working people". The not working people includes the sick, the elderly, the young, the infirm, and the temporarily out of work. Most simply, in order for all those people to eat, enough food needs to be produced by the working people. In a modern economy, that's abstracted to "in order for those people to have a basic living standard, enough value needs to be produced by the working people". That's all it is.
crazyspelling
Yes, and more than enough value is created by the working people. They just aren't getting paid for it now, like they were when systems like social security were set up. One working adult could produce enough surplus wealth for a house and 3-4 non-working family members. Now families need two wage earners to pay for a house and two non-working dependents. Why? Because the capital class has been hoovering up the surplus value and keeping real wages depressed when compared to productivity.
pgdave
(well, it's 100% true that the rich have fucked us all over and made things worse - I don't mean to argue with that)
crazyspelling
It's the classic case of the rich wanting their cake and eating it too. Their gravy train gets bigger the more people there are to grift off of and keep in permanent debt. So of course their media and their economists blame us not procreating for the fact that their gravy train may have to slow down and get smaller. I don't like to say shit like "capitalism requires infinite expansion," because it doesn't - just our implementation of it is.