Peressa Rabniran is having a quiet evening at home poring over some friends' research papers. Her husband is out on a camping trip with friends who, like him, are considerably more outdoorsy than Peressa, and they don't have any children yet, so she has the apartment to herself. She could go out to the floor lounge, but she's enjoying the solitude. She sips a spiced orange mixer and flips to a different paper.
"I think maybe they do that in Canada, because Canadians are loons who have a TFR of like negative two or something?"
"The F stands for fertility but I forget the rest of it. It's a number that says how many babies you're managing to have but I don't know if it can actually be negative even if you let people have abortions which I think Canada also does."
"Having a child younger than that isn't illegal here but it isn't encouraged and most people choose to wait. People tend to want enough children, on average, for starting later than biologically feasible not to be a problem."
"It's this chemical that people used a lot of that turns out to wreck women's reproductive systems, but it does it, like, over time, so a lot of girls can have kids when they're fifteen and not when they're twenty, or whatever."
"Nnnnnnot so much. I think it has a circle part and then something sticking out like -" She gestures. "But I don't think I could draw it or say what's in it."
"Okay. Does it collect more in some parts of the body than others? Do you object to doctors taking a blood sample to see if they can identify it?"
"Ugh I hate needles but if you have that thing that lets you get lots of vials from one draw they can have some next time I need bloodwork for something else I guess. It mostly only hits the human female reproductive organs, not animals or, uh, lungs or anything."
"--Okay, but I'm not assuming that what that looks like is the same in your universe as it is here."
"I have... math and seminary and English and history and chemistry and choir?"
"Seminary isn't translating. Can you say what kind of math you were learning? Where you were at in chemistry?"
"We were doing the thing where you figure out how much of each thing you have to add so there aren't any leftovers in a reaction... and geometry... and seminary is where we study Scripture."