White, black, and Latina, immigrant and native born, US women are having fewer children — by some measures, the birth rate is the lowest it has ever been. In the United States, the costs and work of childbearing and child-rearing are pushed onto parents, women in particular, while employers increasingly avoid contributing anything to the raising of their future workforce. Other countries have responded to plunging birth rates by providing free childcare, paid family leave for both parents, and shorter work hours. But here in the United States, we face a cheaper, meaner strategy to prop up the birth rate: make it harder to get abortions and birth control. The result is that one in four of our births is unintended, roughly twice the rate in countries with robust reproductive rights.

Last December, when House Speaker Paul Ryan instructed Americans to have more babies for the good of the economy, women responded with fury: “I’ll tell Paul Ryan the same thing I tell my parents and all their noisy friends: you want me to have babies, create an environment where having and raising a child doesn’t cost an entire adult person’s salary and I’ll think about it,” wrote MazzieD on Jezebel. Her response is not unusual. The latest reports show that in 2017, women in the US bore even fewer children than in 2016, a thirty-year low despite the alleged economic recovery. To explore the causes and dimensions of this “birth strike,” National Women’s Liberation has been asking women their reasons for having or not having children. The testi-fiers here range in age from their twenties to their sixties and two-thirds are women of color. The names have been changed.

The responses show that women are feeling sharply the burdens that US society puts on them. Those who don’t want children give economic reasons as often as personal preference. Those who want children are weighing their desires against their lack of time, money, sleep, affordable health care, and the anticipated costs to their well-being.