Hungary just took another action to support mothers and save unborn babies from abortion.
The Irish news outlet Gript reports the European country enacted a new family-friendly tax policy this January that exempts mothers under 30 and mothers with at least four children from paying income taxes for the rest of their lives.
Balázs Orbán, political director for Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, promoted the new policies on Twitter last week, saying they hope to encourage more young people to have children.
“Hungary extends its family-friendly policies,” he wrote. “From January, women who become mothers before turning 30 will be exempt from paying personal income tax!”
The tax exemptions are part of the prime minister’s pro-life, pro-family policies. In 1956, under socialist power, Hungary legalized the killing of unborn babies in abortions for any reason in the first trimester. Since then, more than 6 million unborn babies have been aborted. Recently, however, Hungarians have elected more conservative leaders, including Orban and its first female president, Katalin Novak, who support unborn babies’ right to life and other family values.
In September, the government approved an order requiring abortion providers to allow mothers to listen to their unborn baby’s heartbeat before she makes a final decision about her child’s life. Lawmakers also have been creating new benefits for families, including the tax exemptions and support services.
Hungary also is a leading backer of the Geneva Consensus Declaration, a global effort to encourage countries to protect mothers and babies, born and unborn.
In November, Szabolcs Takács, the Ambassador of Hungary to the United States, said its government is committed to “protecting traditional family values,” citing the country’s Constitution, which holds that “every human being should have the right to life…and fetal life shall be subject to protection from the moment of conception.”
Hungarian leaders also want to reverse the declining birth rates that are plaguing many European, Asian and North American countries. Earlier this year, a report from the U.S. Congressional Budget Office predicted that deaths will exceed births in America by 2043 as fertility rates decline and unborn babies continue to be killed in abortions.
Hungary is suffering from a similar problem.
“There are fewer and fewer children born in Europe,” Orbán said in 2019, according to Gript. “For the West, the answer is immigration. For every missing child there should be one coming in and then the numbers will be fine. But we do not need numbers. We need Hungarian children.”
Orbán continued, “If we resign ourselves to the fact that we are unable to sustain ourselves even biologically, by doing so we admit that we are not important even for ourselves.”
Declining birth rates already are leading to economic crises, and a number of countries have launched new efforts to encourage families to have more children. Only a few have moved to restrict or ban abortions, however.
Global economic experts have been warning of the impending population crisis. In July, a study in The Lancet, a prestigious journal, predicted a “jaw-dropping” fertility crash within the next 80 years – one that will have devastating consequences on the whole of society.
Earlier this week, LifeNews reported an estimated 44 million unborn babies were aborted across the world in 2022, making abortion by far the leading cause of death.
By Micaiah Bilger