Ellen Coyne: Donald Trump and the right-wing pronatalists want to help women have more babies – is that really such a bad idea?
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Elle
6 days ago
- Elle
This 'Horrifying' New Podcast Is Being Compared To 'The Handmaid's Tale', And It's A Must-Listen
The sixth — and final — season of The Handmaid's Tale might be over, but the show, which has become a cultural shorthand for conversations about reproductive rights, has sparked a string of dystopian pronatalist podcasts that nod to the themes of the hit Hulu series, the most recent of which is an episode of The Guardian's Today in Focus podcast. The episode, named Make America Pregnant Again, is presented by Helen Pidd with Moira Donegan, and it probes the question of why there is a growing contingency of pronatalists in America, and what exactly it means, questions that are eerily mirrored throughout the Hulu series in which women are stripped of their autonomy and reduced to their reproductive function. In The Handmaid's Tale, Handmaids are forced to bear children for elite families with no say in the process. Make America Pregnant Again touches on an annual pronatalist conference named NatalCon, the second outing of which took place in April in Austin, Texas. The gathering brought together the various groups who want there to be more babies in the US – and they were an unusual collective. Doneghan says: 'So you have folks who we might think of as sort of the traditional old-school pronatalists, right? Like traditionalist Catholics who are very invested in a cultural model in which marriage is the sole legitimate expression of sexuality and in which that sexuality is sort of unmediated by any use of birth control or non-reproductive practices.' The episode name checks the Hulu adaptation of Atwood's seminal 1985 novel, too. 'In the pronatalist movement, there are fewer women. There is a married couple named Malcolm and Simone Collins,' Doneghan notes. 'Simone has started wearing these bonnets that look kind of like what Elisabeth Moss wears in The Handmaid's Tale. She's doing that on purpose.' In fact, the warped interpretation of the Bible in The Handmaid's Tale — which Gilead uses to justify the Handmaids' roles of forced procreation — mirrors many of the most prominent pronatalist voices in America who are often driven by religious ideology. Make America Pregnant Again posits the idea that the pronatalist movement isn't just trying to encourage a higher birth rate to remedy the west's ageing population, but rather to condition the types of children that are born into the world — something that wouldn't feel out of place in Gilead. 'There's a lot of these techno-futurists, who are advancing the use of artificial reproductive technology, including things that are very frowned on by the Catholic church, such as IVF,' Doneghan explains. 'These are also people who tend to be very into gene editing. Something I think is really important to hammer down about the pro-natalist movement is that they're not just looking for more babies, they're looking for more of what they consider higher-quality babies … which is a judgment that they're making that might have, I think frequently does have, racial connotations.' In 2023, the total fertility rate in England and Wales was 1.44 children per woman, the lowest ever on record, which has resulted in an ageing population. It's a similar picture across the pond in America too, where the fertility rate has fallen to 1.6 births per woman, below the 2.1 needed to sustain the population. LISTEN TO 'MAKE AMERICA PREGNANT AGAIN' HERE ELLE Collective is a new community of fashion, beauty and culture lovers. For access to exclusive content, events, inspiring advice from our Editors and industry experts, as well the opportunity to meet designers, thought-leaders and stylists, become a member today HERE. Naomi May is a seasoned culture journalist and editor with over ten years' worth of experience in shaping stories and building digital communities. After graduating with a First Class Honours from City University's prestigious Journalism course, Naomi joined the Evening Standard, where she worked across both the newspaper and website. She is now the Digital Editor at ELLE Magazine and has written features for the likes of The Guardian, Vogue, Vice and Refinery29, among many others. Naomi is also the host of the ELLE Collective book club.
The Guardian
02-06-2025
- The Guardian
Making America pregnant again: the pro-natalist movement
Why is pro-natalism – the idea that society should focus on producing children – a growing movement in the US? The Guardian US columnist Moira Donegan tells Helen Pidd: 'This is not something that average people in the US are crying out for. People are having the number of children that they desire and think that they can support, right? 'What we have instead is a pro-natalist movement that's getting a lot of attention and perceives themselves to have allies in the new Trump administration, and particularly in the form of Vice-president JD Vance and the world's richest man and presidential adviser, Elon Musk.' The second annual natal conference, or NatalCon, was held in April in Austin, Texas. It brought together the various groups who want there to be more babies in the US – and they were an unusual collective. Doneghan says: 'So you have folks who we might think of as sort of the traditional old-school pronatalists, right? Like traditionalist Catholics who are very invested in a cultural model in which marriage is the sole legitimate expression of sexuality and in which that sexuality is sort of unmediated by any use of birth control or non-reproductive practices. 'But there's also people who have a different approach. So there's a lot of these techno-futurists, who are advancing the use of artificial reproductive technology, including things that are very frowned on by the Catholic church, such as IVF. These are also people who tend to be very into gene editing. Something I think is really important to hammer down about the pro-natalist movement is that they're not just looking for more babies, they're looking for more of what they consider higher-quality babies … which is a judgment that they're making that might have, I think frequently does have, racial connotations.' Support the Guardian today:
Vogue
03-05-2025
- Vogue
The Dark History of the Far Right's Natalism
I had my first child in December; he will also be my only child. I'm going one-and-done with kids for the same reasons many women in the United States are having fewer babies, and later in life. Faced with economic uncertainty, climate change, and vanishing reproductive rights, it feels like a prudent choice. Most importantly, it's what I want. The Trump administration is trying to figure out how to change my mind, and doing a terrible job of it. On April 21, The New York Times published an article about various incentives the White House is kicking around in hopes of reversing the country's historically low birth rate. Among them are a $5,000 'baby bonus'—cash in hand for each infant delivered—and a 'National Medal of Motherhood' bestowed on women with six or more children. The public response to the Times story was fast, and much of it was furious. Social media was flooded with references to The Handmaid's Tale. Bewildered parents wondered who could be convinced to have a baby for $5,000. (A recent study found that it costs nearly $300,000 to raise a child in the United States.) Why not enact policies, such as paid family leave and universal preschool, that would actually ease the burden of parenting? The simple fact is that many of the pronatal voices with Trump's ear either don't care about this burden, or don't see it as a burden at all. Among them are Vice President J.D. Vance, who has suggested that parents should have more voting power than other citizens, and Elon Musk, who has fathered at least a dozen children he seems to play little part in raising. Behind these men is a chorus of pronatal activists desperate to kickstart a baby boom. Many of them recently attended NatalCon, the subject of another viral Times article. A running theme of that event, held in Austin, Texas, in March, was that bearing children is a woman's obligation. 'Women need to take their jobs seriously,' one female attendee told the Times reporter. 'Not their jobs. Their duty.' This sentiment should terrify women—not least because we've heard it before, emanating from some of history's darkest chapters and ugliest corners. The natalism promoted by the Trump administration and its allies echoes insidious forces and regimes. In the United States, the far right has long insisted that motherhood is not only a woman's deepest desire and biological destiny, but also a role she must inhabit to avert the collapse of Western civilization. The 14 Words, a popular white-nationalist slogan, is a pronatalist rallying cry: 'We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.' The Turner Diaries, a racist novel published in the 1970s that served as inspiration for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and January 6 insurrectionists, depicts white women as racial soldiers charged with replenishing the world.
