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Dear Friend,
Simone and Malcolm Collins live in an idyllic 1790s stone farmhouse in Pennsylvania with their four young children. Wearing an ankle-length black jumper and sporting copper pots in her kitchen, Simone could pass for a “trad wife” out of an Instagram account. But the couple says they aren’t looking backward but are thinking about the future: They hope to help save humanity from extinction.
As Mary Jackson and Emma Freire report in the new issue of WORLD Magazine, the Collinses are advocates of “pronatalism,” a growing movement calling for families to have more children as a way to reverse demographic decline. Malcolm Collins became a convert after working in South Korea and observing that fertility rates there were so low that for every 100 South Koreans, there will only be roughly six great-grandchildren. Many other developed nations are also experiencing falling or critically low birth rates—including Japan, Italy, and other countries in Southern Europe—suggesting a coming economic crisis.
While the pronatalist movement agrees on the need to reverse current trends, they agree on little else. Some advocates are Silicon Valley tech elites, some are conservative Christians opposed to assisted reproductive technologies, and others hold liberal ethical views. The Collinses, for their part, are advocates of IVF and have used polygenic screening to determine which of their roughly 40 frozen embryos have the best chances at good health and academic achievement.
In contrast to the pronatalist movement is the “antinatalist” camp. As Grace Snell reports, antinatalists believe it is morally wrong to have children under any circumstances, due to the suffering in the world. Sadly, some of these advocates admit their philosophy is the logical outflow of atheistic belief.
Also in this issue, Grove City College political professor Paul Kengor reflects on the legacy of Jimmy Carter, a one-term president who was openly religious yet is most remembered for his administration’s flaws.
Please read on to see what else you’ll find in the February edition of WORLD.
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