History tells us that all freedom is conditional. In 1920, the Soviet Union became the first country in the world to legalize abortion, as part of a socialist commitment to the health and welfare of women. Sixteen years later, that decision was reversed when Stalin was in power and realized that the birth rate had dropped.

The pressure on all countries to maintain their population levels has never gone away. But by 2025, that demographic crunch will be even more of a crunch—and the casualty will be gender rights. Of the two United States and the United Kingdomthe birth rate of children has been declining for 15 years. In Japan, Poland, and Canada, the fertility rate has dropped to 1.3. In China and Italy, it is 1.2. South Korea has the lowest in the world, at 0.72. Research published in The Lancet medical journal predicts that by 2100, approx every country on the planet cannot produce enough children to sustain its population size.

A good deal of this is because women have more access to contraception, are more educated than ever before, and are pursuing careers that mean they are more likely to avoid or delay childbearing. Parents invest heavily in every child they have. The patriarchal expectation that women should be little more than babymakers has thankfully crumbled.

But the original problem remains: How do countries produce more children? Governments responded with requests and incentives to encourage families to have children. Hungary has abolished the income tax for mothers under the age of 30. In 2023, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un is seen crying on television as she urged the National Conference of Mothers to do their part to stop the decline in birth rates. In Italy, Premier Giorgia Meloni supported a campaign to reach the minimum half a million births a year in 2033.

As these measures failed to have their intended effect, however, the pressure on women was worse. Conservative pro-natalist movements promotes the old nuclear families with many children, which can only be achieved if women give birth early. This ideology at least one segment heralds the devastating clampdown on abortion access in some US states. Anyone who thinks that abortion rights are unrelated to population concerns should note that in the summer of 2024, Republicans in the US Senate also voted against creating contraception is a federal right. This same worldview feeds the growing backlash against sexual and gender minorities, whose existence for some threatens the traditional family. The most extreme pro-natalist also includes white supremacists and eugenicists.

The more concerned countries become about birth rates, the greater the risk to gender rights. In China, for example, the government took over a sharp anti-feminist stance in recent years. President Xi Jinping told a meeting of the All-China Women’s Federation in 2023 that women should “actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and childbirth.”

Currently, most women are at least able to exercise some choice about whether and when they have children, and how many they have. But as fertility rates drop below replacement levels, there’s no telling how far some countries can go to raise population levels. 2025 looks to be a year where their choice can be taken.