How can I bring children into this world? The question surfaced in my mind as the attacks on the World Trade Center unfolded on that impossibly clear morning of September 11, 2001. Just one day earlier, I had learned I was pregnant with my third child. Hours earlier, I had been filled with uncomplicated joy, imagining our growing family, wondering whether this baby might be a daughter after two boys. I hadn’t yet worried about the logistics of caring for three small children with only two arms. I hadn’t thought about how we would fit another child into our tiny studio apartment, which we jokingly referred to as a ten-room studio. I wasn’t thinking about work-life balance or my own health. I was simply elated.

But as the world experienced an inconceivable rupture, that joy was pierced by a sudden, personal terror. Hearing about the first airplane, then the second striking the towers, and finally the realization that this was a coordinated attack, the sense of shock deepened with each unfolding moment. With it, the thought of bringing new life into a world that could fracture so violently became overwhelming, almost frightening.

This was not the first time I had questioned the act of bringing children into the world, and I am far from the first to ask it. Across centuries, thinkers and texts have returned to this same unsettling thought, from Sophocles’ stark claim that “not to be born is best of all,” to Ecclesiastes lament (4:2-3) “And I praise the dead who have already died, above the living, who are yet alive. But better than both is he who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil work that is done under the sun".

In New York City, conversations about children are often practical and........

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