The Quest to 'Make America Fertile Again' Stalls Under Trump

[Coventina]

Vice President JD Vance last week called falling marriage rates “a big problem.” The deputy secretary of Health and Human Services in December urged his agency to “make America fertile again.” And at a recent conference for young conservatives, Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, doubled down on the importance of marriage and children, holding out his nine kids as a model for others to follow.

But one year into President Trump’s second term, his administration has enacted few policies to reduce the rising cost of having children — frustrating some conservatives who expected Mr. Trump to prioritize their plans to boost the U.S. birthrate as it continues to drop.

Some Republicans in Congress and leading conservative policy groups have pushed unsuccessfully to significantly expand tax credits for families or introduce a “baby bonus” for all new moms, proposals that Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance had championed in the past. Mr. Trump’s plans for combating infertility have also largely stalled out, after the administration announced a new policy on in vitro fertilization in October that fell far short of Mr. Trump’s campaign promise to make the procedure free.

“If your version of being pro-family is talking about how great families are and encouraging people to get married and have kids, you end up doing a lot of lip service without changing the material and economic conditions on the ground,” said Patrick T. Brown, who focuses on family policy at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. “Just the bully pulpit alone is not really enough.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/us/politics/trump-birthrates-infertility.html

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OK, speaking as woman who is now past her child-bearing years: I am so thankful that I have no surviving children.

This world is FUCKED, and AFAIAC, the human race can't go extinct quickly enough. We've tortured and killed enough of our fellow creatures to prove that we don't deserve this lovely planet. (I'm speaking collectively here, I know that there are many caring people out there, but we are VASTLY outnumbered). There is something deeply wrong and cruel about our species.

If I were a young woman right now, I would probably opt for PERMANENT birth control, given that I would not have any guaranteed bodily autonomy in this country. I can see more an more women following the Korean 4B movement.