Simone Collins
Appearances
Consider This from NPR
They want America to have more babies. Is this their moment?
My whole entire Etsy get-up right now, it's intentionally cringe.
Consider This from NPR
They want America to have more babies. Is this their moment?
There should obviously be more cybernetics in my outfit, but we are combining chunky hipster glasses and a lot of modern equipment with a bonnet and linen clothing.
Consider This from NPR
They want America to have more babies. Is this their moment?
You'll get to do that soon.
Consider This from NPR
They want America to have more babies. Is this their moment?
I would rather not do that. But historically, women died in childbirth at roughly similar rates to the rates at which men died protecting their land or country.
Consider This from NPR
They want America to have more babies. Is this their moment?
The number one goal we have is to make everyone universally aware of demographic collapse as a catastrophic issue. Our big focus is primarily on just signaling that this is a culture that values family and kids, and secondarily taking a regulatory foot off the neck of parents.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
The difference between eugenics and what we practice, which we call polygenics, comes down to consent and individual choice. Eugenics, by definition, involves basically establishing these are good traits and genes. These are bad traits and genes. And on a population level, we are going to try to maximize the good genes and minimize the bad genes.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
So one trait that may be very disadvantageous today could be the lifesaver of tomorrow, depending on how conditions change. As a result, it's really important to have a diverse population and to allow families to select for traits that they think are important. And that's what we're all about.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
For example, even though we could theoretically, with polygenic risk score testing, screen autism out of our children, like many parents want to do, we don't because we actually... think that there are a lot of benefits to certain types of autism, which are within our family. So the big difference comes down to coercion.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
Is a society on the whole being forced to do or not do this thing with regard to how they have children? And about the importance of diversity and traits and understanding that there is no such thing as a universally good or bad trait.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
Elon Musk is a little bit busy with Doge, so I don't expect him to be very involved in pronatalist policy, but he's been always a huge advocate of pronatalist policies, as well as raising awareness about demographic collapse. We are profoundly grateful for that. We're thrilled that J.D.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
Vance is vice president and that in his first speech as vice president, he talked about the importance of America having more babies. When you look not just at these two men, but many people within the Trump administration, you can see that pronatalism
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
is really permeated throughout the entire organization, from Carolyn Leavitt, who sometimes brings her infant in to work with her, to just the number of children that members of the administration have. We're talking five, six, seven. You can see that these are people who just fundamentally agree that children are good and that the future is important. And we find that to be incredibly helpful.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
have submitted executive order drafts to the administration for low-hanging fruit that we think could make lives a lot easier for parents and increase the total fertility rate of the United States. We have very high hopes for this administration.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
Our house is surrounded by a beautiful field that has fireflies in the summer, and it's adjacent to the Valley Forge National Park, which is quite a large park in our area. While our oldest is in kindergarten, our youngest are either with me or with neighbors who live right next to us.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
With demographic collapse, I'm worried not about the elite tech people that are often attributed with championing this cause, but rather the most vulnerable people in society. Like with climate change, demographic collapse disproportionately affects the people who are most dependent on social services, on governments working, on jobs. medical assistance from governments.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
And when you run out of taxpayers who can fund those programs, including pensions, infrastructure development, police, fire security, things like that, you have huge swaths of people who are not only vulnerable, who not only don't have enough money for food or medical care, but who will likely die. So this is a very serious and very scary issue.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
And if governments can't figure out how to continue to support the vulnerable people in their societies when they run out of a taxpaying base due to so many old people, we are in really big trouble.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
I would love to have as many children as I can physically have. So basically until my uterus is removed in a C-section that goes a little wrong or I am unable to carry more pregnancies, I will keep having children, 10, 14, however many I can have.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
That's correct. Yes.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
And yet you hear plenty of stories throughout history of both men and women being very excited to further their values, to support their families and their countries by doing these things, respectively.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
So one thing that we do with our embryos is called polygenic risk score selection, PGTP, which is a more advanced version of the typical pre-implantation genetic testing done by many couples who do IVF already. This has been done for over 10 years. This is just a more advanced and detailed version of it.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
This allows us to look at which embryos have higher risks of things like cancer, which we're very concerned about. and then have the higher cancer risk children later with hopes that once they're adults, they're more likely to have access to screening and cures that will save their lives.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
Now, PGTP also enables families to test for things like height and intelligence, which are considered very controversial terms. But when you look at parents' interest in giving their children the best advantages possible, their willingness to pay for things like test prep courses and send them to all these special tutoring sessions.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
We really have trouble seeing a big difference between looking at an embryo's odds of having high educational attainment or high earnings versus trying to intervene after they are born.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
We want to give our children very strong signals in many ways throughout their lives that we have high expectations for them, that they belong to a culture that expects them to contribute to a better future and to the betterment of humanity.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
We also want a culture that differentiates them from the rest of society because we found that what we call the urban monoculture, basically the predominant culture in most developed countries and most urban areas, is very toxic. As we can see through declining birth rates, it is a sterilizing culture.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
So we give our children names like Octavian, Torsten, Titan, and Industry to show them, among many other things, that they are different and they are not like these other people because we want to protect them from something we find to be very harmful.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
We are a family of six with a five-year-old, a three-year-old, a two-year-old and an almost one-year-old and another baby on the way.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
I would love to have as many children as I can physically have. So basically until my uterus is removed in a C-section that goes a little wrong.
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
There's a really big difference between family-friendly policy, that is to say things that parents would love to see, and policies that will actually help families have more children and encourage families to have more children. It has been pretty clearly shown that
Global News Podcast
The Global Story: Pronatalism - Make America procreate again?
that sending people free child care or giving them very generous maternity leave or giving them payments for having children will not meaningfully increase birth rates. Hungary has spent five to six percent of its GDP on really expensive programs encouraging parents to have children that really just aren't moving the needle enough.