The Birthing Rights Lottery

It’s my nineteenth birthday, and sure enough, in my mailbox this morning I found the letter that every woman receives when she reaches the age of majority—my Birthing Rights Lottery notification.

In my hands, I hold the piece of paper that will tell me whether or not I have the right to bear a child in this life.

They call it a lottery because the privilege is supposed to be a random draw, with one out of every three young women being given the good news that she has been awarded procreation rights. But I doubt it’s random.

Ever since President Slater’s New World Evolution Party was elected into power six years ago, every Unified West citizen has been giving their blood to the New Ministry of Health for analysis, once a year on their birthday.

We’re told it’s so that each person can be given the appropriate vitamin cocktail according to their personal deficiencies. The New Health Equality policy was brought in shortly after Slater’s election in 2054. It purports to level out the playing field of baseline health for all citizens, no matter their socioeconomic status, by providing everybody with a yearly super-vitamin booster shot specific to their needs.

A wonderful idea, right?

But did President Slater make changes to the food industry, to promote better preventative health for the people? Perhaps he implemented new policies that would see organic farming being subsidized, or make nutritious groceries more affordable to everyone?

No. A fast-food burger is still cheaper than buying the ingredients to make a salad, and an ice cream sandwich from the corner store is cheaper than a piece of fresh local fruit.

It’s hard to reconcile this with Slater’s “good message” of truly caring about the peoples’ health. And besides, the blood testing isn’t mandatory until the age of twelve. If our well-being was truly at heart, wouldn’t it be ideal to give these vitamins to younger children, still in their formative years?

Who knows what those booster injections really are—sugar water for all we know. I suspect our blood is being taken for reasons other than providing a dose of essential nutrients to the people. I bet they’re examining our genes for hereditary diseases, or other undesirable attributes.

And what is undesirable? When every life is a beautiful gift—the blessing of a unique spirit on the earth—who decides what human qualities make the cut, and which ones don’t?

I wouldn’t be surprised if President Slater’s subjective preferences make up the guidelines; perhaps he’s creating his own version of the infamous Adolf Hitler’s Übermensch ideology, hoping to build a strong new elitist race, and rid humanity of weakness.

It is his own arrogant illusion to think he can improve human nature through selective breeding.

I want no part of it, and shudder at the thought.

I’m not the only person who has these suspicions, but for the most part, those of us who are unconvinced keep our beliefs to ourselves. To voice an alternative interpretation of our government’s agenda is to invite popular outrage and social shunning.

I think this is because nobody wants to believe that real darkness is possible. We prefer to keep that door closed, so we can continue sleeping without worrying there may be monsters in the closet.

Keep your night-lights on, children. You don’t have to get used to the dark.

What a lulling message.

It's not that we need to go to the opposite extreme, to let the darkness consume us. On the contrary—we can never let it put out our own light. All I’m saying is that if I’m allowed to have a child, I will teach him or her or them to open their eyes at night.

Lean into the blackness, I’ll say, it’s okay to be uncomfortable.

If you stay here long enough, you will see right through it to the deeper beauty that’s only possible to know if you can brave this path.

There’s an old Wendell Berry poem that I like to sing to myself:

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.

To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,

and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,

and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

These are dark times, and it helps when I can sing my way through them.

I am humming a tuneless melody now, as I glance down at the letter in my hands, and the small package that came with it.

The package is a box about the size of a pound of butter. It’s wrapped in brown paper, and sealed neatly with clear tape. A tiny gift, you might assume. Except I am aware of what lies inside these boxes, delivered to us like a special present on our nineteenth birthdays.

Each box contains a syringe, filled with one of two substances.

One is the Pro-Life Supplement serum, which is composed of folic acid, vitamin D, iron and the other essential nutrients required to incubate a healthy fetus and grow it to full term.

My guess is that there are other undisclosed “goodies” in there as well—perhaps some gene-modifiers to ensure that only so-called "perfect" babies are born into our new-and-improved human society.

The other possibility is that the syringe contains EndLine sterilization serum, branded with the tagline, With every end comes a new beginning. This one requires little explanation. Basically, it strips a person of the future generations that might have come to be, if their family line had been allowed to continue.

I’ve heard that this serum not only makes a person infertile, but robs them of their natural, raw sense of desire in every respect. Libido and creative energy are replaced by indifferent lethargy and complacency. Meaningful personal relationships become almost impossible; the reaching tendrils of deep connection are snipped by this emotional lobotomy.

I take the box onto my lap, and feel its weight. It seems much heavier than I'm sure it actually is, for within it lies the course of my entire future.

What will my birthday shot contain? Whatever it is, I’m required to inject myself with it by this afternoon. A medical personnel will check for its presence at my annual blood-giving this evening, and if I haven’t taken it, they will administer it for me.

If I refuse, I'll be detained until I comply. Most citizens agree that this consequential outcome is for the greater good.

I know not everybody wishes to have a baby. Many people don’t. I have several friends who have foregone their chances in the lottery, believing their declination to be a righteous act of planetary preservation; our population is already too high.

Others don’t want to bring a child into this messed-up world, where the future of humanity is so uncertain. They plunge the sterilization serum into their arms with heroic certainty, finalizing their sacrifice with stoic grace.

I can understand their reasons. But I’ve always wanted to be a Mother.

I’m almost embarrassed to admit the cliché, but I used to play with dolls and pretend to nurse my babies, holding their hard plastic heads up to my flat chest, my child's bosom. I would rock them to sleep, and announce to my parents that one day I would have a baby of every colour. My Mom and Dad would laugh and give each other a knowing look, no doubt thinking about how many daddies this vision of mine would necessarily involve, which of course, I knew nothing about at the time.

But that’s not how things work anymore—finding a father for the babies you want to have, and making them the old-fashioned way, I mean. That doesn't happen now.

We women have the Birthing Rights Lottery. For men it's different.

On their nineteenth birthday, anybody born with a man’s biology must make a donation to the sperm bank. Their sperm may or may not be used, and they will never know whether or not they have fathered a child.

I don't know if this is better or worse than my own fate of knowing with certainty, one way or the other.

The donated sperm stays in the bank for decades; young men sign a waiver of release saying they forfeit their progenic rights, and give the Unified West government sole permission to use their sperm (or not) for the next hundred years. This means that technically, a person can father a child after he dies.

After their donation, young men undergo a "quick and painless" procedure which ensures they will never have children any other way—that is, the natural way.

Oh yeah—no matter a person’s parental fate, every compliant nineteen-year-old receives ten thousand dollars upon completion of their birthday obligations.

Welcome to adulthood! Let us soften the blow…

I always imagined I’d fall in love one day, make a life-time commitment, and then raise a family with the person I've chosen, and who has chosen me.

My mentality is considered outdated.

I belong to Generation N. The “N” must be for nostalgia, I think. I am of the last cohort to be raised with free-birthing parents. I have a sister; now biological siblings are virtually unheard of. Maybe for the coming generations, this strange new way of doing things will be easy, and feel normal. But not for me. I am cursed with carrying living memories of how it used to be.

This is the way things are now, and I can’t change that. What was once the will of some greater force, and the product of love—the ability to have children—is now a measured and controlled privilege, which is decided upon and perfunctorily administered to one lucky third of the population, by the Unified West Government.

I take a deep breath.

Time to read my letter, and open the box.