Tag: children

Gender Dysphoria Diagnoses for Children Soared 70 Percent in 2021

Virginia Star Staff

Childhood gender dysphoria diagnoses soared 70% from 2020 to 2021, according to medical records of 330 million Americans analyzed by Komodo Health Inc, Reuters reported Thursday.

The findings reveal a massive uptick in gender dysphoria diagnoses for children aged 6 to 17, with at least 121,882 children receiving that diagnosis in the five years leading up to 2021, according to Reuters. While most children who are diagnosed with the disorder do not medically transition, the rate of children on puberty blockers more than doubled from 2017 to 2021 to just over 5,000.

The data aligns with other findings outlining the rapid rise in transgender identities among adolescents, but it’s less clear why the trend accelerated so rapidly in 2020. Some have attributed the youth transgender trend to social contagion, citing the popularity of trans videos on TikTok and other social media platforms, while others have pointed to school programming on gender identity issues for young children.

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American Academy of Pediatrics Guidance: Don’t Exclude Children Infested with Lice from School; It May ‘Stigmatize’ Them

Admin

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) now recommends against sending children infested with head lice home from school because doing so may “stigmatize” them, “violate their civil rights,” and/or cause “psychological stress.”

The AAP updated its guidance on head lice this week for the first time since 2015.

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Commentary: The Civil Disobedience of Raising a Family

Virginia Star Staff

In case you haven’t noticed, times have changed, and somehow, those who hold to traditional societal norms have become the new face of counter culturalism. As this is unfamiliar territory to those on the traditional end of the spectrum, a few lessons are needed in how to live up to this new moniker. One of those lessons is how to engage in civil disobedience.

If you’re like me, the phrase “civil disobedience” conjures up images of bra-burning hippies protesting Vietnam and demanding that society “make love, not war.” But in a world where up has become down and good has become evil, civil disobedience no longer means we must take to the streets and chain ourselves to some inanimate object. In reality, the best civil disobedience we, as members of the new countercultural movement, can perform is right in our own homes, raising our families.

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UK Announces Children Under 12 No Longer Will Receive COVID Vaccine

Virginia Star Staff
Young girl with a blue shirt on getting a vaccine

Children under 12-years-old in the United Kingdom will no longer be offered COVID injections, except for those in clinical risk groups, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) confirmed this week. The agency said the offer of COVID shots to healthy 5 to 11-year-olds was always meant to be temporary.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said children who had not turned five by the end of last month would not be offered a vaccination, in line with advice published by the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) in February 2022. UKHSA said the offer of Covid jabs to healthy five to 11-year-olds was always meant to be temporary.

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Commentary: Time to Turn Orwell into Fiction Again

Virginia Star Staff

Of all the creepy things that totalitarian regimes do, perhaps none is more creepy than their habit of encouraging children to inform on their parents to the regime.

Anyone who has read “1984” will remember the pathetic Tom Parsons, who winds up next to Winston Smith in The Ministry of Truth (read: prison) after his young daughter reported that he had muttered “Down with Big Brother” in his sleep.

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DHS Encouraged Children to Report Family to Facebook for Challenging U.S. Government COVID Claims

Virginia Star Staff

In the cartoon below, you will see the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) encourage a young female protagonist to report her “Uncle Steve” to Facebook for posting “disinformation”. 

DHS’s rationale? “Uncle Steve” posted that “Covid-19 is no worse than the flu”:

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Commentary: As Great as a Mom May Be, Kids Still Need Their Dads

Virginia Star Staff

by Christopher Becker   “Smokin’ Joe,” a biography of late heavyweight boxing champion and 3-time Muhammad Ali foil Joe Frazier, was recently reviewed by Gordon Marion in The Wall Street Journal. Among the notable details is the fact that five different women gave birth to Frazier’s eleven kids. This occurrence…

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Teachers Explain How They Push ‘Gender Lessons’ on Young Children

Admin

Teachers across the country revealed the strategies they use to teach young children about gender ideology in a Friday article published by The Washington Post.

Teachers discussed the various ways they are injecting gender-related discussions into their lessons, including comments about using hormones to stop menstrual periods and declining to state that sexual anatomy is gender-specific, according to The Washington Post. One transgender teacher makes a point of telling students about the process of gender transitions, including with personal testimony.

