When in history would you have said “it’s a great time to reproduce!”?

It’s irrelevant. “It’s a choice” is also quite literal; modern contraceptives have only really been available for less than 100 years.

Education and access to information are also key points that cannot be hand-waived.

Edit: I’ll offer a counter-question. How bad would things have to get before you decided that it would be a bad idea to reproduce?