#pro-natalism

[marta-bee]

News of the Day 5/24/25: Family Values

Fringe theories, a friend's death and massive explosives: Portrait emerges of Palm Springs bombing suspect

Authorities are investigating what appear to be radical views that Guy Edward Bartkus expressed online in the months before Saturday’s attac

Paywall-free.

Last week, when I heard an IVF clinic had been bombed out in California, I had flashbacks to the anti-abortion violence in the 1990s. I was so sure it was going to be a pro-life thing. Turns out it was exactly the opposite: the suspected bomber was an anti-natalist and was upset, not about the embryos created and ultimately destroyed, but with the prospect of any of them being born at all.

AG Bondi's response was unsettling, but telling. Shortly after the attack, she tweeted how "the Trump administration understands that women and mothers are the heartbeat of America. Violence against a fertility clinic is unforgivable." Speaking as one of those crazy cat-ladies, it does get under my skin when I hear how women should be having more babies, that we're extra-special or heroic or that's what gives us worth. And I've been hearing that a lot these days.

To be clear, there's a lot of talk about babies, but little being done to make them affordable. One-time checks are very helpful to parents, I'm sure, but $5,000 is less than half the cost of giving birth here if you don't have insurance. It would also cover about 4-5 months of infant daycare. After that you're on your own.

(SNAP benefits would help. Affordable housing and childcare. Medicaid that didn't impose work requirements even on the mothers of young children. So, so, so many other things.)

The reality is, the president and those around him don't just want more babies in America. They want the right kind of babies. From family's well enough off they don't need public programs. From stable heterosexual marriages where the mom can stay home. And then there's the whole racism of it. There really is a generational shift in the West driven by falling birth-rates, but the US previously had a solution in high immigration. A lot of the groups driving this hyper-awareness on women needing to have more babies have some strongly eugenic strains to them, too.

I've no problem with people having more babies. I like kids! I want more people who want to raise them to get that chance, to really be able to afford them. I'd just love to have more of that for people who want it, without also feeling like I'm living through the Handmaid's Tale. And yes, we're not there yet, but at a vibe level, it is getting harder and harder to ignore.

Pro-Natalism

They say they want Americans to have more babies. What's beneath the surface?

The precipitous decline of birthrates throughout the world poses a serious threat to humanity. Aeon discusses different strategies to address it worldwide.

Restricting immigration throws out America’s best advantage for addressing the generational shift. (X)

A deeper dive into how high immigration addresses labor shortages in particular US industries. (X)

More young women are embracing fertility tracking methods long popular among Catholics, looking to influencers, questioning doctors — and finding a home in MAGA.. (X)

The rise of eugenist thinking in US policy. (X)

The GOP’s Resurgence Of Pro-Natalism Looks A Lot Like The Past (X)

Specific policies the White House is considering to encourage more pregnancies. (X)

“Don’t Let ‘Pronatalists’ Define What’s Family-Friendly” (X)

Recent Abortion-Related Shenanigans

A Georgia woman is brain-dead after an accident. They’re still keeping her body on life support because she’s pregnant. (X)

A questionable report on mifepristone’s safety is helping anti-abortion groups push to restrict access. (X) RFK ordered the FDA to do a new investigation of the abortion drug’s safety, which many fear could give Trump political cover to ban abortion nationwide. (X)

Trump’s DOJ dropped a lawsuit involving Idaho and the EMTALA.

Context: The law requires hospitals to provide “stabilizing care” for people in emergency rooms, including abortions - even when state bans forbid it. Biden’s DOJ had been arguing Idaho’s abortion ban didn’t make enough exceptions for the health of the mother. (“Life” is not enough.) It’s a major tool to fight for health-saving abortions, and if the administration isn’t willing to pursue court cases based on the EMTALA, that’s concerning.

The current GOP budget defunds Planned Parenthood. (X)

In 2024 Missouri voted for a state constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights. State lawmakers have now approved a referendum to reverse it and enact a ban on most abortions not from rape or incest. Basically they’re asking the voters to overturn the 2024 amendment.

