The mayor of Verona, Italy wants to create a National Day of Unborn Life in March to help society recognize that “children are wealth.”
Gript reports Mayor Federico Sboarina proposed the idea during a Feb. 2 city council meeting as Italian leaders debate how to combat a rapidly declining birth rate and encourage more young couples to have children.
“The Day of Unborn Life is the first concrete step towards a radical cultural change, to give parenthood and the family a central role in society,” Sboarina said. “Children are a wealth, first of all for parents who are lucky enough to be able to feel a love that knows no terms of comparison, but also for the whole of society.”
He asked the Italian Parliament to recognize March 25 as a National Day of Unborn Life in a letter to the presidents of both houses, according to the report.
“Italy no longer has children. It is a national problem that we must face urgently and with the utmost unity, because the repercussions of the fall in the birth rate concern us immediately but above all in the future, with serious consequences for the new generations,” the mayor said.
New health statistics show that the birth rate in Italy is the lowest that it has been in more than a century. Many other European and Asian countries are worried about their low birth rates, too.
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If the trend continues, experts predict the population of Italy will shrink by approximately one third (about 20 million people) by 2050, the report continues.
At the city council meeting, several Verona council members spoke up in support of the pro-life, pro-child measure, including Paola Bressan, the Italian news outlet Verona Sera reports.
“A society cannot be based on individualism but on us, on the family and on parenthood,” Bressan said. “Therefore, value must be given to motherhood to stop the demographic winter.”
Council member Ciro Maschino said he also has been concerned about the falling birth rate and its impact on “generations to come.”
“The Municipality of Verona is distinguishing itself for being the leader of a network at the forefront to achieve concrete goals,” Maschino said. “We all must work together to give a better future to the nation and to the generations to come.”
However, the proposal did receive some push-back from the Conference of Democratic Women of Verona, which described it as “blackmail,” according to VeronaSera.
“We agree with the majority when they say that women should not be faced with the dramatic choice between making a child and keep a job, but the reality of this blackmail, unfortunately still too widespread in Italian, Venetian and Veronese society, is undermined by putting women and their rights, including working rights, at the center of politics,” spokesperson Sabrina Ugolini said in a statement.
Abortion has been destroying generations of children at a massive rate for decades. According to statistics compiled by Worldometer, there were 42.6 million abortions world-wide in 2021.
Billions of children are missing from society due to abortions. Now, many countries are facing a demographic winter as their populations age and young couples forgo having children. As a result, companies are struggling with worker shortages, men cannot find wives due to sex-selection abortions and aging, childless couples wonder who will care for them in their old age.
Even Pope Francis recently addressed the impending crisis. In January, he urged couples to have children or adopt, saying those who choose to have pets instead are hurting themselves and society.
“Having a child is always a risk, either naturally or by adoption,” Pope Francis said. “But it is riskier not to have them. It is riskier to deny fatherhood or to deny motherhood, be it real or spiritual.
“Yes, dogs and cats take the place of children,” the pope continued. “Yes, it’s funny, I understand, but it is the reality. And this denial of fatherhood or motherhood diminishes us, it takes away our humanity. And in this way civilization becomes aged and without humanity, because it loses the richness of fatherhood and motherhood. And our homeland suffers, as it does not have children.”
