A June 6 CNSNews.com “news” article by Jonathan Mizrahi — apparently an intern, since he only started writing for CNS a couple weeks ago — carries the ominous headline “Ireland Is Running Out of People.” Mizrahi then immediately discredits the headline with the numbers:
Only one week after Ireland voted to legalize abortion, a report from the Central Statistics Office stated that not enough babies were being born to replace the population.
In 2017, there were 62,053 births and 30,484 deaths in Ireland. The birth rate decreased 0.6 from 2016 while the death rate increased 0.3 percent from 2016.
If twice as many people are being born than dying, doesn’t that show that Ireland is, in fact, not running out of people and that the population is, in fact, being replaced?
Mizrahi does eventually get around to explaining that the birth rate in Ireland is somewhat below the replacement rate. But given that, again, more people are being born than dying, Ireland won’t be “running out” of people anytime soon.
Mizrahi also admits that the birth rate in Ireland has been declining since 2007, thus proving it has nothing whatsoever to do with the recent vote to legalize abortion.
Finally, Mizrahi ignores that one way to keep Ireland from “running out” of people is to permit increased immigration into the country. Even though Ireland could easily accommodate twice its current population, it has a generally negative attitude toward immigrants.