A federal judge scrapped laws requiring employers to give women time off for abortions. (X)

More on the Palm Springs IVF bombing

Details about the Palm Springs IVF attack. (X)

Details about a manifesto left behind by the bomber. (X)

‘A rabbit hole of paranoia’: what an IVF clinic bombing tells us about young men and online extremism

The IVF bomber was part of the “anti-life” movement.Experts warn that online nihilism is fueling similar violence in the US and Europe. (X)

TIME: “The Unexpected Grief of Discarding Your Frozen Eggs” (X)

“Bombing at IVF clinic should be a security wake-up call for fertility centers, experts say” (X)

The fertility clinic owner vows to rebuild. (X) Good details about their response.

[idroolinmysleep]

America’s premier pronatalists on having ‘tons of kids’ to save the world: ‘There are going to be countries of old people starving to death’

Elon Musk (father of 11) supports their cause. Thousands follow their ideology. Malcolm and Simone Collins are on a mission to make it easie

TL;DR: these are kid-smacking low-key eugenicists who give their children names like “Industry Americus” and think that keeping a home warm is a pointless extravagance.

The Guardian profiles pronatalists Malcolm and Simone Collins, and boy, these people are so full of themselves. Their commitment to effective altruism (you know, the same movement championed by Sam Bankman-Fried, who’s now in prison) somehow leads them to … not heat their home in winter?

as effective altruists, they give everything they can spare to charity (their [personal] charities). “Any pointless indulgence, like heating the house in the winter, we try to avoid if we can find other solutions,” says Malcolm.

And, for a couple who wants to have lots of babies, they don’t seem to like children very much.

The Collinses believe in childcare, but not maternity leave: Simone has never taken any. She will have the day of her C-section off “because of the drugs,” but will take work calls from hospital the day after. She tells me it’s because she’s “bored out of my mind” when she’s stuck with a newborn. … Malcolm tells me how much he doesn’t like babies. “Objectively, they are trying and they are aggravating. They are gross. This little bomb that goes off crying in this big explosion of poo and mucus every 30, 40 minutes. And it doesn’t have a personality, really.”

As for what that childcare looks like? They learned it from watching wild animals. For real.

Malcolm tells me that he and Simone have developed a parenting style based on something she observed when she saw tigers in the wild: they react to bad behaviour from their cubs with a paw, a quick negative response in the moment, which they find very effective with their own kids.

Lovely couple, these two.

[maaruin]

I watched the Abortion Episode of Battlestar Galactica again and Roslin is an idiot if she thinks that outlawing abortion will in any way solve the demographic problem the survivors of humanity have. (If she isn't an idiot, then she did it to pander to religious voters - but even that wouldn't have been a good strategic choice, because it allowed Balter his opening to challenge her by supporting the rights liberal voters consider important - and liberal voters seem to be the majority in the fleet.)

I wish the series actually seriously considered anti-natalism and pro-natalism in this situation. Is it right to have children when the future is bleak? Is the survival of humanity as a species into the future a thing worth fighting for? How can people be incentivized to found families when they are fighting for survival?

Honestly this rewatch may end up with liking BSG less, because I notice how they are missing many interesting questions and how many characters act less intelligently than they should.

[patrickbrianmooney]

It is often said, inside the Church and out of it, that there is something grotesque about lectures on the sexual life when delivered by those who have shunned it. Given the way that the Church forbids women to preach, the point is usually made about men. But given how much this Church allows the fanatical Mother Teresa to preach, it might be added that the call to go forth and multiply, and to take no thought for the morrow, sounds grotesque when uttered by an elderly virgin whose chief claim to reverence is that she ministers to the inevitable losers in this very lottery.

Christopher Hitchens, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice (p. 62 in ISBN 978-1-4555-2300-9)

[shinku-puddles]

really want us to reach the point of putting antinatalism pro natalism posts on the dash simultaneously....the mutliplier effect will be REAL

[lamajaoscura]

The Trump Administration Wants Women Out of the Workforce

Pro-natalism isn’t just about babies. It’s about keeping women at home and out of men’s dominion.

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Father of the year. Another Republican deadbeat dad.