[thread] right wing societies in the Global North have a vested interested in pursuing forced fertility, as more and more of these countries have birth rates that fall below replacement level 1/12 https://twitter.com/9BillionTigers/status/1336081490430443520

many of these countries have ageing, top heavy populations (for various reasons). more pressure is put on the working population to support the elderly (as well as children/young people, students, childrearers, unpaid carers, etc) 2/12

to combat this, human geographers/demographers tend to teach that such a society will make the logical choice of supporting immigration to increase the worker population 3/12

basically. human populations can only change in four ways

births
deaths
migration in
migration out

it is naive and dangerous to assume that right wing demagogues will only look at the last two. 4/12

they can increase birth rate. birth rate is so low in global north countries mainly because of women's education, legal and social rights, and access to contraception. women know that children are expensive, and take steps to have little or no children at all. 5/12

right wingers hate "paying for other people's children" so obvs child benefit is not a popular idea. so they will tamper with other things, like making it harder to access contraception, or limiting access to family planning resources

all examples of forced fertility 6/12

the other is death rate.

I'm speaking from the UK, where its calculated that there are about 100 000 deaths in relation due to benefit cuts.

The UN have investigated and found the country guilty of systemic human rights abuse against disabled people. 7/12

and this was all pre-pandemic - where half of covid deaths are in care homes. the number of which could have been severely reduced if the government were willing to supply PPE earlier, or enact tougher lockdown measures earlier 8/12

governments can and will force fertility on to its population. it can and will kill us in ways they know won't be scrutinised. it is not beyond them. it is already happening now. 9/12

life expectancy in the UK has stopped increasing in the last five years. arent we supposed to be making medical progress and living longer?

progress is NOT inevitable. if we are complacent, everything we have fought for can be rolled back. 10/12

there are plans to raise the state pension age to 75. this is higher than the life expectancy in certain regions in the country. this will force people to work to death. that will kill more people. and kill them faster. 11/12

all this partially because their democratic strategy is based on appeals to racism, white supremacy, and xenophobia. 12/12

(sources to follow)

N.B. there is so much more to mention (specific targeting of queer people in eugenics, Windrush, etc) that I might make this into a proper article at some point. but until then, enjoy a set of haphazard tweets