This article was first published in Stern on November 3, 2026.
Here are excerpts from Population Balance executive director, Nandita Bajaj
Nandita Bajaj, director of the organization Population Balance, observes the rise of pronatalism in the US with great concern. "Of course, one could ridicule these extreme views. But they are dangerous," she says. Modern pronatalism is not a harmless call for extended families, but an attack on the achievements of modernity. It is a profoundly reactionary movement against women's self-determination.
"Behind the panic they are stoking, some Silicon Valley billionaires and politicians in the Trump administration are also harboring a racially charged alarmism. They fear a loss of power for the white population, they fear being overtaken by other population groups, and that not enough babies of the right background are being born."
In Silicon Valley, Bajaj says, she observes how this fear merges with the ideology of "longtermism": the goal is to selectively breed the population using reproductive technology and create "intellectually and racially superior" offspring. "As soon as financial incentives like parental leave no longer work, the movement threatens to quickly turn into coercion—even leading to state-imposed abortion bans and restrictions on contraceptives, as we are currently seeing in some US states," Bajaj says.