By Ray Cardello for August 19, 2025, Season 32 / Post 24

For a country to survive, it must have a growing population. This growth can be achieved naturally through procreation, which helps maintain the country’s culture, or through mass immigration, which will dynamically change the culture in short order. We lose about 3 million Americans per year to death, and those who leave the country, and with our decreasing birth rate, we are losing our population. The last year we saw a positive population growth was 2000. In addition to a declining population, we have an aging population. When you have more older people than younger in the mix, the systems are strained. We have fewer people working, which means more people drawing on Social Security and Medicare than are paying into the funds. We saw what happened under Joe Biden with uncontrolled entry into our country, and we know that does not work for a plethora of reasons. We need to address the procreation and look at the unnecessary deaths that occur in America.

I addressed the birth rate in a previous article. Until we get a grip on the cost of living for the younger generation, we will not see an uptick in marriage and family building. So, we need to look at deaths. The average life expectancy has been decreasing over the last couple of decades. We are an out-of-shape and unhealthy country due to a more sedentary lifestyle and our diets. We are consuming more food than necessary, with too much of it being processed, chemical-filled, and unhealthy alternatives to more natural foods. We are killing ourselves with every meal and snack. Fortunately, we have RFKJ on the job to start cleaning up our food supply. We have two other causes of death that people do not like to think about, but are very real: drug-related deaths and abortion.

After increasing dramatically for two decades, drug overdose deaths in the U.S. saw a decline of nearly 27% from approximately 110,000 in 2023 to 80,400 in 2024, the first annual decrease since 2018. The majority of those deaths are from Fentanyl poisoning, which reached an all-time high under Biden. With the border now more secure under Trump, those deaths should continue to fall. That leaves our last topic, abortion.

There are two elements to the abortion count: physical abortions and the abortion pill. Physical abortions have been declining since 2013, but there were still over 600,000 abortions performed in 2023. The number that flies under the radar is the number of abortions by pill, which will reach 600,000 in 2025. These numbers must come down, and that will happen only when we can show pregnant women that there are alternatives, be it birth control or adoption. The abortion pill has become far too convenient and is actually being used as a form of birth control, but not for the unborn fetus. We are seeing some positive trends with the availability of the pill. This week, COSTCO Wholesale Corp. will not dispense the abortion medication mifepristone at its pharmacies. This decision was driven by the company’s desire to protect its image as a family-oriented entity. COSTCO has opted to concentrate on selling items to enhance life and not death. It is yet to be seen if Walgreens and CVS will follow suit.

The bottom line is we are losing over 1.3 million Americans to drug and abortion related deaths, and this trend must be stopped. Kudos to the government for sealing our border and COSTCO for making a decision that may be detrimental to their profits, but great for their image and America’s future.