1. If this technology were safe and effective, what fraction of prospective parents would pay an extra $10,000 to avoid pregnancy?
2. If insurance covered ectogenesis, what fraction of mothers would still opt for a traditional pregnancy?
3. How much do you think the availability of ectogenesis would affect family size?
I've never had a baby, of course, but looking at my friends, the pregnancy seems trivial compared to caring for a newborn. And there are good reasons to go through pregnancy: the ability to breastfeed, for one, and also the pair-bonding hormones that flood your body during and after birth.
On the other hand, pregnancy is pretty hard on the body--I've never seen a woman come out of her first pregnancy as good looking as she went in, which is emotionally difficult. And it's risky. $10,000 seems a pretty cheap price to pay--though I'd add that I bet ectogenesis would cost a lot more than that.
The interesting question he doesn't ask is what this would do to the politics of parenting. Pro-choice advocates don't talk so much about the right not to be a parent; they focus on the right to control your own body. That's also where the constitutional law seems to be focused, or so I read the right to privacy. The minute you can take an aborted fetus and put it in an artificial womb, that argument falls away, and we get down to what pro-choicers really care about: not having a kid. I'm not saying that pregnancy is minor, but most people don't have an abortion because they don't want to be pregnant; they have abortions because they don't want to have a kid, or at least not this kid right now.
I can construct a libertarian argument for a right not to parent, but once the pregnancy leaves the sacred space of the individual body, both the logical and the emotional arguments get a lot weaker. What will society look like when unwanted pregnancies start turning, once again, into unwanted kids?
The argument over bodily control does not fall away "once you can take an aborted fetus and put it in an artificial womb". The methods for removing a living fetus and a dead one are as different as night and day. It might fall away if the latter procedure is more intrusive, but I doubt that is ever going to be the case.
the pregnancy seems trivial compared to caring for a newborn.
Indeed. Pregnancy hardships vary, but even the hardest ones pale in comparison to 18 years of child-rearing.
I can see a rise in local adoptions (as opposed to parents adopting foreign kids) and/or a return of orphanages.
I can also see a military program akin to the clone army in star wars, although I admit this is the least likely of the options.
Okay, three things:
1) Given that the IVF portion of Ectogenesis would cost $10K-plus (As someone about to start their 3rd IVF cycle, I’m fairly sure of that) alone, no, Ectogenesis would clearly cost a great deal more than that depending on how labor intensive fetus rearing was.
2) Most of the women I know who wish to have children would rather give birth to the infant themselves. Pregnancy is part of the process to produce a child. Even my friends who hated being pregnant and would never do it again were perfectly happy to have the experience the first time. Were the option presented to me I would like to have the experience of being pregnant at least once. I know that my breasts and belly will swell and there is a large chance I’ll only loose half the baby weight, but there is something wonderful about doing something that every woman in your family you are directly descended from has ever done.
3) It seems as if Ectogenesis would not be applicable to aborted fetuses. The discussion is for IVF. When a woman aborts a fetus it generally gets destroyed in the process.
Truth be told, the last point I find sort of obnoxious. People who are pro-choice use the argument that it’s their body/there choice. The argument is generally not about whether the fetus could survive without them -- that’s irrelevant to the discussion. My genetic material is my genetic material until I give birth to do. If I want to create 50 fertilized eggs and then destroy them, I can. Why would an aborted fetus be any different? If it’s a got’cha for all of the pro-choicers out there, it’s a really bad one.
If it were possible to remove a fetus alive without forcing the pregnant woman to undergo major surgery (a big if) then I'd say that all justification for legal abortion has disappeared. Presumably adoption would be available as an option. To say "my right to avoid knowing that my genetic offspring is out there somewhere" trumps the fetus' interest in living strikes me as insane.
You've got to be kidding me. If it was possible OF COURSE I would skip being pregnant and having to deliver!
wtf?!?!?! You feel like crap for nine months and then you have a day or so of intense pain! Followed by more pain! I'm woman enough to admit this!