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COVID Restrictions Stunted Kids’ Immune Systems, Could Explain Surge of Other Illnesses: Scientists

Virginia Star Staff

For two years and counting, the scientific and medical establishments have urged Americans at all risk levels to limit their exposure to the microbial world to effectively reduce the spread of COVID-19, rather than focus on protecting the vulnerable.

The unexpected surge of other pathogens starting last summer, however, has challenged the wisdom of frequent sanitizing, social distancing, remote work and education, and routine mask-wearing, especially applied to children.

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CDC Study: Remote Learning Hurt Kids’ Mental Health

The Center Square

When schools pivoted to remote learning amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the first casualty was kids’ mental health.

A new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) analyzed teenagers’ mental health from January 2021 to June 2021. Compared with 2019, the study found that the proportion of mental health–related emergency department visits in 2020 increased by about 31% among kids aged 12–17 years.

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Commentary: The Dystopian Future Where Women—and Men—Just Don’t Want Children

Admin

Most of the baby strollers my family observed on vacation in Savannah, Georgia were not transporting babies. Instead, couples perambulated about the city with . . . dogs. By the end of our vacation, we had counted more than 200 different dogs in strollers across the city. Seeing an actual baby in a stroller proved to be the exception, not the rule. 

The U.S. birthrate has fallen by about 20 percent since 2007, and shows no signs of recovering. Among childless adults, 44 percent of those under 50 say it is not too or not at all likely they will ever have children, up from 37 percent who said the same in 2018. 

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Commentary: The Long, Horrifying History of Groomers

Virginia Star Staff

In the 1980s and 90s, I worked in child advocacy. One of my jobs was to teach children how to protect themselves from abuse. First and foremost I taught children that adults should not be telling children to keep secrets. I taught children if an adult were to tell a child that something the adult does or says must be kept secret from mom or dad, the adult was doing wrong. The first way for a child to protect themselves was to immediately tell mom and dad about adults wanting to keep secrets.

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Disney Silent on Reports It Helps Employees’ Kids Get Sex Changes

Virginia Star Staff

The Walt Disney Company is staying silent following reports it helps the children of its employees with sex change procedures through its benefits program.

A leaked video shared by Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo Thursday purportedly showed a Disney internal meeting in which a man explained Disney’s efforts to help employees “express their gender” at the company. Disney has not publicly addressed its efforts to help employees medically transition their children to the opposite sex following the release of the video, and did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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Disney Helps Employees ‘Transition’ Their Transgender Children and Themselves: Report

Admin

Disney is reportedly assisting employees and their children with sex change and “gender affirmation” procedures through the company’s benefits program.

The company’s “benefits team” is reportedly offering resources and guides to employees transitioning to the opposite gender, as well as information for employees’ children who are transitioning, according to a video shared by Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo.

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Texas Judge Blocks State Investigations of Transgender Kids’ Treatments as Child Abuse

Admin

Texas District Judge Amy Clark Meachum blocked the state’s Department of Family Protective Services (DFPS) on Friday from investigating parents of transgender children for child abuse with regard to providing hormone therapy.

The decision is the most recent in a weeklong civil lawsuit filed by the parents of a transgender child and a psychologist from the Houston area who are challenging Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s order from last month calling for “prompt and thorough investigation” into reported instances of “gender-transitioning procedures” among minors.

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Texas District Attorneys Fighting Governor’s Order to Treat Sex Change Surgeries for Children as Abuse

Admin

District attorneys for five of the largest counties in Texas are defying Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order to treat sex change surgeries for children as child abuse.

Abbott ordered the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (TDFPS) Tuesday to investigate instances of children undergoing sex change procedures, including “reassignment surgeries that can cause sterilization, mastectomies, removals of otherwise healthy body parts, and administration of puberty-blocking drugs or supraphysiologic doses of testosterone or estrogen.”

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Senators Reveal Bipartisan Bill Targeting Big Tech Companies for Harms to Children

Virginia Star Staff

Republican Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn and Democratic Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal unveiled a bipartisan bill Wednesday aimed at curbing online harms to children.

The Kids Online Safety Act is the result of several hearings and a months-long investigation led by Blackburn and Blumenthal into how use of social media platforms affects teens and young children. If enacted, the bill would require social media platforms to provide minors with options to protect their information, disable “addictive” product features and allow them to opt out of recommendation algorithms.

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Activists Are Trying to Normalize Pedophilia and Corporate Media Is Helping Them

Admin

Media outlets have provided a microphone to activists who want to society to accept pedophilia as a sexual identity separate from any criminal activity.

