I’ll admit this might be a bit of a strawman representation, but I’ve more or less heard this argument before and it always puzzles me. The task of preserving life is more quintessential to a functioning society than introducing it in the first place? Okay. One really isn’t objectively more impressive or riskier or costlier than the other, but sure. (That’s not even touching on how useful a mechanic the premise is to measure worth in the first place.) \
The other version of this kind of argument I’ve heard a few times runs along the lines of, “men do the everything and women just birth,” which comes from, clearly, a place of complete ignorance. So I guess this is, in the year of our Lord 2022, still a relevant topic. Hooray.
Anyway, the good news is, we will probably never see these guys again. This was at least a thousand years ago.

We’ll also probably never see this face of Estariel’s again!
The next time, it’ll be way worse.

Trigger warning for next time for the next few pages: pages 128-131 contain a torture dynamic/implied mutilation.