Pronatalism should prioritize helping people with at least one child already have more (2-3+).
The people who are explicitly antinatal are too foregone, and indeed it may be better for humanity/society if their genes are selected out of the pool.
More Births (@MoreBirths)
FACING ANTINATALISM ON THE LEFT
A paper published on June 19th, 2026 identified falling fertility on the left as a key driver of the decline in births. It showed that the fertility decline has been primarily a progressive phenomenon in the US, with fertility actually rising slightly on the right.
More recent data shows that the left-right fertility divide has become a chasm, with young conservatives having more than twice the fertility of young liberals.
A lot of this of course is downstream of the cultural preferences of liberals. Liberals tend to be less religious. Liberals tend to be much more urban, marry later, and spend more of their fertile years in higher education. All of these preferences are associated with lower birthrates.
But that isn't the whole story. A pretty substantial portion of the political left is explicitly antinatal. Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, died five months ago but ideological antinatalism is continues to hold major sway among Democrats.
That was driven home a couple of days ago in a piece in The Atlantic titled, "A Sibling Is Not Always A 'Gift.'" Responding to the culturally normative idea that siblings are a good thing (expressed a few weeks earlier in the Times), columnist Amanda Ruggeri chose to take the other side of that.
That kind of direct antinatalism is pretty jarring on its own. But this was an Atlantic essay, not a Reddit thread.
The Atlantic is considered center-left, and its viewpoints are usually those of establishment types and moderate Democrats. Articles like this and others combined with polling suggest that antinatalism isn't just a fringe position among progressives but one pretty close to the Democratic mainstream.
In the world of 1968, that sort of position was at least understandable. But in 2026, birthrates are plunging almost everywhere and the United States and most developed countries are on a path of slow or not-so-slow population collapse. National budgets and progress itself are under threat. In that context it is indefensible for antinatalism to be a mainstream position in a leading political party.
With nearly flawless birth control now, fertility will be much too low unless people are culturally motivated to have children. And for the left, which has allowed antinatalism to become mainstream, fertility has fallen through the floor and is could end up under 1 for the youngest age groups.
Many left-wing governments of the 20th century were pronatal in orientation so today's left wing antinatalism is not inevitable. But if this antinatal ideology is not addressed and countered, history will look back on today's progressives very negatively indeed.
— https://nitter.net/MoreBirths/status/2085759549324107892#m