Samuel Hammond sits at a cluttered desk in his Washington office, holding up the pamphlet that changed the world. “It’s a giant space fetus,” the think-tank staffer says with a grin. “You’re never going to get that from a liberal child-welfare organization.”
The pamphlet, titled “The Conservative Case for a Child Allowance,” does indeed show a big pink fetus, silhouetted against a globe and held by a pair of hands. Released in early 2021, the paper features an epigraph from the Book of Psalms: “Children are a gift from the Lord.” In it, Hammond and his co-author argue that giving cash to parents would strengthen families, bolster the institution of marriage, and reduce abortions, while at the same time boosting the economy and lessening dependence on the state. As the title suggests, it’s a right-wing argument for a proposal more often associated with the bleeding-heart left.
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