President Donald Trump is considering several ways to reverse the country’s declining birthrate, including offering a $5,000 “baby bonus” for each new child’s mother and menstrual classes to improve chances at pregnancy, according to a report.
Birthrates have declined sharply since 1960, from 3.65 births per woman to 1.66 births per woman today.
Raising America’s birthrate — along with improving access to in-vitro fertilization — is expected to be part of Trump’s cultural agenda, according to The New York Times, which reported April 21 on the proposals sought by the administration.
Other possibilities include reserving 30% of prestigious Fulbright fellowships for those who are married or have children and educating “women on their menstrual cycles and their ‘natural fertility,’ such as cycle-charting courses that many conservative Christian women use to try to prevent pregnancy without using birth control,” New York Times reported.
“Those ideas, and others, are emerging from a movement concerned with declining birthrates that has been gaining steam for years and now finally has allies in the US administration, including Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk,” New York Times reported. “Policy experts and advocates of boosting the birthrate have been meeting with White House aides, sometimes handing over written proposals on ways to help or convince women to have more babies, according to four people who have been part of the meetings who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.”
In February, Trump signed an executive order creating a task force that will look at ways to make IVF more affordable.
“These are treatments that have become unaffordable for many Americans, have been unaffordable for many Americans, and the executive orders a directive of a domestic policy council to examine ways to make IVF and other fertility treatments more affordable for more Americans,” a White House aide said at the signing ceremony.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said the order “directs policy recommendations to protect IVF access and aggressively reduce out-of-pocket and health plan costs for such treatments.”
In-vitro fertilization became a nationwide issue following a controversial Alabama Supreme Court ruling on February 16, 2024, declared frozen embryos have the same rights as children.
The decision drew nationwide backlash and spurred IVF clinics in Alabama to halt operations amid concern that they would face lawsuits.
It also led the Alabama Legislature to pass a bill giving IVF clinics immunity from criminal and civil lawsuits.
Infirmary Health, which runs Mobile Infirmary in Mobile, Alabama, announced in April that it will no longer provide IVF treatments beginning in 2025.
—Howard Koplowitz, al.com (TNS)
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