Birth-right or Birth-earned

Article 16 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that (emphasis my own):

“Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.”

So what happens if childbirth was earned and not a right? This is the idea behind “The Coast Road” - a collection of short stories and novels written by Carrie Vaughn.

In this fictional world, conspiring black swan disasters (hurricanes, pandemics) repeatedly ravage the fragile modern world until it kicks the bucket. The idea is that the world can survive a single black swan disaster, but when you kick an opponent in the head and stamp on their feet, after you punched them in the groin, they’re probably not getting up again.

After a turbulent Max Max period, surviving humans cohere into an agrarian society, a stable series of settlements along a Californian coastline.

Their medical experts are equivalent to a hands-on mid-level practitioner. These people have managed to preserve basic modern medicine like antiseptics, but most importantly, birth control.

In the Coast Road, households earn the right to childbirth. Households usually have at least one couple capable of bearing children. When they think their collective efforts have been sufficient (consistently high levels of wheat harvest, cloth dyed and so on) they must petition for a banner. If a banner is granted, the household can then elect a woman to have their contraceptive device removed and hope she is fertile.

Perhaps you are now wondering how this kind of coercion is enforced, but in this world, society is highly conditioned against the excesses of their forebears and there is high societal pressure to conform. If your neighbouring household notices one of the women in your household has stopped appearing in the public, or the local council sees a steady dip in your output, they’ll send an Enforcer to check you out.

Enforcers travel in pairs, one as the muscle and the other as the brains. In truth, they work like any other law enforcement agency - they ask enough questions and people squirm. If the social contract - bearing a child without earning a banner - is broken, a household could be broken up. Though it is important to note that they will also get you for hoarding your produce. You could be shunned, where society literally cuts you out and won’t interact or bargain with you. This is the ultimate expression of being excluded at the childhood playground.

Enforcers in the Coast Road are really the embodiment of the societal pressure to conform to anti-capitalist sentiments. Imagine if a policeman showed up at your front door to investigate whether you’re hoarding tinned goods or throwing out repairable socks.

All told, an inhabitant of the Coast Road could be summarised as a secular version of existing modern day religious agrarian communities. For these real life communities, in broad strokes, the self-righting mechanisms are the religion and the culture that has grown around it. A Coast Road inhabitant is bound tightly by a deeply seated aversion of capitalistic over-consumption - though if that isn’t enough, the Enforcers will come after you with the implied threat of a staff and the real threat of societal shunning.

I’ve been thinking about the right to childbirth a long time before I read anything in the Coast Road set of stories. Being a parent is one of the hardest things a person can do, yet it is the easiest thing to initiate. You can tell that modern society struggles with this duality too by perusing, for example, British bureaucracy on child adoption.

I’m not saying childbirth should be earned, but perhaps we should view it a privilege instead.

On the close, I’ll leave you with article 7 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child which declares (emphasis mine):

“The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and. as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.”

I didn’t know this until I was researching for this article, but most nations in this day and age take a violation of article 7 as a legal violation, and you guessed it, will send their version of the Enforcers.

If it wasn’t clear, I really enjoyed Carrie Vaughn’s “The Coast Road” collection. Please support the author, have a look at her website, read her stories (following the hyperlinks in the ISFB entry is an effective way to do this), support her with your wallet by buying from a local bookstore.

This is an unsolicited discussion of “The Coast Road” collection.

Until next time.