In the Book of Genesis, God commanded Adam and Eve to “go forth and multiply” — and members of the pronatalism movement aim to make that commandment exponential.
Often without religious references, pronatalists promote having as many children as one can support, forming a subset of the pro-life movement focused more on survival rather than morality.
“Pronatalists recognize that declining birth rates pose an existential threat to civilization, but many of them lack the deeper cultural and religious frameworks that have historically sustained high fertility rates,” Emma Waters, senior research associate at The Heritage Foundation, told The Washington Times.
Concerns about declining birth rates have found footing particularly among technology entrepreneurs and policy thinkers who see low fertility as a long-term threat to economic stability, national security and human survival.
“The way that pronatalists view the issue tends to be that there’s a problem, which is not enough children, and the reason that that matters is because of the national impact it will have on all aspects, from end-of-life care to education to military readiness,” Ms. Waters said.
Figures such as Elon Musk have spotlighted the issue, warning repeatedly that falling birth rates could lead to economic ruin. “A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces, by far,” Mr. Musk tweeted in 2022.
The billionaire entrepreneur has backed up his rhetoric by fathering a dozen known children with at least three different women. Mr. Musk also is investing in fertility technology, cozying to the broader movement increasingly spanning Silicon Valley and elite policy circles.
The U.S. fertility rate has been steadily shrinking, tracing a downward arc over the past decade and a half. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, back in 2007, American women were having babies at a rate of 69.5 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44. Fast forward to 2022, and that number had dropped to just 56.0.
In response, the country is shifting in the way it thinks about birth. In 2021, the CDC reported that nearly 97,130 babies were born via assisted reproductive technologies, primarily in vitro fertilization (IVF) — a figure larger than Pasadena’s Rose Bowl could contain.
The past decade, in particular, has carried the surge in reproductive tech use, with the number of treatment cycles more than doubling between 2012 and 2021. As a result, births via the procedures have increased by nearly 50%, with 1 in every 42 babies born in 2021 conceived through fertility treatments.
Critics of pronatalism argue that its tech-driven vision promotes a utilitarian view of human life that prioritizes quantity over the intrinsic value of children.
Patrick Brown, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and pro-family commentator, told The Times that the secular wing of the pronatalist movement often embraces embryo selection and genetic optimization in ways that are unsettling to traditional conservatives.
“If you look at somebody like an Elon Musk and that of strain of […] more like tech side of the coalition, they’re all gung-ho about embryo selection in IVF and increasing, you know, using polygenic scores to choose your offspring to give you the greatest control over their IQ and that sort of stuff,” Mr. Brown said. “And I think that’s where religious conservatives tend to have the biggest area of disagreement, right?”
‘Quality control’
Preimplantation genetic screening in the U.S. operates in a regulatory gray area, allowing companies like Genomic Prediction, an organization backed by Sam Altman, to assess embryos for health risks.
The efficacy of the technology comes into question. Geneticist Adam Rutherford, for example, remains skeptical of the hype. As far as the supposed IQ boost from embryo selection goes, he told The Guardian it’s “the type of thing you can change by having a decent night’s sleep or a cup of coffee before doing an IQ test.”
More philosophical critics warn that fertility technologies could erode the natural bonds of family and turn children into designer products.
“The more that human reproduction becomes a matter of technology and financial transaction, the more we can expect that ’quality control’ will become part of the process — soft eugenics in the name of customer service,” critic Daniel Frost wrote in the religious journal First Things.
Attitudes about abortion also divide traditional pro-lifers and pronatalists, Mr. Brown says. While religious conservatives have long fought to restrict abortion access, many secular pronatalists see legal abortion as a separate issue, or even as a necessity to ensure that childbirth remains voluntary.
Some, like Mr. Musk, argue that abortion is mainly a problem when it significantly reduces birth rates, while others simply avoid the topic altogether.
“Once you have birth control and abortions and whatnot, now you can still satisfy limbic instinct, but not procreate,” Mr. Musk said in a 2023 interview with Tucker Carlson.
“You might get Elon Musk to agree that late-term abortion is bad, but beyond that, there’s little common ground between secular pronatalists and the traditional pro-life movement,” Mr. Brown said.
Policy and pronatalism
Some pronatalists, like Pennsylvania-based influencers Malcolm and Simone Collins, have taken an especially public role in advocating for high birth rates.
The couple, who describe themselves as “hyper-pronatalist,” have embraced embryo selection, genetic screening, and unconventional parenting methods as part of their mission to produce as many children as possible — something that’s caught the eye of many in San Francisco.
They have also attempted to create an “intentionally constructed religion,” which they describe as “technically atheist” but structured around rituals meant to instill values in their children, according to The Guardian.
The Collinses used Genomic Prediction’s services for medical screenings but farmed out “the controversial stuff” to another team — one that claims to predict everything from a child’s happiness to future income.
“Obviously, we looked at IQ,” Mr. Collins told The Guardian. They ruled out embryos with high risks for cancer and severe mental health conditions like schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease but made no exclusions for autism, which they see as an integral part of identity.
“The vast majority of right-leaning people in Silicon Valley are pronatalist. You’re probably looking at 100,000 people or something that subscribe to our specific vision,” Mr. Collins said. “They are young, radical thinkers who are working to have children.”
And while their approach has drawn media attention, their critics argue that their model turns childbearing into a strategic experiment rather than a natural or spiritual calling.
But the ideological debates haven’t put a pause on governments worldwide beginning to address the problem of fertility through policy. Countries like Hungary and Poland have attempted to boost birth rates through financial incentives, but results have been mixed.
Hungary’s tax breaks and grants briefly raised fertility from 1.23 in 2011 to 1.59 in 2020, but it has since fallen to 1.36, according to the Financial Times. And Poland’s “Family 500+” program saw a short-lived rise, but birth rates have now hit their lowest since WWII, Politico reports.
Even Sweden and France, with generous family policies, remain below replacement levels — Sweden’s fertility dropped from 1.9 a decade ago to 1.7, while France’s fell from 2.03 in 2010 to 1.68 in 2023, according to French news outlet Le Monde.
Meanwhile, Vice President J.D. Vance has repeatedly made his stance on pronatal policy clear. He supports expanding the child tax credit from $2,000 to $5,000 per child to ease financial burdens on families. He has leveled criticism at childlessness among leaders, while proposing higher taxes for childless adults and suggesting that parents ought to have greater voting power than non-parents.
“When you see countries with declining birth rates, it tends to correspond with the people who have lost a sense of purpose and meaning and investment in future generations, ” Ms. Waters said, adding that a flourishing fertility rate depends on deeper beliefs of human value.
“My concern with some in the pronatalist space is that they’re focusing so heavily on having children — the outcome — that they’ve neglected the prior commitments, the prior values that are needed to actually sustain childbearing long term,” she added.
As fertility tech becomes more commonplace in America, Mr. Brown urged citizens to do some soul-searching about the matter.
“Do we want parents to have the ability to not just choose if they have a son or daughter, which is pretty unique in the United States to begin with?” he said. “Sex-selective embryo implantation is illegal in most countries that practice it. When it comes to these sorts of things, do we really want the U.S. to be the Wild West?”
• Emma Ayers can be reached at eayers@washingtontimes.com.