With the Trump administration’s frenzy of new policies clouding every news outlet, the usual media consumer would scroll through headlines, jaded from the output of madness. However, recent reports from the 2023 census describe a slow population decrease due to “Increases in mortality caused by the COVID-19 pandemic,” along with “declines in fertility that have persisted for decades,” said Sandra Johnson, a demographer at the Census Bureau. While the pandemic is expected to be a short term cause, fertility declines are likely to continue into the future. In return, President Donald Trump has responded with startling plans.
In ways to promote traditional family values, the Trump administration wants to be the head of new pro-natalist policies to combat declining birth rates. The policy includes reserving 30% of Fulbright scholarships for married applicants or those with children. The Fulbright scholarships are U.S. government-funded grants that support students, scholars and professionals in studying, teaching, or researching abroad, promoting international exchange and understanding. Fulbright is funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Additionally, there is meant to be a $5,000 baby bonus for every new mother, along with government-funded education on menstrual cycles and natural fertility awareness.
The administration is catering to its far-right audience by aligning with extreme conservative movements. This entails defining family as marriage between a man and a woman, in order to boost baby rates and promote the “Make America Great Again” ideology. Notably, the last time there was a baby boom in the US was in 1946, after the second world war. In a post war America, although women were granted the right to vote decades earlier and had contributed to the war effort, they were expected to return to their traditional roles: producing children and staying at home. This is what President Trump and conservatives want to return to. An America that restricts the rights of women, and limits their dreams and opportunities to revolve around men. It is extremely ironic that the administration that is actively trying to ban women’s rights to their own bodily autonomy by supporting the overturning of Roe v. Wade, along with demonizing the notion of feminism is trying to put on a facade of progressiveness and pro-women policies.
Moreover, Trump, who called himself “the fertilization president,” is not alone in making these outrageous claims and attempts to start the second coming of the baby boom. He has Vice President JD Vance and DOGE leader Elon Musk at his side.
“More babies in the United States of America” and more “beautiful young men and women” to raise them,” Vance stated as a part of his support for increased natality rates. Think tanks like The Heritage Foundation, a conservative research institution, are also a part of shaping ideals.
What is most disturbing about the plan is its scary implications to women and minorities in the U.S. By creating an American ideal of a family, which is a wife and husband with multiple children, we begin to regress as a society that holds women to unattainable and unrealistic standards, making them subservient observers in their own lives. Women have worked so incredibly hard for centuries to have their worth be recognized individually, and not attached to a man or their children. This is no doubt a “baby” step backwards to completely stripping women of the very rights we’ve gained over the years. Along with this, the administration is actively trying to diminish federal funding for scientific research, which includes research on women’s health and childbirth, and making efforts to ban programs like DEI, which maternity leave is a part of. Trump believes he is making reproduction easier for women, when in reality, he is only making it more and more difficult to rationalize having a child in today’s political and economic state.
Project 2025, a conservative blueprint and agenda opens with the promise to “restore the family as a centerpiece of American life.” Yet, even within a political party that tries to outwardly intimidate the American people with their “strength”, the conservatives are facing internal conflict with the execution of the fertility plan. Debates about the validity of IVF (In Vitro Fertilization), are rampant, particularly between republicans in office and think tanks like The Heritage Foundation.
Emma Waters of The Heritage Foundation states, “The solution is not to push IVF for everyone.” Trump, within the first month of his administration, signed an Executive Order expanding access to IVF for Americans, notably one of the catalysts for today’s conversation around increasing birth rates. Contrarilly, Alabama Supreme Court decision prompted fertility clinics to temporarily stop offering the procedure, and The Heritage Foundation has spoken out against the treatment due to anti-abortion concerns. According to Lynman Stone of the Pronatalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies, “Research suggests IVF does not increase overall fertility rates, it just shifts when some people start their families.”
The pro-natalist movement fear economic collapse and societal decline if birth rates don’t increase, yet they disagree on the best methods to encourage births (technology vs. traditional values). What shocks me, and many other women in America, is the fact that the current republican administration wants women to start families while actively making it harder to live a comfortable life in the U.S. With the increase of tariffs, the housing crisis, roll back on women’s rights and healthcare inaccessibility, whatever incentives Trump plans on giving to women for producing children are illogical. It seems especially irrational with the fact that there are close to 400,000 children in foster care in the U.S. Instead of focusing resources on the children who don’t have families, the Trump administration ignores them to try and add to the existing American population.
Fertility expert Dr. Eve Feinberg states that, “These ideologies have been around for a long time, and they’re always rooted in religion. It’s not actual medicine. [But] more federal funding for infertility and reproductive health issues is a wonderful idea.” If Trump is able to expand the rights of women and make current day America a safe and reasonable place to bring children into, he will do more to increase fertility rates than any part of his plan.
The issue is that conservatives and the Trump administration are stuck to the traditional values of the past. Instead of making women comfortable and hopeful to have children, they are turning them away from the notion all together due to the continual attacks against their rights.
