Thank you for prompting me to write again! I did't know myself I had this much on heart.

So, yes, preventing unwanted pregnancies is the key, and it's working; Norway has considerably lower abortion rate than the US (in 2020 14.4/1000 for US, 9/1000 for Norway), and I believe that the main reason for that is excellent reproductive health education. Youth under the age of 22 also gets free or strongly subsidized prevention, but I still think that the education is the key: The children are thought age appropriate from an early age, and I have never heard of any protests from parents or religious groups, ever. Reproductive health education is the a part of general health education, and we'd like our children to be healthy, right? So, people know form young age that abortion is the last and highly undesirable resort, and they have both the knowledge about, and access to prevention, and that put together holds the abortion rates low. Another nice surprise i stumbled upon while researching for this answer is that 80% of abortions are done before week 9, and 90% are performed medicinally so there are very few who goes through the trauma of a late abortion.

During their lifetimes Norwegian women have marginally less children then American. The numbers have been fluctuating recently because of the times we live in, but Norwegian woman have in this century been on average having .1 less child per women then the American. But free access to prevention and abortion means so much more! It means that the wast number of children born in this country are wanted and planned for. That also means the parents are prepared, and more likely to hold together. Per today, around 3/4 (76%) of the Norwegian children live with both mother and father. But also, if parents split, co-parenting is on the steep rise: today 43% of children with divorced parents are raised by both parents, increasing from 25% just ten years ago. The division of the time is most often 50/50, children live one week with one parent, and then swap. This division also means that, accept in rare cases, no one pays alimony to anyone, making co-parenting, oh, so much easier! Also, fathers don't stay in dead marriages in fear of losing the children, and being instead burdened with alimonies, making the divorces easier and less bitter.

So, if we put these numbers together, 85% of the Norwegian children are raised by both of their parents. Not necessarily mothers and fathers, gay marriage is so established that they are just the part of the statistics.

Now, this may be far off, but it is my personal opinion: I firmly believe that the main reason for this incredibly good statistics, with all its good long-term consequences, is that these children are planned for, which takes us back to the beginning: Reproductive education, access to prevention, and access to abortion.

Now take all those children raised in stabile environments, and give them free health care, access to good schools, free university education, and you get Norway.

I was not born Norwegian, I came to Norway as a young adult, so I can still look at her with an outsider's perspective. Norway has its disadvantages too, but this aspects of Norway, her utter respect for human life shown through giving people agency to bring children into the world on own premises, it has never seized to awe me.

Ah, writing all this has made it easier to accept that it's April 7th and it's again frigging snowing. Hope the spring will find up here soon...