Amid the din about childless cat ladies, you may have missed the NY Times and Washington Post’s articles this week on the movements in Russia and the US to increase the birthrate, or rather the birthrates of some segments of their populations.

There have long been calls in America, starting in the mid 19^th Century, for white America to increase its birthrate. The Know-Nothing Party rose in response to Irish-Catholic immigration of 1848 and the fears of white Protestants that they would lose power. Hence the criminalization of birth control and abortion because white men didn’t want their white wives using them (the fact that women of color would be banned also didn’t initially matter in their cradle competition).  The white Protestants went all in on their eugenics when they later targeted poor or immigrant women with hysterectomies, and legislation requiring sterilization for unfit women. 

The Great Replacement Theory that many US conservatives tout is old whine in a new bottle. It is immigration again that is the political lever that these conservatives are using to raise white fears of being replaced. Since they have already succeeded in criminalizing abortion in much of the country, birth control is next. Count on it.

In Russia, the Washington Post reported that Putin said the following: “Many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had seven or eight children, and maybe even more,” Putin declared to an audience of ultraconservative religious and political figures who had convened in the State Kremlin Palace in November. “We should preserve and revive these wonderful traditions.”

Russia has a TFR of 1.4. The US is 1.6 (the rate for white women is slightly less than that of African-American and Hispanic women).  Russia is fighting a war, and men are leaving the country. Russia is kidnapping Ukrainian children to replenish the youth of the country. Putin, like US conservatives, seeks a country based on Orthodox Christianity and nationalism. Putin said, “Making sure Russians have as many children as possible is the underlying goal of our state policy.”

Women are a means to this end for both US and Russian nationalists. Women’s rights are disposable. 

See:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/07/30/russia-putin-antifeminism-women-children-society/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&utm_campaign=wp_todays_worldview&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3e88816%2F66a9b812b115535658dc2a42%2F60a4ff32ae7e8a50b536ca00%2F36%2F61%2F66a9b812b115535658dc2a42

https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/why-jd-vance-worries-about-childlessness-00bb96cb