At the same time that activists push for a respectable place in society for pedophiles — who are called minor attracted people — some conservative commentators and concerned parents are voicing fears about the sexualization of children and their exposure to sexual materials, often in relation to gender and sexual identity programs targeting young people.

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Canadian Father Loses Custody of Children Due to Being Unvaccinated

Virginia Star Staff

In New Brunswick, Canada, a father of three lost custody of his children after a single judge ruled that his unvaccinated status was a danger to his children.

According to USA Today, the concerned father presented evidence to the judge that pointed out possible harmful effects of the Pfizer-BioTech vaccine, as proof that his concerns about taking the vaccine were valid. But Justice Nathalie Godbout, of the Court of Queen’s Bench, ruled against him by simply deferring to “public health officials” as being superior to his own research.

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Child Psychiatrist: Toll on Children’s Mental Health During Government Response to Pandemic Is ‘Utterly Devastating’

Admin

Though children are least likely to experience severe illness from COVID-19, the level of mental health distress many are exhibiting during the government’s response to the pandemic is “utterly devastating,” child psychiatrist Dr. Mark McDonald said in a recent interview.

The Los Angeles-based clinician expressed his concern during a late November podcast for the Unity Project, an organization working to end COVID-19 vaccine mandates for healthy children in grades K-12.

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Law Profs: Most States May Recognize ‘Multiparent Families’ in the Near Future

Admin

Two law professors this week argued that the U.S. is on the verge of seeing most states recognize “multiparent families,” a novel familial arrangement that the instructors nevertheless claimed was “hardly new.”

Professors Courtney Joslin and Douglas NeJaime of UC Davis School of Law and Yale Law School, respectively, argued in the Washington Post this week that it “soon could be unremarkable for a child to have three or more legal parents,” with that legal concession “fast becoming reality” throughout the country.

“These new laws have been spurred, in part, by the rising numbers and public profile of LGBTQ families and others with children conceived through assisted reproduction,” they write. “In many of these families, one or more parents are not genetically related to their children, and many states now legally recognize these ‘intended parents.'”

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Former Planned Parenthood President Says School Closures Harm Children

Virginia Star Staff
Dr. Leana Wen

A former Planned Parenthood president and public health professional argued in a Thursday op-ed for The Washington Post that the rise in cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant is not a reason to keep schools closed.

Dr. Leana Wen argued “both sides [of the school reopening debate] are wrong,” in her op-ed. “let’s agree that schools are essential and then work to reduce risk to get students back to in-person learning,” Wen wrote.

Wen called it “astounding” that governors in states like Texas, Georgia and Iowa are fighting against school mask mandates and that Florida’s surgeon general is discouraging testing in schools, attributing ” “low vaccine uptake among children” to “rampant right-wing disinformation.”

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Latest Research Chronicles the Impact of COVID Lockdowns on Children

Admin

A growing body of academic research is chronicling the toll that pandemic lockdowns imposed on children, warning that the mental and social anguish the policies caused outweigh the health protections.

The “overall impact of COVID-19 restrictions on the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents is likely to be severe,” an Oxford University professor warned in a recent analysis.

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Commentary: Poll Reveals Education Quality, Curriculum Stoke Parents’ Concern

RealClearWire

After a year in which parents across the country began exercising more political power at school board meetings and through activist groups, the COVID-fueled parent movement is unlikely to subside any time soon, a new poll released Monday found.

Even as some school districts in Oregon and other locales this year suspended math and reading proficiency graduation requirements, most Americans believe public school academic standards aren’t high enough.

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Commentary: The Data Mining of America’s Kids Should Be a National Scandal

RealClearWire

As U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland sat down for his first hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, denying a conflict of interest in his decision to investigate parents for “domestic terrorism,” there is a mother in the quiet suburb of Annandale, N.J., who found his answers lacking. And she has questions she wants asked at Garland’s hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee this Wednesday.

On a recent Saturday night, Caroline Licwinko, a mother of three, a law school student and the coach to her daughter’s cheerleading squad, sat in front of her laptop and tapped three words into an internet search engine: “Panorama. Survey. Results.”

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Attorney General Garland Grilled by GOP Senators over Department of Justice Memo Targeting Parents at School Meetings

Virginia Star Staff

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday faced a litany of hard-edged Senate questions about agreeing to allow federal law enforcement to investigate alleged incidents of outspoken parents at school board meetings.

