Birthing babies should not be a condition for voting rights

The first time I heard the right-wing argument that political participation and voting should be tied to parenthood was more than fifteen years ago. The argument was that the only ones we can trust with our country are those who have kids because parents have a vested interest in making a better future for their children. Childless couples don’t. The subtext was that conservatives have more kids so they truly care about the future.

Two years ago, J.D. Vance made the same argument: if you don’t have kids, you don’t have a stake in the future. And the more kids you have, the more votes you should get (at the link, the writer points out why this isn’t the huge edge for conservatives Vance may think)! We need to get the population up and we can’t do it with immigrants (see more here). Just recently, someone on Twitter argued that we can’t have democracy without “limiting suffrage to parents.” Evidence offered? None. Though Elon Musk, the ever idiotic, chimed in to agree.

In the first place, I think this is as ridiculous as most proposals to restrict the franchise. Everyone has a stake in how this country is run; restrictions need to have a damn good rationale and they never do. The idea a single twentysomething doesn’t have the same stake in the future as a fortysomething with a teenage kid is nonsense. Heck, I’m 65 and I have a stake in the future. If I live to 105, that’s forty years of future; I’d rather not spend it in a global warming nightmare.

And that brings up another point: Vance and the others who make this argument are either wrong or lying (with Vance I’d guess the latter). Global warming will create a nightmare future if it’s not averted but plenty of people with kids are adamant we shouldn’t do anything to stave it off. Republicans are fans of doing nothing to stop mass shootings or epidemics; they’ll make the next pandemic even worse. None of this suggests a concern for their children’s future.

I’m curious, also, how this will work in practice. I suspect rather than “parents with kids” it’ll be “two-parent families with kids.” And if they could find a way to give all the votes to the husband, they’d do it. But even if not, it’s still a bad idea.