Avoiding Fertility Tests Is a Crime

Japan's health minister says it's about time Tokyo did something about the country's Children-of-Men-like birthrates. His astute analysis of the baby shortage:

"The number of women between the ages of 15 and 50 is fixed. The number of birth-giving machines [and] devices is fixed, so all we can ask is that they do their best per head," Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Hakuo Yanagisawa said in a speech Saturday, the Asahi and Mainichi newspapers reported.

The birth-giving machines of Japan are displeased, as well they should be, but the sentiment is perfectly consistent with the ideology behind birth-payment policies. If women don't want to be characterized as fetus producers by government officials, perhaps they should object when governments pay them to produce fetuses.

Headline explained here.