More White Babies: The Architecture of Selective Pronatalism

In serious political analysis, we have a dangerous habit of waiting for a confession. We pick apart press releases and scrub sanitized slogans, hunting for the “smoking gun”—some explicit admission of malice. But this search for declared intent is a waste of time. It is an academic indulgence.

We don’t need a lecture on Foucault or Lukes to understand how power operates. We know it doesn’t always announce itself with a bullhorn. It operates in silence. It is diffuse. It is embedded in the daily grind of the institution.

Power is inscribed in the machinery: the reflex of bureaucracy, the patterns of rhetoric, and the cold reality of the scoreboard.

Right now, we are watching a sudden resurgence of “pronatalism”—a government obsession with incentivizing childbirth. If you look closely, this isn’t a universal embrace of family. It is a mechanism of selection. When the state signals a preference for who belongs, it creates a permission structure. It tells the institutions how to behave. At that point, it is analytically irresponsible to pretend the resulting policies are just neutral administrative choices.

We cannot afford to be naive about the history here.

The origins of population management in this country were inextricably bound to the darker philosophies of eugenics. Look at the founders. Margaret Sanger, the architect of the birth control movement, didn’t mince words. She openly advocated for curbing the reproduction of the “unfit.” That label mapped with devastating precision onto race, class, and poverty. While institutions like Planned Parenthood have evolved into vital providers of care, that structural logic—the desire to sort and manage the population—remains woven into the societal fabric.

That historical echo makes the current moment terrifying.

Look at the push for expanding IVF subsidies. On paper, it looks like a benevolent triumph for family building. But look at the operational reality. Access to this technology is gated by income, by employer insurance, and by geography. The data bears this out. High earners get access; low earners get shut out. Employer coverage is heavily stacked in industries that employ white-collar and affluent workers. These gates swing wide open for the wealthy and, by extension, for the predominantly white. They remain obstinately shut for the working class and the marginalized.

At the exact same time, look at what is being destroyed. The support systems that actually sustain the reproductive health of women of color—Medicaid, maternal health initiatives, community clinics—are facing a relentless attrition of resources.

The juxtaposition is the point. We are seeing a lavish investment in the reproduction of the privileged, paired with a calculated disinvestment in the reproduction of the vulnerable.

This isn’t an accident. It is a specific design. When a policy framework consistently produces a racialized asymmetry, and when those in power refuse to fix it, the outcome is the evidence.

We need to strip away the comforting myths of national innocence. We need to look at the sequence of the slide. Germany didn’t begin its descent into demographic authoritarianism with the camps. It started with rhetoric about “decline” and “purity.” It started with “positive” incentives for national survival. It proceeded through the cultural normalization of hierarchy—bureaucrats sorting births into “desirable” and “undesirable”—long before it ever culminated in violence.

This isn’t just an American experiment. Look at Hungary. Look at Russia. They are running the same play. They push tax breaks and cash incentives for the “right” kind of families—those who fit the government’s specific vision of national identity. It is dressed up as “national rejuvenation,” but the mechanism is the same. It is selective pronatalism.

The early stages were administrative. They were orderly. They were framed as “health.”

I am not claiming the atrocities are identical. I am asserting that the logic is shared. When you have selective birth incentives, combined with rhetoric that elevates the “familiar” over the “other,” the result is demographic shaping. The fact that it is being implemented quietly makes it more dangerous, not less.

If this were truly about supporting “families,” the agenda would look very different. We would see universal childcare. We would see comprehensive parental leave for janitors, not just for executives. We would see massive investment in community clinics to close the gap for marginalized groups.

We don’t see any of that. We see the opposite.

So here’s the trap: we could get lost in debates about “intent”. That would be a luxury we just don’t have. What we have to do is look at the potential outcomes. Real accountability requires us to tune out the soothing words of their speeches and press conferences and focus on the cold, harsh reality of what they are actually doing.