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Jamaica has had a fertility crisis before. At the start of the 19th century, Jamaican planters rejected metropolitan efforts to end the slave trade and abolish slavery. One of their main arguments was the low fertility rate of female slaves.
If the slave trade ended, the economy would collapse because planters couldn’t depend on natural increase to create the next generation of workers. They could have improved the working conditions on their plantations, but it was cheaper to buy new slaves.
Fast forward to 2021. The projections that I’ve seen suggest that the population of Jamaicans in Jamaica will not rise above 3 million this century. I see the trends playing out in my own family. My mother's mother had 8 children. My mother had 4. My sister had none.
In addition to incubating new life, Jamaican women shoulder a disproportionate share of childcare responsibilities. This is true whether they have partners or not.
When people say abortion should be illegal, they're making an argument about the role women should play in the society. Pregnancy alters the life course of women, but places no burden on Jamaican men who are always free to walk.
This is obviously not fair to women, but governments that are anxious about fertility rates do not care about what is fair to women. They care about sending the right signals.
For example, a government will decide to not promote (tolerance for) homosexuality, because heterosexuals seem to need more encouragement right now. Similarly, they will oppose efforts to abandon draconian termination of pregnancy laws in the middle of a fertility crisis.
We like to think of ourselves as free people, but we're not free. Governments need tax payers to fund their initiatives & markets need consumers. Currently, we only know one way to create citizens. Coercing women to bring unwanted pregnancies to full term is cruel but defensible.
