Readers Write: The birthrate, women and voter ID, sexual harassment

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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The letter to the editor headlined “Have more kids, just don’t ask for help” (Readers Write, April 23) encapsulated exactly why America’s birthrate is declining and why the White House’s idea to simply pay mothers $5,000 for having a baby is ludicrous. Yes, other countries do this, and those other countries also have the supports that make it possible to actually raise a child — starting with paid leave and universal child care. Without at least those, $5,000 is laughable when child care for an infant costs $20,000 a year and when the Trump administration is doing everything it can to make child care even more expensive and impossible to find by eliminating Head Start.

Don’t think that will affect you? Think again. Child care centers across the state, especially in rural areas, have spots specifically for Head Start kids. If those kids go away, those centers close because of the hit to their budgets. There aren’t 20 families just waiting for care who have the financial means to pay for it. The same is true for the Child Care Assistance Program that is surely next on the chopping block if they succeed in eliminating Head Start. About 70% of child care centers in the state accept kids on this program, and it’s a significant amount of their budgets.

Without those kids, centers will close, and they will close unexpectedly quickly. But apparently that’s what the Trump administration wants — women at home barefoot and pregnant surrounded by kids.

Lydia Pietruszewski, Bemidji, Minn.

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What? “White House weighs how to bump up U.S. birthrate,” and “Baby bonuses, other fertility incentives weighed by Trump” (April 22). I find it sadly ironic that the Trump administration is looking to increase the population in the United States while at the same time deporting immigrants who want to live here, work here, pay taxes, go to church, make a better life for themselves ... and maybe have babies. The solution should be so simple: We need more Dreamers.

Pete Boelter, North Branch

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I am responding to a comment on birthrates in the April 23 Star Tribune. The gender pay gap is still very real, even though gender-based discrimination in pay has been illegal for decades. When you look at what women make, mothers make significantly less than their colleagues who are not parents. This is the phenomenon termed “the motherhood penalty.” Starting two years before a woman gives birth to her first child, she is looked at differently in the workplace and afforded fewer opportunities because employers see her as a caretaker. A $5,000 bonus only for women who have babies would not even begin to correct the financial inequities mothers face in the workplace. Especially when compared to the lifetime wage gap women experience.

Colleen Josephs, Minneapolis

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The April 22 article in the Star Tribune demonstrates one of the tragic ironies in life. The article discusses the White House trying to bump up the United States’ birthrate by paying people. The tragic irony is not the objective of trying to increase the U.S. birthrate but how they are approaching it. Paying people to have babies will not impact the birthrate.

We need to look at the causal factors for infertility, like environmental pollution. The science on infertility being linked to environmental pollution is strong. The research now shows that environmental pollution contributes to dropping sperm counts and premature ovarian failure. This pollution is from chemical, air and water pollution.

Ironically, the White House, while supporting a higher birthrate, is also supporting chemical and oil companies plus repealing environmental protection laws. The last time Republicans supported strong environmental protection laws was back in the 1970s when the Democrats and moderate Republicans passed the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. A Republican president signed the bills. The far-right Republicans said these two laws would hurt the economy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average back in the 1970s was around 1,000; right before Trump took over in January it was 44,000. It appears that protecting the environment does not hurt business nor the economy.

If the White House truly wants to increase the birthrate, which I support, it needs to stop repealing environmental protection laws, stop supporting chemical and oil companies and start supporting the research that shows environmental pollution can cause infertility. In other words, start cleaning up our planet.

Kevin Timothy Wand, Edina

The writer is a retired family physician.

On April 24, I was again very proud to be a member of the League of Women Voters (LWV). With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union in League of Women Voters v. Trump, the LWV pushed back and won a court case against the executive order that states must require proof of citizenship in order for people to vote. It is a preliminary injunction. This executive order mirrors the requirement in the SAVE Act that passed the U.S. House. So, this fight to protect the right to vote is not over. Please write your senators to prevent the SAVE Act from passing in the Senate.

It is especially appropriate that the LWV brought the lawsuit as the LWV was originally established to support the right of women to vote. This executive order and the SAVE Act would greatly impair the right of many millions of women who are citizens in the U.S. to vote. Why? Unless the woman has a passport or has kept her maiden name as her legal name, having a birth certificate that says you were born in the U.S. will likely not be enough. A woman would need to prove she was the person on the birth certificate, which means having all the documents proving her change to her married name. If divorced and remarried, she may also need the divorce papers and the proof that she changed her last name again. Women who are naturalized citizens will have similar issues if they married and changed their name after they were naturalized.

The complexity of this can be daunting, especially if you have moved around the country as these marriages and name changes accrued. Many women who do not have passports may simply decide not to bother to vote. Hence the SAVE Act and this executive order can be viewed as an attempt to reduce the influence of women at the polls. It is another piece of the “Handmaid’s Tale” that is at the heart of much of the 2025 Project.

Please make your voices heard to preserve the right to vote for all citizens who will be disenfranchised, without merit, by this executive order and/or the SAVE Act.

Megan Dahlberg, Roseville

Former Hennepin County District Judge Jay Quam is publicly reprimanded for a pattern of sexual harassment, an inappropriate workplace relationship and “canoodling” on the job (gross!) — and former Hennepin County District Judge Kevin Burke calls it “a very sad situation for him and for his family”? (“Longtime judge rebuked over sexual harassment,” April 26.)

Silly me. I was expecting Burke to say it’s a sad situation for all the women who worked for this guy.

Leslie Martin, Inver Grove Heights