When we think about the causes of the now consolidated decline in the birth rate in Italy, what usually comes to mind are the lack of aid for families with children, the difficulties with which paternity leave is recognised, a school calendar stuck when we were a peasant population and recently called into question only for tourism reasons, the lack of places in nursery schools, the often insurmountable complications in the working careers of women who decide to have a child, in a context in which, between salaries which have remained stagnant for decades and a cost of living which instead increases from year to year year, the “traditional” family model – a working father, a mother who is an angel of the hearth – simply no longer holds up, not only culturally but economically.

As a parent of two young girls I personally know these problems, and as a journalist I have written about them on several occasions, wondering how it is possible that, in a country where the dream of each of us is to arrive healthy and enjoy retirement, there is so little attention, if not annoyance and contempt, towards those who, despite everything, decide to give birth to and support children who one day will have to pay for a large part of those pensions.

The dilemma, however, was resolved a couple of days ago when, contrary to the recurring accusation of showing users only content that strengthens their beliefs even if objectively wrong, the Facebook algorithm placed on my timeline this post by Simone Pillon, former senator of the League in the last legislature, not re-elected (we were about to say “screwed”) in 2022, in the smell of a transition towards Vannacci’s National Future, a well-known fervent Catholic organizer of the Family Days of 2007, 2015 and 2016.

Year 2024: newborns in Nigeria alone were 7.6 million.

In the same year, in the whole of Europe, including Russia, there were 6.3 million children born and 1.8 million abortions.

Without abortions the total births in Europe would have been 8.1 million.

There is a war underway, a real war, being fought against life, family and birth rate.

The first way out of the demographic winter is to stop voluntary abortion.

Anyone who doesn’t understand or doesn’t do anything is complicit.

Simone Pillon

The person who even worried the UN, as well as the National Order of Psychologists and various associations, when he proposed a DDL, later archived (we were about to say “aborted”), which provided for, among other measures for cases of separation of couples with minor children, also the abolition of maintenance allowance (so if you agreed to be a housewife and dumped your man you have to find a job immediately and maybe think about it before coming up with certain ideas), has the sensitivity to include Russia (an Orthodox country which has between 0.1 and 0.6% of Catholics) in Europe which is “losing a war” against Nigeria (where about half the population is Christian and where there is the largest Catholic community in Africa, but evidently it is not so much a question of religion). “We” 6.3 million, “them” 7.6, says the score that sees us succumbing, but which we could overturn if only we listened to Pillon and, from Lisbon to Vladivostok, made voluntary termination of pregnancy illegal.

A brilliant solution, in its simplicity: we ban abortions and births increase by almost a couple of million. Of which around 63,000 in Italy, according to the latest official data referring to 2021. Indeed, Pillon is so convinced of having found the solution to the problem of the so-called “demographic winter” that in the following post he does not abandon and doubles down, writing that the collapse in the Italian birth rate occurred due to the laws that allowed abortion and divorce in the 1970s.

“To get back on track it is necessary to give stability to couples and stop the massacre of unborn children” states the former senator, who invites Minister Roccella (whom he obviously calls minister) to have courage.

Courage that is certainly not lacking in former senator Pillon, who, despite losing his seat at Palazzo Madama, certainly does not hold back when it comes to finding simple solutions to Italy’s complex problems. We allow ourselves just one question: but do we count the children of immigrants, in particular those coming from non-Christian countries or even Christian ones but with a different skin tone from that of Pillon, on our side or on the other side?