What may go in as a "banana" - sure as hell comes out as a "pineapple," as the saying goes!
Your boobs and stomach are ruined. Your bladder is NEVER THE SAME. Oh and neither is your hair.
I love my children (of course!), and my pregnancies and deliveries were all normal and fine, but if I had the choice I'd TOTALLY skip the pregnancy/delivery part!
If it were possible to remove a fetus alive without forcing the pregnant woman to undergo major surgery (a big if) then I'd say that all justification for legal abortion has disappeared. Presumably adoption would be available as an option. To say "my right to avoid knowing that my genetic offspring is out there somewhere" trumps the fetus' interest in living strikes me as insane.
I think that the option is still there. It could be either cost-prohibitive to remove the fetus without destroying it, or perhaps adoption would take too great of an emotional toll on the mother- for some, I can see how it'd be easier to abort than to adopt. Or the fetus might be at risk for some horrible genetic defect. There's so many "what ifs" that the justification for legal abortion is definitely still there.
"I've never seen a woman come out of her first pregnancy as good looking as she went in"
Actually, my wife was a size 8 before pregancy, and a 4 petite after. The strange thing is that before she was a workout warrior, teaching 5 classes a week of step aerobics, yoga fit & kickboxing. Afterwords, she stopped teaching becuase of time constraints and worked out a lot less in general. For some reason, though, she dropped a couple of dress sizes. Lucky her (and lucky me!). (And to the cynics, there's no eating disorder involved.)
In this kind of discussion, is it too hard to put yourself in the place of the child and think that your mother preferred to incubate you in an artificial womb instead of herself just because she didn't want to get fat or were not able to suffer what is needed for you? For me it sounds too inhuman to even think of the possibility. If parents are not willing to sacrifice themselves for their children since the beginning, better not to have any children.
If we get working ectogenesis, and we get technology that can remove an unwanted fetus and put it in an artificial womb, and this leads to the outlawing of abortion and a government mandate to bring all babies to term in federally funded artificial wombs and then put them up for adoption, I for one will go out and try and generate at least one or two hundred progeny, both in test tubes and the other, fun way, and let them be raised at government expense, the better to promote my genetic legacy. I trust everyone else's selfish genes will lead them to do the same?
Count me in as another husband who's come out looking better after pregnancy than before. (Perhaps I'm biased.)
"husband who's come out"
Uh, that's "whose wife" has come out better than ever...
I trust everyone else's selfish genes will lead them to do the same?
I see no reason why the feds couldn't get child support from you quite a bit more easily than the women you knock up, so that probably isn't the wisest of ideas.
As an adjunct to Kate's point, women already have the option of using gestational surrogates (with the woman's own eggs and the husband's sperm). Very few women do this, even those who have serious physical issues with carrying a pregnancy to term -- the financial and emotional difficulties are non-trivial.
In any case, it won't come to pass for many, many years, and won't be financially reasonable. There's too much we don't know right now about how placentas function and how fetal and maternal hormones interact. Just to name a few examples, we're still not sure what causes preeclampsia (the current thinking is that it's a placental implantation problem), nor do we know exactly what initiates labor, or best how to promote fetal lung maturity.
The problem of ectogenesis is orders of magnitude more complicated than IVF or organ transplantation. If neither of those is reliable, easy, or inexpensive, there is no reason to think that the same would be true about ectogenesis. It will be many decades if not centuries before it moves out of the realm of the theoretical. Talking about its potential effects on abortion policy is precisely as relevant as talking about how teleportation will impact highway spending.
ve never seen a woman come out of her first pregnancy as good looking as she went in, which is emotionally difficult.
It occurs to me that while this seems emotionally difficult, it probably pales in comparison to the emotion challenge of raising children.
This leads to the conclusion that if you're avoiding pregnancy because you're worried about what it will do to your looks, you're probably a frivolous bimbo who shouldn't have kids anyway. Age will get your looks in the end, so you'd best be prepared to move gracefully to a new stage of your life in which looks aren't the dominant motif whether or not you decide to have kids.
