Financial worries main reason for not having ideal number of children: UN survey
The United Nations Population Fund surveyed about 14,000 people in 14 countries from 2023 to 2024 and released the results on Tuesday. The countries include those with low fertility rates such as South Korea and Italy, and others with high rates.
Asked what the ideal number of children is, "two" was the most common reply in all the countries.
People with fewer children than they consider ideal were asked what factors led to this situation.
Fifty-four percent said financial worries, such as job instability or housing conditions.
Twenty-four percent said health reasons such as difficulty conceiving, and 19 percent said fears about the future, such as climate change and wars.
UNFPA Executive Director Natalia Kanem cited lack of choice as the main issue. She said, "That is the real fertility crisis, and the answer lies in responding to what people say they need: paid family leave, affordable fertility care and supportive partners."
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Abortions are only available in around half of Sicily's hospitals, health ministry data shows, a figure much lower than in central and northern Italy, where rates are around 70%. Like most of his colleagues, Fabio Guardala, a 60-year-old doctor, refuses to perform abortions. He operates at the Cannizzaro hospital in the Sicilian city of Catania, on the east coast of the island. "A doctor's job is to heal," said Guardala, who is also deputy head of a healthcare unit at his local Catholic church. "Abortion is not treatment but killing. Nobody can force a doctor to kill." Silvia Vaccari, president of the Italian federation of midwives, FNOPO, said health outcomes can be grim in areas where legal abortions are hard to access. "The absence of facilities sometimes leads people to turn to non-professionals, putting them at risk of death, or to continue with pregnancies and give birth to babies who are abandoned in places where they may never be found alive," she said. Catholic influence Most other European Union countries allow health workers to refuse to perform abortions on ethical grounds, according to a 2022 study published in the Acta Biomedica journal. But the right is generally exercised far less commonly than in southern Italy. One exception is deeply Catholic Poland, where abortion is only legal in cases of rape or incest or when a woman's health or life is at risk. The Acta study said many Polish women have been forced to travel abroad to terminate their pregnancies. Abortion has always been contentious in Italy, a Catholic country that hosts the Vatican. Right-leaning Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni passed legislation last year to try to deter women from terminating pregnancies. People demonstrate about abortion rights in Rome on Sept. 28, 2024. | REUTERS Anti-abortion groups have been allowed into abortion advice clinics, in a move Meloni's party said was aimed at giving women an opportunity for reflection before making a final decision. Nationally, the number of abortions dropped to 65,000 in 2022, according to the latest health ministry data, against 110,000 in 2011. More than 60% of gynecologists are conscientious objectors. On the island of Sardinia, the region's ruling, left-leaning 5-Star Movement last month presented a law proposal similar to the one adopted in Sicily, suggesting that other southern regions may soon follow its example. Dario Safina, a center-left Democratic Party lawmaker in Sicily and the promoter of the new law, said many Sicilian women seeking an abortion feel forced to resort to the private sector. "Access to abortion is not a problem for those who can afford it, because they can go to a private clinic. But health care based on wealth is the end of democracy," he said. Some doctors argue Sicily's high objection rates are not only due to ethics, but also to staff shortages and poor working conditions that make it harder for gynecologists to provide abortions on top of their regular duties. Data from the GIMBE Foundation, a health sector think tank, shows Sicily had nine health care workers per 1,000 residents in 2022, compared with a national average of 11.6 and far below the northern and central Emilia Romagna and Tuscany regions with 15. "Hospitals always try to exploit doctors' work without paying them properly, so sometimes professionals are reluctant to perform abortions," said Salvatore Incandela, head of the Sicilian arm of AOGOI, Italy's gynecologists' association. Italian anti-abortion group Pro-Life Together rejects this, saying non-objectors in Sicily were only required to perform 1.5 abortions a week, on average, in 2022 — still above a national average of 0.9. Legal challenges? Six Sicilian hospital managers and health professionals said the new legislation could strengthen the service, but it was still important to ensure doctors could opt out as allowed under 1978 national law that sanctioned the right to abortion. The entrance to the Day Surgery department of San Marco Hospital, in Catania, Italy, on June 25. Some doctors argue Sicily's high objection rates are not only due to ethics, but also to staff shortages and poor working conditions that make it harder for gynecologists to provide abortions on top of their regular duties. | San Marco Hospital / via REUTERS Under the law, health workers are exempted from abortion procedures if they declare an ethical or religious objection, so long as the woman's life is not in immediate danger. Gaetano Sirna, the director general of Catania's Policlinico-San Marco hospital, one of the city's largest, said even with just six non-objecting gynecologists out of a total of 39, he could still ensure abortions for those who needed them. "We have no problems guaranteeing the availability (of doctors) ... gynecologists are free to declare themselves as objectors; we do not discriminate," he said. Abortion is not the only case in which conscientious objection is permitted in Italy. It used to be grounds for avoiding compulsory military service, which was abolished in the early 2000s, and an opt-out for scientists from conducting animal experiments was introduced in the early 1990s. Giorgia Landolfo, a abortion-rights activist in Catania, called the new law in Sicily a "landmark," but said she feared it would be hard to enforce. Some anti-abortion groups say it will be challenged in court on the ground that job postings reserved for non-objectors discriminate against the others. "Many measures in the past aimed at hiring non-objectors have been challenged and ultimately came to nothing," said Vito Trojano, the head of SIGO, the Italian Obstetrics and Gynecology Society. Some Sicilian politicians who strongly oppose the new rules believe the region should instead bolster its health care and support facilities for pregnant women, who often feel abandoned and see no alternative to abortion. "Life is life from the moment of conception," said Margherita La Rocca, a Sicilian lawmaker from the center-right Forza Italia party. "The fetus cannot just be considered a clump of cells when it's convenient."
