Mike Lee and other pro-natalists ramp up efforts to boost Utah's lagging birthrate. 

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• “The solution to so many of our problems, at all times and in all places, is to fall in love, get married and have some kids.”—Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah

No one is more concerned and alarmed by the falling birth rate than Utah's senior senator, Mike Lee. Well, maybe Elon Musk, who seems to be trying to solve it unilaterally.

Musk has very definite ideas. Whether motivated by fear of mass extinction or just that white people are being "replaced," Musk believes the solution is for women to get procreating. And while Musk and Vice President J.D. Vance are prominent in the movement, Lee is not far behind.

"The solution to so many of our problems, at all times and in all places, is to fall in love, get married and have some kids," Lee said in 2019.

The Utah Population and Environment Council (UPEC) has been on the other side of this question for years. Founded in 1997, UPEC's mission was to address "on-going concerns of population increases and resource consumption in Utah, particularly along the Wasatch Front."

But a brief, small-families campaign showed them how that would play out. There were billboards and radio spots. KSL Radio started playing their ad. Then, a little more than halfway into the four-week campaign, it all ended after a flood of complaints.

UPEC chairwoman Susan Soleil said the promotion of smaller families touched a "third rail." She recalled how a neighbor with 12 children approached her to voice her opposition to population control.

"The word 'population' sends out a vibration," Soleil said. "We were merely advocating for reasonable population growth so there would not be negative impacts on our beautiful natural resources."

Mallory Bateman understands the debate all too well. Bateman is a demographic researcher at the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, which regularly provides state agencies with population trend data.

The nation's fertility rate has been falling since 2008. And surprisingly, the West saw higher decreases than the Midwest or Northeast. Utah saw a steeper decline than the national average, possibly because it started at a higher rate. "We had been the highest for quite some time," Bateman said. "Historically, [Utah] women had babies younger than other places."

But here's the thing—teen birth rates are down substantially, and Utah has seen a big decrease in mothers age 20 to 24. And universities and colleges are enrolling more women. But not to worry, Utah is still the youngest state with a median age of 32.

So, why all the anxiety? It's not just the United States. In 1979, China implemented the draconian and ill-fated "one-child policy." The fear was that overpopulation would stunt economic growth and strain the welfare system.

Some women were sterilized, others given abortions and still others hid their pregnancies. Among other things, China's gender ratios skewed in favor of males, and the country faced an aging population without workforce support. Then, in 2016, China raised the permissible number of children to two. Now it is three.

"As observed in many other countries and societies, socioeconomic and cultural transformations accelerated the pace of fertility decline," a Brookings Institution commentary noted in 2016.

What that means is that women have prioritized higher education and opportunities in the workplace over the immediacy of childbearing.

And of course, the older a woman gets, the harder it is to get pregnant.

Birth Days
Anna, who asked to be identified only by her first name, was 30 when she and her partner began trying to get pregnant. She said her attempts ended in several miscarriages, two of which required the kind of emergency medical attention that can put a mother's life at risk under the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision overturning the right to an abortion.

"When we first started our relationship, I very much wanted children, but he did not," Anna said. "He had a pretty irresponsible mother, and as a result, had pretty much raised his six younger siblings."

Jennifer Lane was also 30 when she and her husband Nolan Kelly started thinking about kids. She had married young and divorced prior to her relationship with Kelly, and things were different now. The couple had bought a house, but they were far from financially stable. She was starting her own business and working three jobs.

"My life just changed," she said.

But these life nuances matter little to pro-natalists. Birth is the goal—and if you look at history, the goal was actually "better" babies. That's the euphemistic term for what critics might describe as eugenics.

While Musk, Lee and others are elevating pro-natalism, Teddy Roosevelt was one of the first to call out the perils of declining births. He called it "race suicide," thinking the so-called American race was in jeopardy.

To be clear, the pro-natalist movement is largely male-dominated. Take the recent gathering in Austin, Texas, called Natal Con. CNN noted that few women attended, while the conference ignited protests against far-right ideologues, among whom were MAGA types who offered a $10,000 matchmaking service to repopulate the world.

"The patriarchy has promoted and enforced pronatalism," wrote the Population Media Center. And Politico notes: "Natalism is often about more than raising birth rates, though that is certainly one of its aims; for many in the room, the ultimate goal is a total social overhaul, a culture in which child-rearing is paramount."

Utah is far from immune to the birthing doctrine. Media outlets like The Salt Lake Tribune have run stories about a eugenics-inspired law passed by the state Legislature in 1925. At least 830 men, women and children were sterilized under the law, and the Tribune noted that a version of that law remains on the books to this day.

The stated motivation behind that law was to save the world from people deemed undesirable—the poor, racial and ethnic minorities, the disabled and even the promiscuous. In today's world, eugenics seems to be less about preventing births from certain demographics than promoting them among white Christian groups.

In the early 20th century, state fairs—even in Utah—highlighted "better baby" and "fitter family" contests. What could be better than a white baby born to an intact and entitled family?

