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- Mike Pence praised Hungary's authoritarian leader for overseeing a declining abortion rate.
- Pence lamented the "erosion of the nuclear family" at the Budapest Demographic Summit.
- He also said he hopes the US Supreme Court will restrict the longstanding right to an abortion.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Former Vice President Mike Pence praised Hungary's authoritarian leader, Viktor Orbán, for overseeing a declining abortion rate while speaking at a conference on demographics in Budapest on Wednesday, the Associated Press first reported.
Pence made his remarks at the Budapest Demographic Summit, a conservative forum for discussions on "family values," where he called the "erosion of the nuclear family" and "widespread abortion" an existential crisis.
"We see a crisis that brings us here today, a crisis that strikes at the very heart of civilization itself," said Pence, an evangelical Christian who's supported severe restrictions on abortion rights. "The erosion of the nuclear family marked by declining marriage rates, rising divorce, widespread abortion and plummeting birth rates."
During Orbán's 11 years in power, his government has implemented a slew of restrictions on abortion, including prohibiting medical abortions, while also boosting government subsidies for parents and other incentives for child-rearing. Hungary's minister for family affairs, Katalin Novák, told far-right outlet Breitbart News in 2019 that "pro-abortion is pro-killing." The country's rate of abortion has dropped significantly in recent years. At the same time, significant numbers of Hungarian women are also reportedly traveling to neighboring Austria to receive abortions.
Orbán said his ruling Fidesz party was engineering Hungary's demographics by limiting immigration and heavily subsidizing childrearing. He told Pence he hopes the Republican politician makes a political "comeback" "as soon as possible," the AP reported.
Influential American conservatives, including Fox News host Tucker Carlson and some Republican lawmakers, have held up Orbán's regime as a model of right-wing government, despite the country's increasing restrictions on the free press, crackdowns on LGBTQ rights, and other democratic backsliding.
Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, recently endorsed Orbán's leadership and praised Hungarian parliamentarians he's met with as "family-oriented" in an interview with Insider. In August, Carlson filmed his nightly primetime program in Hungary for a week and sat down for a friendly interview with Orbán.
Pence also said he hopes the US Supreme Court will restrict the longstanding right to an abortion. This comes after the high court allowed an extreme prohibition on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy to become law in Texas, despite the fact that it violates the right to abortion under the Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. Anti-abortion activists hope the Supreme Court's new conservative super-majority will overturn Roe.
"We may well have a fresh start in the cause of life in America," Pence said. "It is our hope and our prayer that in the coming days, a new conservative majority on the Supreme Court of the United States will take action to restore the sanctity of life at the center of American law."