This is an important issue for all nations concerned about aging and the provision of incomes for the elderly. It also has serious implications for defense and security. Unless these trends are reversed there will be global problems for the support of billions of elderly people without any means of earning income.

Babbette Francis is a well-known pronatalist who baulks at the idea of anyone getting their rocks off and dodging the preganacy and birth bullet. Her faux concern for population aging is just a smokescreen for her real agenda; making pregnancy and childbirth compulsory.

Parents do not choose to have children to render a future taxpayer to the nation so that old faux altruism chestnut ends right there.Parenthood is a private good because the benefits of parenthood are privately consumed by parents alone.

Yes children are future taxpayers thus it is the children who are social goods, not their parents. As such, assistance for children ought to be socialised such as better schools and health care for children, improved ante-natal and post natal care (including support for miscarriage and PND) and even mothercraft and fathercraft classes. I have no issue with my taxes spent on this because that is a bonafide investment in children and their future.

The childless/childfree do not owe the baby-makers a debt of gratitude. That there are parents who may begrudge the impact children have on their consumption of adult goods is not the responsibility of the the childfree or childless and they should not have to be fiscally penalised. Conscripting the childfree/childless to cross-subsidise parents is not social justice, it is the overt social engineering that Francis seeks so that the government is regulating what does on in the bedrooms of consenting adults.

The Black Cat - You completely miss represent what Babette is saying a number of times in your comment
It is ridiculous to suggest her real agenda is "making pregnancy and childbirth compulsory.
And just as ridiculous to state that "the benefits of parenthood are privately consumed by parents alone." Parents are the fundamental building block of society and without children there is NO FUTURE society.
When you or your "childfree or childless" friends, as you call them, get old, I have no doubt that you will be very thankful for someone else's children, who were given the chance to be born and properly raised, to look after you.

'In my opinion, abortion should be a major federal issue, not only from the perspective of the human rights of babies in the womb, but from the impact a below-replacement level birth rate has on the economy of a nation '

you are right Babette but remember secularism has no moral conscience. The rights of the 'woman ' is more important than the life of the unborn. The evils of driving a car or turning on a heater is further up the scale as far as voting issues for most. By banging on about the 'greatest moral dilema of the century ' the secularist feel very self righteous and so the life of a baby means little unfortunately.

The Black Cat,

"Her faux concern for population aging is just a smokescreen for her real agenda.."

Yes, that seems entirely plausible, there are far too many vested interests in the population debate.

http://www.openforum.com.au/content/immigration-inappropriate-response-ageing-australia’s-population

The jury's still out on which is the greater problem, a high population growth rate, or an ageing population, the "cure" might be worse than the disease.

Increasing the birth rate is merely kicking the can of aging population a bit further down the road.

Every bit further it goes, the harder it is to fix when the crunch finally comes.