There is no doubt that birth rates are declining. However, efforts to stem the tide have typically failed.

"What's different now is that fertility has continued to decline as the economy has improved," Lee, Utah's senior senator, said in a 2019 interview. "That might reflect the high costs of student loan repayment—many young adults took shelter from the recession by going to or staying in school. It might also reflect the high cost of housing."

Lee unsuccessfully sponsored the Cradle Act, which would have offered paid leave to new parents. But the bill had a catch, borrowing money from the Social Security fund that would later need to be paid back. The approach was heavily criticized.

"Pro-natalists aren't actually interested in making motherhood easier by offering things like affordable childcare," wrote Moira Donegan for The Guardian.

Growing Old
Certainly, pro-natalists don't support access to abortion, under any circumstance. They may secretly hope for more teen births, if Sen. Lee's comments are any indication.

"It is only among unmarried women that birth rates have continued to fall," Lee said in the interview. "If that reflects delayed childbearing—perhaps induced by the recession—we may find that what would have been a greater number of out-of-wedlock births among younger women, instead, became a somewhat lower number of births to older married women."

Utah's population grew by 1.5% in 2024, to more than 3.5 million people. The Gardner Institute noted that growth rate is slightly lower than the state's 1.6% growth in 2023.

And then there's the aging population—fewer people are dying young. In 2019, the global life expectancy was 72.8 years, and it is expected to increase to 77.2 years by 2050. Those older citizens won't be having many babies.

Whether the United States or the world is overpopulated is a subject of debate. The global population is projected to reach a peak of around 10.4 billion in the 2080s before potentially declining or stabilizing, writes the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere, an organization which studies the pressures on humankind in the face of climate change and an economy based on growth.

Kathy Adams started thinking about overpopulation early in life. She grew up in Salt Lake and lived in the barracks of the old air base. "There were just tons of children," she said.

She worked as a probation officer, where she saw too often why parents want to give up their children.

When she married, she told her husband she had no intention of having children. He said he wasn't either—and that was it. They joined the zero population growth movement and were stunned at how much it would cost to raise a child.

There appears to be little debate about population in the White House, though. The administration is worried. President Trump has called himself the "fertilization president" and his team has proposed all kinds of potential incentives—even a $5,000 baby bonus—to get women birthing.

But there's more at play than money.

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• Hannah Owen and Dylan Ijams felt conflicted about bringing a child into a world of climate change and resource scarcity.

"I have serious qualms with the idea of bringing a kid into this world," says Hannah Owen. "Climate change is a real and present danger—kids are going to suffer. Resource allocation and scarcity; the dismantling of American institutions; the lack of real and true public education; the lack of any real social programs that support either children or the family. School shootings and any lack of reasonable and meaningful gun control. The list goes on and on."

Owen, 35, and her partner Dylan Ijams have been together for nearly eight years. He underwent a vasectomy in his 20s, and she had a hysterectomy a few years ago.

"It literally seems crazy that people are still having kids," she said. "I also feel torn because it feels like having a kid is a very hopeful thing we can do. A child represents our hope for and commitment to the future. But if there isn't any action behind it, isn't it just cruel?"

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• Actors Rebecca McCarthy and Tim Jeffryes spent their “child-bearing years” performing and studying.

Rebecca McCarthy and Tim Jeffryes have been on the same no-kids page for the 10 years they've known each other.

"The 'why' with men and women who want children is built into their DNA," says Jeffryes. "They spew out a bunch of reasons, but it's not in my soul. The world is too populated, taking up too many of the earth's resources, and I didn't think I'd be a good father."

McCarthy, who at one time worked for Planned Parenthood, has a one-woman show about sexuality, birth control and venereal disease. She is passionate about responsibility. She said that she spent her "child-bearing years" performing and earning a doctorate so she could teach and write.

"As a woman, it needs to be your ambition to be a mother," she said. "I decided to care for the people who are there."

She also saw the difficulty her sister and sister's wife went through to get a child.

"Those are the people who need to be parents," she said.

She and Jeffryes are both professional actors and want to keep a focus there. Jeffryes, seeing that birth control is mostly a woman's job, had a vasectomy. McCarthy was stunned.

"I thought to myself, 'You're really going to do this for me?' I was super grateful," she said.

She wonders what lawmakers think a woman's purpose is, if not to have a family.

"How narrowly we define it," she said, "it takes their humanness away from them."

And it tends to be men who are making laws around women's reproductive health.

"Men don't understand the sacrifice the woman makes," Jeffryes remarked. "We don't seem to understand and have no great compassion or empathy unless we experience it in our own lives."

For now, the politics around birth are steeped in anxiety and focused narrowly on reproduction—who gets to, who doesn't and who shouldn't.

"We need a more loving and effective balance between our wild spaces and our built spaces. We depend on the natural environment for literally everything," Soleil said. "I hope we find a better balance soon in how we consume and reproduce so that we and all of nature can thrive together."