We are far closer to removing women's rights to increase birth rates, rather than emancipating workers so they can actually have lives.

From woman's perspective, its hostile now to even be pregnant, if stillbirth, miscarriage, etc can stick you with murder charges and doctors in the state can't save your life in the event of complications.

From man's perspective, if you accidentally get someone pregnant, you get stuck with 18 years of child support, wage garnishing, criminal penalties but only civil court proceedings so you can't defend yourself well legally.

Why bother.

Edit:

"But if things keep trending the way they are, the United States is heading toward a future in which our population numbers will be directly tied to border policy."

The pre-trump population projections I've seen all accounted for a decline in fertility and also depended on immigration to support growth, social security programs and other retirement solvency. But now we have the double whammy of decreased immigration, forced deportations, and super accelerated declines in fertility thanks to federal policies and economic uncertainty.

I'm curious to see the revised population projections for the USA out 100 years with those factors woven in.

It probably means all of these cones get shifted downward somewhere, and worst case we see flattening or decline in the line, and end up like Japan and Korea, no fertility and no immigration and who knows what happens after that.

I mean its not just cost, people have options now and realize the point of life doesn't just have to be about having kids. There is a reason smart people have fewer children lol

Won't do anything, everywhere in the workd, Nordics Australia, France. Japan, Soith Korea etal when women have control over their bodies they inevitably choose 0,1 or 2. You need 2.1 for stasis

If you want the number to go up, you need to remove choice from women eg no access to birth control, no access to work etc , typical of relegion and/or patriarchal societies.

Young people should just pull themselves up by the bootstraps

agreed. this sounds like climate change predictions. Im expecting now to see it in a year or two.