If America lost one-third of an entire generation to war, disease, suicide, or gun violence, it would be treated as the greatest tragedy in our nation’s history. But according to a new report, abortion has claimed the lives of that many would-be Gen Zers – and hardly anyone in the political or media establishment has taken note.

As the National Catholic Register reported earlier this month, data from the Guttmacher Institute, the CDC, the United Nations, and the World Health Organization show that some 850–900 million babies were aborted globally between 1997 and 2012, the years generally accepted as the range for Gen-Z.

In the United States alone, more than 63 million children have been aborted since Roe v. Wade legalized the procedure in 1973. That includes 24.5 million millennials and 26 million members of Gen Z, nearly a third of both generations. Pro-life commentator Catherine Hadro calls these missing brothers, sisters, classmates, spouses, and friends the “unseen wound” of abortion: a generational trauma that has left holes in families, communities, and the nation’s future.

This staggering loss has also accelerated America’s rush toward demographic collapse. The U.S. fertility rate remains well below the 2.1 births per woman needed to sustain a population, meaning overall population growth now depends entirely on immigration. In 2023, the fertility rate among native-born women in the United States was about 1.73 births per woman.

Notably, black Americans have been disproportionately affected by the abortion epidemic. In 2019, black babies accounted for 38 percent of abortions despite black women making up only about seven percent of the U.S. population, according to the CDC.

Proponents of abortion will often point to cases of rape, incest, and life-threatening pregnancies to justify the practice. But less than 0.5 percent of abortions stem from incest, less than 1.5 percent are the result of rape, and only about 2.8 percent of abortions are performed for maternal health concerns, according to Encounter Today.

This means that about 95 percent of abortions – 24.7 million Gen-Z babies – were killed by elective abortions.

That reality reflects a much deeper cultural problem that the pro-life movement must confront if it is to prevent one-third of the next generation – or more – from being lost to abortion. While the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision may have been the conclusion of the legal battle against Roe v. Wade, it was only the start of a far more difficult societal battle to rebuild a culture of life.

Following Dobbs, blue states retaliated by liberalizing their abortion laws even further, with most now allowing unlimited late-term abortion at any stage of pregnancy for any reason. Even in many red states, pro-abortion ballot initiatives have passed, leaving ostensibly conservative states with more permissive abortion laws than they had pre-Dobbs.

The harrowing truth is that mainstream culture in the United States and most of the Western world views fertility and motherhood as a liability to be managed rather than a blessing to be embraced. As many anti-abortion crusaders have recognized, the pro-life movement, in addition to waging legal battles to protect the rights of the unborn, must also create an atmosphere of compassion, kindness, and generosity toward expectant mothers to empower them to choose life.

The rising prevalence of absent fathers compounds this ongoing struggle. In 1960, 11 percent of kids were living in homes without fathers. By 2020, that figure had more than doubled to 25 percent. Once again, this crisis is particularly damaging for the black community. In 2023, an astonishing 55.4 percent of black kids were living in a single-parent household.

For decades, government programs have reinforced these pressures by incentivizing fatherlessness. The design of welfare benefits often reduced assistance if a father remained in the home, creating perverse incentives that encouraged single-parent households. The unintended result was an epidemic of absent fathers, leaving mothers alone to shoulder both the economic and emotional burden of raising children.

Polling also shows that Gen Z, immersed in pro-abortion messaging from Hollywood and the education system, is more likely to support abortion than older generations. Many in the pro-life community attribute their activism to their faith. As religiosity has declined in the United States, so too has the belief that unborn babies are entitled to the same protections as babies who have already been born.

However, there are some positive developments that preserve hope for a future where more Americans value life and motherhood. Advances in ultrasound technology have made the humanity of the unborn harder to ignore, challenging the “clump of cells” narrative.

Moreover, activists say that when younger Americans become pro-life, they bring their characteristic energy and activism to the cause. For millennials and Gen Zers, abortion is not an abstract political issue. Many have learned that would-be siblings or cousins were aborted, or that they themselves narrowly escaped it.

The loss of a third of a generation is a catastrophe of almost unimaginable scale. America can secure its future only by rebuilding a culture of life – one where mothers are supported, fathers step up, and every child is given a chance to be born.