Elon Musk reportedly offered friends and associates the use of his sperm in conceiving children, including one such suggestion to Nicole Shanahan, the vice presidential pick for the independent Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., campaign.
Shanahan rejected the suggestion, according to The New York Times, which cited multiple unnamed sources regarding the exchange.
The alleged offer came in late 2022 after Musk and Shanahan reportedly had a brief affair that prompted the end of the former lawyer’s marriage to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
Both Musk and Shanahan have denied having an affair, with the Tesla co-founder calling the 2022 Wall Street Journal report on the alleged relationship “total bs.”
The Independent has contacted Musk and Shanahan for comment.
Shanahan wasn’t the only one to get such an offer from Musk, according to the Times report. The tech executive also offered his sperm to a couple he didn’t know well during a dinner party at the home of a well-known Silicon Valley executive last year.
As The Independent has reported, Musk, who has at least 11 children by three mothers, is a pro-natalist who believes population decline poses a major threat to society and people should be encouraged to have as many children as possible.
In July of last year, Musk replied “Yup,” to a series of posts from X user @fentasyl, which argued “democracy is probably unworkable long term without limiting suffrage to parents.”
Musk has also been the most prominent supporter of the Trump campaign, whose vice presidential nominee JD Vance has called declining birth rates a “civilizational crisis” driven by a “childless left,” and accused Democrats of being “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives.”
Donald Trump, who appointed three conservative Supreme Court justices, was instrumental in the 2022 high court ruling overturning the right to an abortion.
The ruling paved the way for a wave of abortion bans, which have imperiled and in some cases led to the deaths of women seeking abortions in U.S. hospitals.
Since then, Trump has come out vocally in support of in vitro fertilization, calling himself the “father of IVF,” offending some anti-abortion conservatives
According to the United Nations, the population reached nearly 8.2 billion by mid-2024 and is expected to grow to 10.3 billion over the next 60 years, before then declining to 10.2 billion.
