BULGARIA/NETHERLANDS: Lucia Liljegren responds to Stanley Kurtz

...I also showed the non-marital birthrates in numerous European countries rose as quickly and even more quickly than those in the Netherlands. This indicates the rate of change in the Netherlands does not stand out from changes in Europe as a whole.

In a response, Dr. Stanley Kurtz fixated on my discussion of Bulgaria. Previously, he claimed Bulgaria doesn't count because Bulgarians have the lowest access to birth control in the Europe. I showed they have the highest rate of birth control use in the world. Kurtz now claims the fact Bulgarians use birth control at the highest rate in the world is irrelevant. Why? Because, poor teen Gypsy girls (those of the Roma minority) do not have access to contraception. Their behavior has caused a nationwide explosion in the Bulgarian nonmarital birth rate. In contrast, he says, the rise in the Netherlands is due to women choosing cohabitation over marriage (as a result of legalized same sex marriage.)

Can't you just hear Cher singing "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves" in the background?

I do not wish to give the impression that my argument hinges on Bulgaria; it does not. Even without considering Bulgaria, there are plenty of European countries whose non-marital birth rate rose as rapidly, or much more rapidly, than in the Netherlands. The rise in all those countries can be explained by factors other than legalized same-sex marriage....

Nonetheless, regarding Bulgaria: Jaklina Tzvetkova Anguelova, a scholar cited by Kurtz, after examining the data and reviewing the literature, attributes the growing Bulgarian non-marital birthrate to "consensus marriage", i.e. cohabitation--not to gypsy girls. In a 2004 study, The South Eastern European Legal Initiative (SEELINE) also attributes the rise in non-marital births to rising Bulgarian cohabitation. How much cohabitation do we find in Bulgaria relative to the Netherlands? Batalova and Cohen reported that a larger number of adults cohabit in Bulgaria than in the Netherlands. Of adults surveyed in 1994, 18.1% of Bulgarians reported they had cohabited; in contrast, 15.1% of Dutch respondents reported they had cohabited. Yet, despite the greater prevalence of cohabitation in Bulgaria, Dr. Kurtz attributes the rising Dutch non marital birth rates to cohabitation, yet insists it has a negligible effect in Bulgaria! ...

In any case, members of the Roma minority account for 2.6% of the Bulgarian population. Can anyone really believe the nationwide explosion in the nonmarital birth rate is dominated by their behavior?

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posted by Eve at 12:03 AM VOTE

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