Rachel Lu's 2026 pronatalism essay distances the term 'pronatalist' from a genetic-engineering fringe it names 'polygenic embryo selection'

pronatalismpolygenic-embryo-selectionlaw-libertyeugenicsai-genomicsfirst-encounter-term

Rachel Lu writes that she has "become increasingly leery of the term 'pronatalist'... Now it's often read as support for a whole range of unethical practices and revanchist ideals, from mandatory tradwivery to polygenic embryo selection." Lu's own project in the essay is a "libertarian" pronatalism built on policy reform (tax and family-support incentives), and she names the genetic-engineering fringe specifically to disavow it — the term she is defending is under pressure from associations she does not want.

Before this capture, this vault had zero mentions of "polygenic embryo selection." It is the entry point into a distinct, AI-adjacent practice: using machine-learned polygenic scores to rank IVF embryos before implantation, documented concretely at claim-heliospect-genomics-used-ai-polygenic-scoring-to-rank-embryos-by-iq. The fact that a pronatalism advocate feels the need to publicly disavow it is itself evidence the practice already has enough real-world visibility to shape how the parent movement's own vocabulary is read.