If you are going to assume a technology like ectogenesis, why not just assume the simpler technology of perfect birth control/STD prevention. Then you only have a kid when you decide to, by going in to the doctor and having your fertility (male and female) turned on.
What would that do to the right to life argument? Would there be any excuse for abortion?
There was a somewhat parallel situation in San Francisco about twenty years ago. An elderly woman had a dog that she claimed to "love" so much that she couldn't bear the thought of it being with another owner after her death. So, she put it in her will that the dog be put to sleep when she died.
The San Francisco Humane Society successfully sued to overturn this provision, claiming that the dog's interest in living outweighed a human's desire that the dog not continue living without the former owner. The dog was eventually adopted.
That's the thinking I'd apply to the case of ectogenesis and abortion. I realize that some, perhaps many, pregnant women would prefer to destroy their fetus rather than simply unload it to the ectogenesis machine- I just think that once unloading becomes possible, the balance of rights shifts in favor of the fetus.
I'm very doubtful that this will ever be possible, however.
Rob, are you saying the feds would make it illegal for parents to put their kids up for adoption? I don't really understand.
As I understand it, the situation Megan envisions involves the government taking unwanted fetuses out of the bodies of women and bringing them to term in artificial wombs. I imagine mothers in this situation, who would otherwise have aborted their fetuses, will put them up for adoption rather than choose to raise them. I can't see where child support from either parent would enter the question.
Rob: This leads to the conclusion that if you're avoiding pregnancy because you're worried about what it will do to your looks, you're probably a frivolous bimbo who shouldn't have kids anyway.
What? I can't believe you just wrote that. "While providing financially for children is challenging, it pales in comparison to the emotional and behavioral challenges of raising kids. This leads to the conclusion that if you're avoiding pregnancy because of financial considerations you're probably a shallow asshole who shouldn't be having kids anyway." Huh? There are many valid reasons to be anxious about having kids, and saying goodbye to your own youth, both physically and emotionally, is one of those reasons.
I can't see where child support from either parent would enter the question.
The current version of child support law does not include provisions for child support for artificially gestated babies. But since you suggested that your children be gestated in "federally funded" wombs and "raised at government expense," I see no reason for the rest of us not to come after your irresponsible ass for the money.
Women already have the right to offload their baby for a few days after it's born. They get to bring it to a fire house within three days of birth and, no questions asked, they're no longer a mother.
I propose that mothers be required to deliver formal notice of paternity to the father before suing for child support. The father gets three days after formal notification of pregnancy to legally disentangle himself from the baby -- the same three days the mother gets at birth. The mother can deliver the notice well before birth [in case she wants to have an abortion unless she can count on child support], or at birth, or later. Occasionally mothers delay child support proceedings to wait for the father's career to ripen and to get past the point where the father can realistically participate in the child's life, so she can get the bucks without pesky co-parenting, and my proposal would render this despicable practice ineffective.
-dk
Rob: exactly. If the government decides to take fetuses out of the wombs of women who do not want to bring them to term, which is what Megan is envisaging here, it is going to have to raise those children when the women give them up for adoption. Do you propose to try to force women who give their children up for adoption to pay child support? Or would you only charge fathers for child support for the children both they and the mothers have given up for adoption? You can't. And since you can't, men and women will be free to abandon birth control entirely, secure in the knowledge that if they do conceive a child, they can simply give it up to the government to bring it artificially to term and raise it, at taxpayer expense.
Brooksfoe, your analogy fails. I was comparing emotional cost A (no longer hot) to emotional cost B (trying to raise children). One of these is MUCH larger than the other, and if they are roughly parallel in your mind, you're almost certainly a frivolous bimbo.
You are comparing financial cost to emotional cost, aka apples to oranges. It is perfectly possible to be emotionally prepared for children while lacking the necessary financial resources; it's much harder to be emotionally prepared for kids and yet simultaneous lack the necessary emotional resources to deal with not looking as good as you used to.
