"The sect leaders make a very conscious effort to impregnate the women. Some of them, I was told, even pray before mating, offering supplications for God..."

"... to make the products of what they are doing become children that will inherit their ideology."

"Paternity Case for a New Jersey Mother of Twins Bears Unexpected Results: Two Fathers."

An interesting story which I only started reading because I thought it was about bears.

The case took root when the mother, identified only as T.M., told the Passaic County Board of Social Services in the course of applying for benefits that A.S., her romantic partner, had fathered her twins, The Law Journal reported. The board, in turn, filed an application to establish his paternity and force him to pay child support for the twins, born in January 2013.

But the woman�s claim slowly fell apart. She revealed in testimony that she had had sex with a second, unidentified man within a week of having sex with her romantic partner. A paternity test was ordered....

What will sex education sound like when the government sees a need to encourage young women to get pregnant?

The NYT has an article titled "Sex Education in Europe Turns to Urging More Births," but there's precious little in it about how a society � having given sexual freedom and birth control to women � can foster a rebirth of birth.

The comments at the NYT are loaded with statements that we don't need more people on earth. Now, the article is mostly about the need to keep up the birthrate, so I understand why people are responding on that level, but it's interesting that so few accept the presentation of the problem.

My criticism of the article is that it didn't do what the headline made me think it would do and get into a topic I've been concerned with for years. What if, over time, with perfect reproductive freedom, the choice to avoid childbirth is far more popular than we'd ever imagined? One solution would be to back off from women's freedom and equality, and I don't like that. So the thought experiment is: Assume women will continue to have the power to avoid childbirth and complete freedom to exercise that power. Assume we agree that the birthrate must be increased. What can we do?

ADDED: I just happened to run into another NYT piece from a week ago, "No Kids for Me, Thanks":

Meghan Daum, the editor of the anthology ["Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids"]... said, �It�s undeniable that watching this culture play out � the helicopter parenting, the media fixation on baby bumps and celebrity childbearing and -rearing � is overwhelming, and it�s natural that people would react against it.�

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"The Supreme Court is giving a former UPS driver another chance to prove her claim of discrimination after the company did not offer her lighter duty when she was pregnant."

"The vote was 6-3 in Young's favor. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote the majority opinion."

The outcome reflects a "middle ground" that Justice Elena Kagan suggested during arguments in early December. Courts must now re-examine Young's case with a more accepting view of the discrimination claim. UPS and other employers facing similar suits still are able to argue their policies were legal because they were based on seniority or some other acceptable reason.

ADDED: From SCOTUSblog:

The Court appears to reject both sides' arguments about the meaning of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.... The Court chooses an interpretation of its own. The plaintiff, a pregnant woman, under the Court's approach will be required to show that she belongs to the protected class, that she sought accommodation, that the employer did not accommodate her, and that it did accommodate others similar in their ability or inability to work.

So, apparently, it's a minimalist, moderate approach attuned to the particular circumstances of this case. The PDF of the opinion is here.  The dissenters are Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy. Kennedy seems like the interesting vote. Let's read that. Kennedy also joins Scalia's dissent, which he says he did because  "[m]any other workers with health-related restrictions were not accommodated either," and because "there is no showing here of animus or hostility to pregnant women." But he writes his own separate opinion to associate himself with the "societal concern" about the particular problems of women in the workplace. Pregnancy can be "serious disadvantage." It's "an issue of national importance." And there are a lot of statutes that "honor and safeguard the important contributions women make to both the workplace and the American family." Please don't think Justice Kennedy lacks empathy toward the interests of women!