Introduction & Thesis
My boyfriend calls me baby, which is funny because I used to think that I would never be a part of one of those cringey couples, using pet names instead of the appellations we’d legally obtained. So, I’m surprised that I like it as much as I do. I think it’s because I know that he means it. That he regards my life with the same reverence as you would a baby, with as much gentleness, as much protection, and as much care. Or, somewhat less sentimentally, he simply acknowledges the indisputable fact that I was once a baby, and if you truly love babies, then you must also love the men and women that they will one day become.
For this reason, I don’t see women’s rights as an attack on children. More specifically, I don’t see women’s right to reproductive healthcare to be in conflict with children’s (moral, not necessarily legal) right to grow up and lead happy, healthy lives. Rather, I see these two agendas (although perhaps I should use a less politically charged synonym to communicate the following thought) as working together in tandem. Children’s rights cannot be protected without women’s rights. Indeed, the one is contingent upon the other.
While I do acknowledge that anthropological research has demonstrated a directly negative correlation between women’s rights and the number of children being produced, there is also an observed directly positive correlation between women’s rights and the quality of the lives of the children these women do raise, roughly half of which will grow up to be women themselves.
So, at present, I believe that we should be more invested in the defense and preservation of women’s rights (to their bodily autonomy, reproductive healthcare medication, ability to travel while pregnant, ability to work in the government and in higher paying jobs, and ability to access education for themselves and their progeny, all of which are rights currently subject to potential legislative change) than in engaging in any sort of Pro-Life Vs. Pro-Choice debate, for I sincerely do not believe that it ever was a question of one versus the other.
I believe that we should strive for both. A life with choices, for all men, all women, and all children.
our current dilemma
Regrettably, such idealistic optimism is a far cry from the harsh realities of what is going on within our country’s reproductive healthcare systems at present. Within ten days since Trump’s inauguration as the 47th President of the United States, he and his compatriots have 1) ended federal funding of elective abortion 2) suggested that Plan B legality be left up to the states 3) suggested women who seek abortion outside of their home state be persecuted and 4) rejoined the Geneva Consensus Declaration, an anti-LGBT and anti-reproductive rights group created in 2020 under Trump’s administration. Even before this, however, the country faced major setbacks in women’s reproductive rights after the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
How this endangers women medically
As an individual with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), I find these recent developments to be very troubling. See, PCOS is a chronic illness largely characterized by cysts in the ovaries, hormonal imbalances, and issues with infertility. In order to regulate my hormones (preventing me from passing out, having fevers, or coming down with chronic inflammation) and medically generate a monthly menstrual cycle (preventing my ovaries from developing ovarian cancer that either could kill me or would have to be removed via partial or full hysterectomy) I take prescription birth control. The same medication that Trump strongly implicated in an interview might soon be regulated by the states. What this means is that state legislation could eventually ban the birth control pill, in turn banning me from receiving life-saving care. While I could hypothetically respond to an enacted birth control ban by having a total hysterectomy before ovarian cancer could develop, this would be an incredibly painful trade-off, as I have always wanted to have kids, and this procedure would bar me from that. That being said, I don’t believe that the state of my uterus and ovaries is a decision in which the government, state or federal, should have a say.
I do recognize that it is also a possibility that the Trump administration never bans birth control, instead exclusively cracking down on surgical abortions. However, this would also inhibit my ability to try for a child, as women with PCOS are significantly more likely than women without it to develop ectopic pregnancies–pregnancies where the egg is implanted outside of the uterus. These pregnancies are unviable, and when left unterminated, most certainly result in the death of both the baby and the mom.
So, that’s my personal dilemma.
I acknowledge, however, that it takes a certain level of empathy to care for the individual strife of a stranger–which to many of my readers, I would qualify as. However, I do not share my personal medical information with you to ask for your sympathy or pity. No, I do not. The real reason that I am sharing with you my concerns regarding women’s reproductive rights through the lens of having PCOS is because PCOS affects 8-13% percent of women (according to the World Health Organization, but our government left that organization, so perhaps they don’t know). That would mean that roughly ten percent of women in the U.S. could actually be barred from having children by laws that are being instated under the false guise of protecting children, which could have calamitous impacts on our country’s population.
Or would it?
The thing is, it’s too early to be sure. I have theorized that the government’s increasingly restrictive laws surrounding reproductive rights and abortion healthcare are not actually incentivized by scientific or moral beliefs, such as that life begins at conception or that God is the only one who can decide when a baby should be born or not, but rather by political goals. More specifically, the government wants to prevent women from getting abortions because our fertility rate is declining.