But to go along with your analogy, if you're worried that children will cut into your DVD budget, you probably are a shallow asshole who shouldn't have kids. On the flip side, if you're worried that you don't have enough money to provide your children with adequate food, clothing, shelter, and attention, then you're a responsible prospective parent.
So the dads have to pay child support but the moms don't, after ectogenesis?
This is even remotely fair and constitutional because ...
-dk
Do you propose to try to force women who give their children up for adoption to pay child support?
I don't see why not, theoretically speaking. The practical implications are of course problematic (back alley abortions and whatnot).
On the other hand, if somebody else (an infertile couple, say) wishes to voluntarily assume those obligations, then we can let mom and dad off the hook; no double recovery for the government.
This is even remotely fair and constitutional because ...
Because Women have rights, while males have only responsibilities.
Rob: "I don't see why not, theoretically speaking."
Um...Okay then.
Rob thinks parents who give their kids up for adoption should have to pay child support. Duly noted. Yikes.
Rob thinks parents who give their kids up for adoption should have to pay child support. Duly noted.
Oh, for heaven's sake, allow me to quote myself from a few minutes ago:
if somebody else (an infertile couple, say) wishes to voluntarily assume those obligations, then we can let mom and dad off the hook
And you can add to that my comments about "federally funded" and "government expense." I think that parents who surrender their children to become wards of the state should pay child support to the state. This has absolutely ZERO to do with adoption, a practice in which governments do not engage.
dk: I think the concept that you are looking for is "paper abortion." (And I don't mean my work desk.) Can't remember where I read about it, but it was the idea that, if women are entirely in control of whether to have a child or not (having the primary choices re: abortion & adoption), men should have the same choices - though, obviously, abortion doesn't need to enter into it for them. Men would get notice of any claim of paternity and then have some period of time (4 or 5 months or so, roughly equivalent to how long women have to decide whether or not to terminate) to either accept or disclaim paternity. If they accept, they have equal parental rights (custody) and obligations (support) with the mother. If they disclaim, they terminate all parental rights but also terminate any potential claim for financial support.
Frankly, it's hard to see how this isn't fair.
Science fiction author Lois McMaster Bujold has just about made a career out of answering these questions. (Okay, not quite, but her Vorkosigan novels are tied to the notion of the "uterine replicator," as she calls it. It features quite heavily in her books.)
The social and moral implications of such an invention play heavily.
Throw in some modestly priced advances in cryogenics and you lose the "I don't want this kid right now" argument, too.
What would that do to the right to life argument? Would there be any excuse for abortion?
Posted by Michael | August 1, 2008 5:43 PM
Of course there would be. A woman still has the right to an abortion even though she deliberately got pregnant. That wouldn't change if she went to a doctor to "have her fertility turned on", then changed her mind.
An entirely different argument than if she chooses to gestate the baby in an artificial womb. There is no longer the tension between the rights of the fetus and the right off the mother not to go through pregnancy.
Let me rant for a few moments and then say: READ PEOPLE!!!
The right to abortion has virtually nothing to do with a woman's right to control her body during pregnancy. From the majority decision in Roe v Wade:
"This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent. (1)Specific and direct harm medically diagnosable even in early pregnancy may be involved. (2) Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. (3) Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by child care. (4) There is also the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it."
Those are the courts reasons for allowing abortion. That is why the court allows women to have choice to free themselves from the burdens of motherhood. While 1 does apply only to women, notice that 2, 3, and 4 applies to both men and women. And notice the focus on parenthood in the text, it wasn't just about being pregnant.. the decision is based upon the burdens that parenthood impresses on people.
If it is possible to extract embryos with minimal risk, why not permit fathers, who have exactly the same genetic investment as mothers, to take custody of the embryo and bring it to 'birth', if that is the father's desire? Of course, the mother would be on the hook for child support, regardless of her views, just as the father is today. Only if both parents agree to abortion would it be performed.
