That would be fair in view of the fact that men are required to die in war. However, I think most women would sooner accept the responsibility of the draft than that of motherhood. This is not a new phenomenon:
“…formerly the blessing of children was woman’s pride; now she boasts with Ennius that she ‘would rather face battle three times than bear one child.’”
– Marcus Terentius Varro, 1st century B.C. (as quoted in Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization)
It would be difficult to sell the idea of taking away anyone’s right to vote, but we could achieve a similar result by expanding the franchise to include children, and letting parents vote on their children’s behalf until they reach the age of majority. @johnwalker mentioned this idea in an earlier post:
Under this system, a childless woman could still vote, but a woman with four children could vote five times (once for herself, and again for each of her children), or three times if the children’s votes are divided between the mother and father. I don’t think this would stimulate births among people who have already decided not to have children because the returns to voting for any individual are virtually zero (one has a greater chance of being struck by lightning than casting the tie-breaking vote), but it would probably lead to governance with a longer time-horizon.
We are not the first civilization to encounter the problem of declining birth rates. Our ancestors have tried and failed to stimulate fertility among their people. Perhaps there is a solution, but I am beginning to think that everything goes in cycles. The Spartans enacted pro-natalist policies more radical than could be hoped for from any modern state:
“…for they have a law releasing the man who has been father of three sons from military service, and exempting the father of four from all taxes.”
– Aristotle, Politics, 2.1270b
But their society eventually died out due to an unfavorable distribution of wealth in which young men were left with too little property to make viable husbands. @jabowery’s militia.money might have offered a solution. Again from Politics:
“For next to the things just spoken of one might censure the Spartan institutions with respect to the unequal distribution of wealth. It has come about that some of the Spartans own too much property and some extremely little; owing to which the land has fallen into few hands, and this has also been badly regulated by the laws; [20] for the lawgiver made it dishonorable to sell a family’s existing estate, and did so rightly, but he granted liberty to alienate land at will by gift or bequest; yet the result that has happened was bound to follow in the one case as well as in the other. And also nearly two-fifths of the whole area of the country is owned by women, because of the number of women who inherit estates and the practice of giving large dowries; yet it would have been better if dowries had been prohibited by law or limited to a small or moderate amount . . .1 But as it is he is allowed to give an heiress in marriage to whomever he likes; and if he dies without having made directions as to this by will, whoever he leaves as his executor bestows her upon whom he chooses. As a result of this2 although the country is capable of supporting fifteen hundred cavalry and thirty thousand heavy-armed troopers, they numbered not even a thousand. And the defective nature of their system of land-tenure has been proved by the actual facts of history: the state did not succeed in enduring a single blow,3 but perished owing to the smallness of its population.”
2.1270a