Garland, in a memo, agreed to responded to a Sept. 29 letter from the National School Board Association to President Biden asking that the FBI, Justice Department and other federal agencies to investigate potential acts of domestic terrorism at the meetings. Parents across the nation have been voicing their concerns about the curricula being taught to their children, in addition to instances like the one currently playing out in northern Virginia, in which there was an apparent coverup of the sexual assault of a female student in a bathroom.

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Report Finds Members of the French Catholic Church Abused 330,000 Children

Virginia Star Staff
People sitting in church pews at a church

Members of France’s Catholic Church sexually abused 330,000 children over the past 70 years, according to a new report on abuses in the country’s Catholic Church.

The 2,500-page report is France’s first real documentation of the abuse, the Associated Press reported, and is based on research by France’s National Institute of Health and Medical Research.

“The Catholic Church is the place where the prevalence of sexual violence is at its highest, other than in family and friend circles,” the report said, according to CNN.

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Facebook Suspends ‘Instagram Kids’ Following Investigation Into Platform’s Effect on Teens

Virginia Star Staff

Facebook has paused development of a version of its image-sharing platform Instagram specifically geared towards children, the company announced Monday.

The tech giant decided to suspend work on the project in order to “work with parents, experts, policymakers and regulators,” and “demonstrate the value and importance of this project for younger teens online today,” Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, wrote in a statement Monday.

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Vaccinating Kids as Young as Five Would Be a ‘Game Changer,’ Biden’s Education Secretary Says

Virginia Star Staff

President Joe Biden’s Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said the approval of a COVID-19 vaccine for children would be a “game changer” for students in the U.S.’s public school system, U.S. News reported.

Pfizer announced Monday that a smaller dose of its vaccine has generated an immune response in 5 to 11-year-old children during the clinical trial. The company said it plans to submit data for approval in the next few weeks.

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Science on Mask Usage Indicates Scant Benefit

Bradley Vasoli

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have recommended that all schools require mask-wearing indoors by teachers and students, vaccinated or unvaccinated against COVID-19. 

And many school districts are adopting that requirement, to the dismay of many parents.

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Migrants Coming to America Illegally Say They’re Coming to the U.S. for a Variety of Reasons

Virginia Star Staff

MCALLEN, Texas — Some migrants who spoke to the DCNF said they were motivated to come to the U.S. by the Biden administration, while others cited death threats from “narcos” and disaster in their home countries.

“Suddenly, the situations during the previous years weren’t like this one. This year was much more difficult,” a Honduran migrant named Javier told the DCNF after illegally crossing into the U.S. near the Hidalgo Point of Entry early Tuesday morning.

Javier said increasing “crime and a lot of insecurity” including “extortions and death threats from the cartels” motivated him to leave Honduras. He said it took him a little over a month to reach the U.S.

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American Academy of Pediatrics Claims Masks Have No Negative Effects on Children

Cooper Moran

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) on Thursday argued in a series of tweets that masking in schools seemingly has no negative effects on children.

The medical organization dismissed parental concern over the issue as nonexistent, pledging to provide “real talk” about children wearing masks.

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Medical Journal Declares That Parents Should Lose Their Authority to Object to Transgender Surgery for Children

Virginia Star Staff
Mother and child hugging

A major medical journal in the United States is facing widespread criticism after it published an article declaring that parents should lose their “veto power” to object to their children trying to seek gender-altering surgical procedures, Breitbart reports.

The Journal of Medical Ethics published an article titled “LGBT testimony and the limits of trust,” authored by Dr. Maura Priest, a professor of philosophy and bioethics at Arizona State University (ASU). In the article, Priest claims that “it is no longer the job of physicians to do their own weighing of the costs and benefits of transition-related care,” as “only the patient can make this assessment, because only the patient has access to the true weight of transition-related benefits.”

Furthermore, Priest declares that “taking LGBT patient testimony seriously also means that parents should lose veto power over most transition-related pediatric care.” Priest had expanded on this assertion in a pre-publication draft, where she said that “guardian veto power over identity-affirming care [results] in injustice whenever such power means one trans child is denied the care that another receives.”

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Mom Says School Board Threatened to Sue Her for Seeking Public Information on Critical Race Theory in Curriculum

Virginia Star Staff

Nicole Solas was surprised to find her name listed on the meeting agenda of her local school board, especially since it said the board was considering taking legal action against her in response to her many requests for public records.

