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INTRODUCTION
Baby bonuses. Motherhood medals. Fertility tracking. You may have heard of these policy proposals as solutions from the Trump administration to help encourage women to have more children.
Besides falling short of ensuring that people have what they need to raise a family, these ideas have another thing in common: they stem from an obscure, dangerous, and increasingly influential movement of people who call themselves “pronatalists.”
As an organization dedicated to advancing policies that help women and girls thrive— which importantly includes allowing people to decide when and whether to start a family—we at NWLC have some serious concerns about what it means to have pronatalists dictating family policy in the White House.
In this report, we explore the pronatalist movement, their history of eugenics and racism, the Trump administration’s concerning ties to the movement, and what we should be doing instead to support women and families.
BUT FIRST…WHO ARE THE PRONATALISTS?
Pronatalism literally means “pro-birth.” The National Women’s Law Center is also pro-birth. However, our definition of “pro-birth” differs from the pronatalists.
For us, “pro-birth” means...