Her Womb, Her Choice

Around the world, worries about falling birth rates are putting women’s freedom to choose at risk. But having children must remain a woman’s decision.

When Delhi’s Chief Minister says women are not baby-making machines, she is absolutely right. She was talking about her government’s Lakshmi Yojana scheme, where women with more than three children may not get the benefit. That may be a way to keep the number of people claiming the benefit under control. But the bigger point is important: women must have the right to decide whether and when they have children.

This matters because some political leaders, especially in southern India, have recently been asking people to have more children. Leaders in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, for example, have spoken about the need for bigger families.

But this is not a demand that affects men and women equally. Women’s bodies are the ones that go through pregnancy and childbirth. Women have also faced many forms of pressure and control over their bodies — including being forced to undergo sterilisation, being forced to continue pregnancies, and facing unfair treatment at work because they are pregnant.

So when leaders talk about a “demographic disadvantage” and say people should have more children, we need to be careful. It can become another way of telling women what they should do with their own bodies.

There is another thing these arguments often ignore: raising children is expensive. Education costs in India, for example, have been rising by around 10–12% a year. Families have to think about housing, food, healthcare and education too.

This is not just an Indian debate. China’s Xi Jinping has encouraged Chinese women to have more children, even though the Chinese government once had strict policies designed to stop families from having too many children. In Russia, Vladimir Putin has also urged women to have much larger families, while Russia’s war has sent many young people into battle.

Yes, birth rates are falling in India and many other countries. Governments are worried about what this could mean in the future. Some have tried to encourage people to have more children, but no country has found a magic solution.

Governments can certainly make it easier for people who want children. They can provide affordable childcare, better parental leave and support for families.

But there is one basic idea we should never forget:

Having children is a personal choice, not a duty to the country.

A woman may want children, or she may not. She may want one child rather than three. She may want to wait until she is older, or concentrate on her education or career first.

Those choices belong to her.

Women are citizens, not tools for solving a country’s population problem. Their bodies, their futures and their choices should remain their own.

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