We are entering a startling new era in the politics of birth control, with President Donald Trump launching the most serious effort in decades to curb contraception.
The Department of Health and Human Services recently released new guidance that outlines a major overhaul of federal family planning programs — prioritizing childbirth over contraception, and privileging “natural family planning,” like period-tracking apps, over far more effective methods, like the birth control pill. The Trump administration is also poised to establish new regulations that would end further funding for Planned Parenthood chapters.
Millions of Americans who receive federally-backed family planning services are likely to feel the impact of such a policy shift. And there is real political risk as well. Birth control remains overwhelmingly popular in the United States: Only 8 percent of Americans say using contraception is morally wrong, according to Pew Research Center polling. (More Americans object to drinking alcohol, getting a divorce or being extremely rich).
Given widespread support for birth control, it’s no surprise that politicians have long been reluctant to zero in on it. So, what’s changed?
The unwieldy political coalition that sent Trump back to the White House in 2024 is clamoring for action. For different reasons, an alliance of MAHA adherents, social conservatives and pronatalists are eager to go after birth control. With Trump sinking in the polls and his coalition fracturing, he may want to deliver for his core supporters. But regardless of whether he succeeds, the administration’s move signals a major transformation in America’s culture war: Contraception has gone from being politically untouchable to a real target on the right.
Honestly, in some ways the right-wing theorist types’ framing of birth control / birth rates is kind of interesting – even if the way they tend to go about implementing legislation to address the issue is largely misguided.
One of their core arguments is that politicians should be benefiting locals / existing members of the country, rather than relying on an endless stream of immigrants to supply workers – doing the latter, you’re exposed to more risk and more cultural divergence amongst the population, as well as a general cheapening of labour due to an endless supply of people. A “strong nation” should have a people who are thriving, and one sign of people thriving is locals having kids / a self-sustaining population base. It’s hard to argue your nation is ‘strong’, if it’d effectively die off without constantly pumping additional people in from other nations.
Almost every western nation fails on this front. Programs that are designed to help locals have kids are generally less materially supported by left leaning parties, as left leaning parties try to garner favour amongst recent immigrant demographics – the focus is on “people who have nothing / just moved here” vs “people who inherited a bit of money from previous local generations, and have grown up here”. Wealth tax arguments, for example, are viewed as taxing people who’ve been in the country for a generation or more, and transferring their generational wealth to newer immigrants, by having taxes support programs that disproportionately benefit people without that historic/local nestegg: eg. affordable childcare is most useful for families with two working parents, no ties to other parents/social groups for afterschool care, and no grandparent support locally. Even then, those programs are often half-assed when it comes to implementation, as left leaning parties are more intent on bringing in more immigrants, rather than supporting the immigrants who’ve already arrived with young kids. Like in Canada, population growth is 100% determined by immigration – every locally born demographic, aside from First Nations, is shrinking based on local birth rates. So if you’re a business, or a political party, that wants to ‘grow’ with the economy/population, your primary growth demo is to target new immigrants (or FN, but FN has additional legal hurdles in many cases) – generally to the detriment of local interests.
Like there are right leaning theorists pushin stuff like – if having birth control / women’s rights results in a nation that cannot sustain its local population / would die off without external infusions of people, then having birth control / women’s rights is detrimental / counter-productive to the overall health and sustainability of a nation. Women on aggregate can’t be given these rights/benefits, because if they get them, they basically kill the nation through local attrition on a generational scale. If giving them those rights had resulted in increased birth rates / prosperity within the country’s local population, that’d be a different story – but it’s not how it plays out in reality, and we can see that in most western countries.
I dunno, I find it a kinda interesting argument to think about, though the conclusions and implementation of it in practice are pretty stupid. Especially in an individualistic nation/system.
We need more Luigis.
