VietNam is a society in which the vast majority of the population is barely making enough food or money to feed and shelter themselves. Things have improved substantially over the past couple of decades, but this has coincided with drastic and oppressive population control measures. Per capita income is still less than $1000 a year.
I’m not advocating the oppressive tactics. But I recognize that if people don’t limit child-bearing voluntarily, governments will end up doing it for them involuntarily. The best way to counter such governmental abuses is to vigorously promote responsible self-limitation on child-bearing, and that’s what is sorely lacking in conservative discourse.
You need look no further than the post immediately preceding your own, for an example of the typical FR argument re poverty and fertility, repeating the usual theme of “having more babies will make them better off economically”. Can’t afford to hire employees to generate profits for you? Just breed some that you can make work for you without pay!
In any case, that's for Catherine Pham Thi Thanh and her husband to decide. They are the only ones who can make this judgment of how many children they want and need.
The point must be reiterated: the people in this article are productive, they and their children; and the government --- not the babies, the government --- is reducing them to penury.
On the family level--- according to the article--- they have the means to space, delay, or even prevent more childbearing already, via NFP: the only method of family-planning which requies no daily, monthly or yarly supplies, makes no demands on the public health infreastructure, and costs nothing (beyond the initial investment of learning the method); which has no expensive or dangerous side-effects; which requires the equal and intelligent commitment of both the husband and the wife; and which cannot be used coercively by the state.
If they have the liberty to manage both their production and their reproduction, the interference of the state has nothing to do with the common good and everything to do with tyranny.