Allow me to explain this more clearly.
how the united states’ fertility rate is declining
In order to maintain the United States’ current population of three hundred and forty-one million people, this country would consistently need to produce 2.1 babies per woman. That is the fertility replacement rate of our country, but we are not meeting it. As matters currently stand, we are producing roughly 1.7 babies per American woman in the United States, which is a 1.22% drop from five years ago, and a 12.43% drop since ten years ago back in 2015. By contrast, our fertility rate during the year I was born, 2005, was 2.06. In even sharper contrast, the fertility rate during the Baby Boom was roughly 3.5. Most of our government officials are boomers, meaning that they have watched with wary eyes as our country’s fertility rate has dropped 53.71% since the year of their birth.
Why has the fertility rate dropped so much? Well, there are a lot of contributing factors, but I will list some major ones shortly.
The first is inflation. See, when the value of the U.S. dollar goes down, American citizens need more dollars to get by. Oftentimes, this results in even married women having to join the workforce. Once women start working, they have less time and energy for children. In dual-income households, it is also more difficult to raise babies specifically, since maternity leave in the United States doesn’t exceed twelve weeks, leaving mothers dependent upon nannies and family members to help raise their babies during the four years between their birth and when they can start to go to school.
Another is women’s education. As formerly stated, women’s education is negatively correlated with women’s reproductive rates. In the U.S. specifically, not only do women have access to K-12th schooling, but they are dominating the higher education field, with 58% of the undergraduate population being comprised of women. Ergo, instead of getting married and pregnant during the height of their fertility window, women are pursuing degrees. When they graduate college, instead of relying on a man for financial security, they will be seeking full-time employment with these degrees.
The final factor I want to make note of is the drop in our biological fertility, with just under 20% of couples unable to conceive even after a year of unprotected sex. Whether American women have a chronic illness like PCOS or not, they likely still have been affected by the surplus of hormones in our food supply, specifically red meat, processed foods, caffeine, soy, and dairy, all resulting in a dip in their fertility. Women are also getting married later and starting their periods earlier (which I researched and talked about in my girlhood article, linked here), meaning that by the time they do start family planning, their fertility windows may already be closing. Additionally, men’s testosterone levels have also been seen as going down. With men’s virility and women’s fertility decreasing dramatically, even couples that want children may struggle to have them. There are, of course, medical treatments like in-vitro fertilization to combat these issues, but these treatments are not always covered by insurance, meaning that it has created a huge class gap between infertile women who can still have babies versus those who cannot. So, with only 10% of the country holding 60% of the country’s wealth, expensive fertility treatment plans are not the solution to increasing women’s fertility replacement rate.
So, if the government wants to increase or even maintain the United States’ current population, what can it do?
Well, historically we have relied on immigration to keep our population numbers up, but with Donald Trump sending ICE after immigrants deemed illegal and questioning birthright citizenship, it appears that this isn’t the strategy the U.S. government is implementing, either.
What it appears that they are doing is hoping to increase our fertility rate by barring U.S. women from receiving abortions. That way, whether women want the baby or not, whether it’s a safe pregnancy or not, every fertilized egg, in the absence of a miscarriage, becomes a baby. Because, in the words of Vice President JD Vance, they “want more babies in the United States of America.” Note that he did not say, “We want financially struggling mothers who struggle with infertility to have more treatment options available to them.” He also did not say anything about keeping those babies safe from school shootings, which averaged more than one a day in January of 2025 alone. He did not say anything about feeding the babies that will grow up to rely on free breakfasts and lunches from public schools, which a Republican congressman has said should be taken away, because children need to learn to work and not rely on handouts. There was no mention of care or protection of children whatsoever. Only a raw desire to have them, to increase our fertility and prevent population decline without relying on immigration numbers.
This is how our current government intends to boost the population.
Why exactly they are so hellbent on doing this is unclear. Are they merely trying to generate more members of the working class? Are they preparing to cancel out the deaths of millions of Americans in an impending war? At this point, there are only theories, and I have tried, despite my strong implicit biases against legislation that could kill me, to give you mostly facts.
So, I will leave you with what I have written thus far, but I encourage you to peruse the sources I have linked for you and reflect on all that I have shared, as at some point in the future, we may get the opportunity to vote on this topic again, in which case it is best to do it from as informed a perspective as possible, which I have taken the time out of my school week to provide to you to the best of my ability.
Thank you for reading, and have a great day.