" - Elves consider life to start before birth -"

"Do you also object to abortion?"

"That being?"

"Deliberate termination of a pregnancy?"

" - oh good lord."

" - I guess since you can get pregnant by accident it's better if - if someone didn't want to be -"

"Long as it's, like, 'I'm pregnant and I don't want to be pregnant' instead of 'I'm pregnant but I can't afford a child credit'' -"

"And what should one do if pregnant and unable to afford a child credit?"

"What happens to 'em if they have the baby?"

"They get sterilized and the baby adopted out."

"Your world is in fact pretty horrible."

"If you let them keep the kid everyone'd do that."

"I gather Elves just. Don't want babies as much," says Shasali. "I actually managed not to for ethical reasons even though I could have afforded it, before I got decontaminated, and it was horrible." She snuggles Asame.

"Our birthrate's pretty high but we're so slow to grow up that we had lightleapers long before we felt pressed for space."

"Managed not to for ethical reasons?"

"I was red. I didn't want to - I didn't endorsedly want to - have red children - and now I have blue ones." Snuggle snuggle snuggle.

"Because of Aitim's government treating reds so badly?"

"Anitam has been the most consistently humane government towards reds and ex-reds on the planet," she says firmly. "I don't appreciate you all on what I can only assume is sort of my behalf denigrating his efforts, I think you aren't clear on what the counterpressure was like. Transition era was a very worrying time and I just had higher standards for the life I wanted to provide to my children than I could realize before Aitim's government, at no cost to me, got me out."

"I wonder if our Amenta has a you."

"If it doesn't have Inlad's family, I suppose she'd be in Lakla's red neighborhood still."

"No, we got them all out, she'd be on Endorë somewhere. I could look it up by district of origin if I had access to a computer - I am really going to miss the internet -"

"Save me," sighs Isama, quietly, "a world of no Internet."

"Is the Internet not the kind of thing three Fëanors can put together."

"I mean, I have done it once, but - hmm maybe we could disassemble existing computers for raw materials and then have the wizards make more of them, faster than mining -"