Pope visits the country with highest abortion rate in the world. And it’s not the US.

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D. | September 21, 2015

At evening prayer in Cuba last night Pope Francis lamented that “too often, when a disability is detected in an unborn child, the child is ‘sent back,’ and not given the chance to be born,” ZENIT reported.

The fact is Cuba “sends back” babies at a higher rate than any other nation in the world.

Cuba’s abortion rate is 28.9 per 1000 women aged 15-44. Far from lamenting this, the government has enthusiastically supported its pervasive abortion culture during its review at the CEDAW committee. The extremely high rate is only similar to former communist countries in Europe.

Even China, with its infamous one child policy including forced abortions, is reported to be significantly lower at 19.2 abortions per 1000 women of childbearing age. The United States reports a rate of 19.6.

Contrary to what Melinda Gates and UNFPA would have us believe, the high “safe abortion” rate (done in government-run facilities) is linked to high contraception use and high maternal mortality.

Three quarters of Cubans use birth control, and virtually all of it artificial or “modern” according to the UN. Yet Cuba’s maternal mortality ratio is poor at 73 deaths per 100,000 live births, despite Havana’s claims of superior government-run health care. China’s rate is 37, the U.S. reports 21.

Cuba’s fertility rate, at 1.5 children per woman, is the lowest in all of the Caribbean (with an average of 2.2).

Nor can all this be blamed on poverty.

While the Obama administration has attributed much of Cuba’s ills to the economy, the country’s spiritual poverty — what the Pope calls the “throw away” culture — mirrors that of more developed, secular world. And this is reflected in its population statistics.

No nation has been able to rebound from such a low fertility rate to regain replacement fertility rate and demographic health. And even in the world’s richest countries demographic demise is restraining economic growth, not ushering it in.

So many remedies have failed in Europe that experts are now suggesting the refugee crisis might be the thing that finally turns things around and helps repopulate abandoned cities. For Cubans, now able to gain entry to the U.S., the flow of migrants might well drain the nation further.

Thus the Pope’s call to end the “throw away culture” couldn’t come soon enough. We can only hope that the government, and not just the religious gathered at last night’s Vespers, will take his words to heart.

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