With the passage of the 20 week abortion law in Texas last week, the familiar refrain of “feminists” has been front and center in the media -“A woman’s right to choose”. I have been thinking about this phrase for a long time, dear readers, and what I have arrived at is this:  Why should it only be a woman’s right to choose to abort a child? Have we really gone so far that it is no longer a valid choice for a woman to choose to have more than one child, or to have a child at all? The reason that this has been on my mind so much is that this issue has become highly personal to me.

As a woman whose husband chose to pursue a professional degree, I was thrust into the (usually) male role of primary breadwinner for the first five years of our marriage. This was an unsettling hat to wear, as I am sure you can imagine, but even more so since I work in marketing which has been highly unstable for the life of my career. Eventually my husband received his doctorate and we were able to start our family, but ever since our son came along, and I began teaching at night in order to be home with our son during the day, things have been tight financially. Now that our son is of an age where he will be in school all day I am free to return to work full time. This sounds like it should be a fairly easy thing, but I am finding that is not the case.

It seems like perhaps after nearly seven months of looking, hundreds of resumes sent out and dozens of interviews completed that things may be turning around-but this  brings about conflicting emotions. On the one hand I am thrilled that our financial fortunes may be reversing and getting less restrictive. On the other hand I am concerned that I may not have many years left to conceive another child.

What does all of this have to do with a woman’s right to choose, you ask? Well, the question I have is this:  Shouldn’t it be my choice to be able to afford to have another child without worrying about risking the loss of financial security for my family (in the shape of a new job for me)? What ever happened to THAT choice?

Many European countries face declining birth rates.  One small town in Italy in 2007 saw four babies born in that town. Yes, you read that correctly-four. “But what does the birth rate in a little town in Italy have to do with the U.S.?” you might ask. A lot if you view it as an indicator of what is to come for the U.S.  You see  a declining birth rate-which is what the current trend is-means less wealth for everyone down the road. When there are fewer children born, there are fewer wealth creators which drive our consumer based economy. Fewer wealth creators equals less opportunity for folks like you and me who are in the middle class. If you review history you will find that when the U.S. has a higher birth rate, its economy does well and we all benefit because of increased productivity.

So perhaps my question is best posed to our economic apologist in chief, but I ask you to consider, isn’t it a woman’s right to choose to have BOTH economic prosperity for her family and the number of children she wants? Or have we as women been taken prisoner by some “feminist” ideal where our fertility is ruled by the “feminist” mob instead of ourselves? Something to consider.