The Rhode Island mother of two began filing records requests with the South Kingstown School District several months ago, when she learned that teachers were incorporating critical race theory and gender ideology in the curriculum.

But she didn’t expect the school board to talk about suing her.

“I was shocked,” Solas, 37, told The Daily Signal in a recent phone interview. The school board, she said, “did not tell me that [the requests were] a problem.”

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Commentary: As Great as a Mom May Be, Kids Still Need Their Dads

Virginia Star Staff

by Christopher Becker   “Smokin’ Joe,” a biography of late heavyweight boxing champion and 3-time Muhammad Ali foil Joe Frazier, was recently reviewed by Gordon Marion in The Wall Street Journal. Among the notable details is the fact that five different women gave birth to Frazier’s eleven kids. This occurrence…

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Commentary: Vegan Diets and If It Makes Kids Shorter and Weaker

RealClearWire
Vegan dish

Diets that exclude meat and fish (vegetarian) or all animal products including dairy and eggs (vegan) are becoming increasingly popular for health, environmental and ethical reasons.

Past research in adults has linked vegetarian and vegan diets with a reduced risk of heart disease but a greater risk of fractures, caused by low calcium intakes. But the impact on children has not been evaluated, until the release of a new study this week.

The researchers found a link between shorter heights and lower bone mineral content among vegan children, compared to meat-eaters. But they didn’t show vegan diets caused the difference. Nor can they say the differences will last into adulthood.

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$6 Trillion Biden Budget Formally Refers to Mothers as ‘Birthing People’

Virginia Star Staff
Woman making a heart over her pregnant belly

Joe Biden’s proposed budget for the year 2022 was found to contain anti-scientific language that eliminates the concept of gender from the act of childbirth, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

The budget plan, which costs a record-breaking total of $6 trillion, dedicates over $200 million in healthcare spending for the purpose of reducing the “high rate of maternal mortality and race-based disparities in outcomes among birthing people,” despite providing no evidence to back up this assertion. The phrase “birthing people” replaces the more widely-known and correct term, which is “mother.”

The push to replace mother with “birthing people” is part of a broader effort to eliminate so-called “gendered language,” with the Left claiming that gender is merely a “social construct” and that there are more than two genders, even though both claims are false. This was made evident on Mother’s Day a month ago, where several Democrats and far-left organizations – including Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and the pro-abortion group NARAL – included the terminology “birthing people” in their respective Mother’s Day statements.

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Study: American Hospitals May be Overestimating COVID Cases in Children

Virginia Star Staff
coronavirus cases in children

A new study from an elite university reveals that American hospitals may have been severely overcounting the true number of coronavirus cases in children, USA Today reports.

The study, from Stanford University’s School of Medicine, focused on COVID data from the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford over a nine-month period, from May 10th, 2020, to February 10th, 2021. During this time span, 117 patients admitted to the hospital under the age of 18 were either confirmed to have tested positive for COVID, or were suffering from multisystem inflammatory syndrome, or MIS-C.

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Commentary: One Way to Fix Plummeting Birthrates Is to Stop Bashing America

Virginia Star Staff
Mothers hand holding infants hand

The National Center for Health Statistics, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention subagency, reported this week that America’s fertility rate dropped for the sixth consecutive year. Total births declined by 4 percent in 2020, down to 1,637.5 children per 1,000 women. The statistical replacement rate for the U.S. population, by contrast, is roughly 2,100 births per 1,000 women. Overall, the 3,605,201 births last year in the United States represented the lowest number since Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

It is perhaps too early to tell whether yet another annual incremental birthrate decline is anomalous, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, or flows naturally from existing demographic trendlines. Sociologists and demographers will pore over the data, but it is difficult to ignore the broader trend and place the blame squarely—or even predominantly—on the virus and the myriad draconian lifestyle restrictions the virus engendered.

On the contrary, many had speculated before this week’s report that the extended COVID lockdowns might lead to a one-time annual increase in the birthrate as couples sheltered in place together for months on end.

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Carol Swain Tells Fox and Friends Weekend: Politics Underlies Everything We Are Doing With COVID-19

Julie Carr

Dr. Carol M. Swain appeared on Fox News Channel’s Fox and Friends Weekend Edition with hosts, Jedediah Bila and Pete Hegseth Sunday to discuss how the coronavirus has been politicized and schools have become indoctrination camps of an anti-American agenda.

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