The Future Generation

Families must be supported by the government. Raising children and teaching them civilized values is EXTREMELY important to society. Even if you don’t care what happens after you die, you should care what happens in your old age. Throughout history, support for the aged was primarily their grown children. Social Security merely pools that--- it assumes people are having and raising kids. Therefore the government that backs social security has an obligation to make the system workable by subsidizing fertility when it drops too low.
Some, perhaps, oppose such policy because they want the human race to die out or it’s numbers drastically reduced. At them I sneer, that is not going to happen; people have kids all across the globe despite adverse conditions-it is a fundamental human drive. Attempts to reduce fertility rates by government policy will merely ensure that more kids will be raised in poverty and by parents who have not been able to plan a secure future for their kids.
I consider deliberately having no kids despite the ability to raise them to be immoral, as a default to societal obligations (Imagine the effects on social security, pensions, investments, public services if no one/few had kids + 50 years. Substantially contributing to raising other people’s kids, I think, mostly mitigates the immorality of deliberate childlessness.) The government already spends a lot of money on supporting families and the raising of children, but I think more and better focused spending/tax breaks are needed.

That said, women, under all circumstances should have the final say on having children and how many—government and society can incentivize and persuade but it is immoral for them to dictate---either to limit or to mandate. I have not reached any conclusion as to welfare for single mothers with kids as it creates moral hazard. Ideally, I would like policy that supports such children without incentivizing fatherlessness-but nothing occurs to me so far.
I consider abortion immoral proportional to its proximity to birth. Infanticide is murder, contraception is not immoral, because of that, as a pragmatist, I would consider a political compromise where all but early term abortions are allowed in exchange for government subsidized contraceptives and matching available sex-ed. The goal is to reduce number of abortions per capita, especially late term abortions. Some exceptions for abortion: Incest, Rape, Mothers life at risk in carrying to term, and if the fetus will not survive childhood. That moral call in those cases should delegated to individuals.

One final issue: I oppose designer babies for the following reasons;
1. We don’t know what to select for. This has always been the fundamental problem of eugenics. Consider sickle cell and that our civilization may collapse or be radically different in the future.
2. It reduces the value of human life in a similar fashion to racism by making it plain that certain lives are to be valued above others.
3. It reduces human genetic diversity, which impoverishes society and makes humanity less adaptable and less disease resistant.