Birthright: A Near-Future Novel
A country votes on banning natural birth-and for one young woman it's about to become the most personal question of her life.
Europe, 2096. After the collapse of global birthrates, nearly every child is born in artificial wombs and raised in state-run Centers designed to eliminate uncertainty. Those born the old way live in their own districts, remnants of a past slowly fading from view.
Grace is in her final year at a Center, her life steady, structured, and meticulously guided by AI-assisted human caretakers. She often lingers where her peers move on, asking questions the Center's curriculum considers settled. Yet she has never doubted her carefully engineered upbringing-until she is gifted a banned book that awakens a longing to see beyond the Center's walls.
On a school trip to Natural-Born District 1, Grace meets Tom, whose world is full of things she's only read about: families built on warmth and choice, streets overtaken by wild green, futures that aren't prewritten. Drawn to him and his different life, Grace begins bending rules-sneaking out, clashing with friends, deceiving caretakers-and starts to notice what her system quietly takes away.
When a charismatic minister drives a referendum to outlaw natural birth "for the children's sake," protests turn violent. And Grace discovers she is carrying a secret that puts everything-her bond with Tom, her future, her freedom-on a collision course with a system that has already made up its mind.
With days dwindling and the system tightening its grip, Grace must make a decision: protect the future she was raised for, or risk everything for one that no one else believes in.
Tense, intimate, and plausibly near, Birthright asks not only who gets to decide how we are made and shaped, but how much certainty we're willing to trade for choice.
If banning natural birth promised a better life for everyone-would you vote yes?
For readers of Klara and the Sun, The Handmaid's Tale, and The Power, who enjoy literary unease combined with page-turning force.
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