Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

In the hierarchy of Rights, where does bearing children come in? And when is there a State interest to intervene? Since society's imperative is to perpetuate itself, the Right to bear children hovers near the top, however, China's One Child policy was a main ingredient contributing to its emergence as a World Power, and arguably is leading to more individual liberty for all of its citizens. China's approach cured terrible poverty, albeit generating other problems, but I'm guessing the vast majority of their citizens would not go back. This is prima fascia evidence that restricting childbearing until passing some metric or condition will significantly improve society. There is a legitimate discussion about encouraging population control in the Third World as part of any strategy to intervene during their unending crisis of poverty.

The West has exactly the opposite problem: we want to encourage childbearing but instead we discourage it through our focus on creating an Aristocracy & providing a comfortable retirement for The Old, together which consume most of the available resources, stagnating the opportunity & income among those who should be having children. Combine that with the high costs of raising children, not to mention the burden it places on parents, and it's easy to understand why all Western societies have shrinking indigenous populations. Also, because childbearing is a Women's Rights issue, a woman cannot be forced to bear nor abort a fetus. The choice of who will have children coming from the State is certainly an issue of Personal Liberty: does most-liberty-to-most-people tomorrow justify imposing on liberty today?