Jenny Brown, organizer for National Women’s Liberation and author of Birth Strike: The Hidden Fight Over Women’s Work, presents a different perspective on the rather successful attempts to make getting an abortion– if you are poor– harder and harder.
Brown cites statistics demonstrating that U.S. women are having fewer and fewer babies, right now our birthrate is below simple replacement levels in the population. This is of great concern to the 1% who fear there won’t be enough workers to exploit in the future.
Besides being a woman’s fundamental right of sovereignty over her own body, Brown reminds us that “The production of children, and who will pay for it, is a key economic battlefront.”
She discusses the carrot and stick methods that governments have used to increase birthrate. The “carrot,” preferred in Europe and Scandinavia is to provide generous parental leave, good inexpensive childcare and other programs that makes having a child easier. The U.S. has used the “stick” approach– trying to ban abortion and now going after birth control.
Read more at:https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/08/abortion-rights-strike-economic-battlefront-birth-rates
contributed by Kathy Scarbrough
Actually, the carrot approach has been used in the US. The Family and Medical Leave Act was passed in the 90s to allow parents to take up to 3 months unpaid leave and still keep their jobs. Maternity and paternity leave is expanding. Some tech companies have months of paid leave for both mothers and fathers who are functioning as primary caretakers of children.