@Goshin
I suppose the first question which needs to be addressed is should reproduction rates stay high in developed countries? Is that good or bad? Given that the Earth's human population just surpassed 8 billion people this past summer, do we really need replacement rate levels of reproduction or higher in developed countries? Those countries can maintain their populations by immigration, allowing overburdened developing and under-developed counties to reduce their surplus populations and enjoy better living conditions for those who remain. We as a species are running up against the carrying capacity of the Earth, estimated to be between 10 and 12 billion humans. When I was born the human global population was just 3 billion and globally prosperity levels even in the developed world were far lower than today. If we in the developed world want to maintain our standard of living, then we're going to have to absorb surplus populations from abroad. To expect the Earth to support billions of Asians, Africans and South/Central Americans all,living at our present customary levels of consumption is unrealistic, unless we absorb the best that the world has to offer in order to share the wealth through migration.
Now to Heinlein's points. Believe it or not, women have agency in their choices for reproduction in most developed countries. This agency has given them the power to make better choices for themselves. In a country like America which values (at least in principle) protecting the rights and freedoms of its citizens, it seems odd that Heinlein or anyone else would stress a society's collective need for domestic reproductive security over individuals' rights to make choices over their own reproductive destiny. Women now have jobs, better educatin, economic independence and more political clout, all because they have been freed from minding the cribs of the nation. Why should their individual choices be questioned through the lens of ccollectivist thinking about nationalist reproductive security or perhaps even nativism from some fringe corners of the American populace. If women are so valued that Heinlein listed them first in his moral creed, then letting them make the best reproductive choices for themselves seems only natural.
I sense that Mr. Heinlein may have been channeling a sort of pioneer morality where cultures in competition needed to out reproduce each other in order to succeed or defeat a settler-colonial project of displacement and land theft. This was a running theme through many of his books. His notion of only enfranchising veterans of interplanetary or interstellar colonial wars with the right to vote seems to indicate that Heinlein favoured some flavour of militarised manifest destiny over universal rights and freedoms for all. Forging national destinies is often hostile to the maintenance of personal liberties and freedom for all.
So I guess the takeaway question would be, "Can America rely on population replacement from immigration rather than reproduction or would the changes which that reliance brought be too unacceptable to Americans today? Not being an American, I don't know the answer to that, but in Canada we're generally more receptive to immigration and refugee resettlement than our good cousins to our south.
What say you right back at'cha!
Cheers andd be well.
Evilroddy.