Demonspawn:
If you take away the right of the woman not to be forced to go through pregnancy as the rationale for abortion, then all your arguments would apply to a newborn baby, giving a woman the constitutional right to kill her newborn.
Go read Lois MacMaster Bojold's Vorkosigan Saga books. She pretty much covered everything about it's use.
Did a dandy job of trashing Andrea Dworkin's critizism of the technology ("projected" at the time).
Rob, I don't have statistics on how often children given up for adoption at birth go the route of first becoming wards of the state, but I would guess that it would be a majority of the cases. I guess what you're proposing is that our system be changed so that it becomes the responsibility of women giving birth to find adoptive parents or face mandatory child support when the child is placed in the care of the state. I don't think there is any public support for such a punitive move.
Re: Would there be any excuse for abortion?
Yes: A desired prgenancy goes bad, threatening the mother's life. Or a woman hoping to get pregnant by her significant other is raped instead.
JonF
Or if the mother simply changes her mind about having the baby after getting pregnant. The constitutional right to an abortion does not require that the fetus has anything wrong with it or that it was not intentionally conceived according to current court interperectation of the constitution.
I think this is a great idea. It's just the start, however. I think we should do away with walking and driving, too. How about if we remove our legs and embed ourselves in motorized wheelchairs? Reaching for things is a pain, too. We could remove our arms and replace them with mechanical tentacles. Breathing? That's such a chore! I'm sure we can come up with ways to provide oxygen for the blood without the need for lungs. The entire digestive system is just a titanic waste of time, too. All it does is get clogged up or make you belch. Nutrient infusion is the way of the future, baby.
Come to think of it, Megan, why not just put your brain in a bowl and have a robot push it around in a shopping cart?
Biological processes - they're for losers.
KTC, you stop too short. Download the patterns that your (chemical) brain uses for thought processes to an (optical, electrical) digital computer. Now you can easily up the CPU speed, add far higher performance input devices, and connect with greater bandwidth to other digitally embedded personalities. Plus you avoid all the distressing diseases that go along with being a mobile bag of easily disrupted chemical reactions. Who wants to be an analog meat machine?
Given that a lot of potential genetic mishaps occur due to the fetus being exposed to stuff in the womb (and we're starting to see more and more indication that getting certain genetic diseases turned on later in life is due to fetal exposure,) it may get to the point where it's not techno-nerds vs. everyone else, but mandated use of the uterine replicator for everyone. Having a baby "the natural way" will become to be seen vulgar and the mark of A Bad Parent.
I'm all for it--I love technology that throws everyone a loop and forces them to have to question all their assumptions. Any technology that pisses off both the self-proclaimed feminists and the religious believers (can you imagine what the Catholic Church will say about this?) can't be all that bad....
In this kind of discussion, is it too hard to put yourself in the place of the child and think that your mother preferred to incubate you in an artificial womb instead of herself just because she didn't want to get fat or were not able to suffer what is needed for you?
On the assumption that there's no health impact to the baby, I would see no reason to be offended that my mother chose not to suffer needlessly.
Megan,
I feel compelled to speak up for a friend of mine who is my age (26) and had her first of three children at 22. In the years since we graduated from high school, she's gone from being a pretty but slightly overweight girl to looking better with each passing pregnancy. I saw her just a few days after her last child's birth, and she looked like she had never been pregnant. I last saw her several months ago, briefly, and she still looked great. She was probably 15-20 pounds lighter than in high school, and clearly in better shape overall.
Almost certainly an anomaly, but one I feel compelled to mention.
If you haven't noticed, women functionally have that right. In fact, in 48 states the mother has the "right" to totally abandon her baby at a hospital or police/fire station. Abandonment that is a death sentence to the child... were we, the people, not forced at government gunpoint to take responsibility for the child she chooses to absolve herself of.
And how did women get that right? They found too many women were killing their children and wanted to give them yet another escape route away from responsibility.
And how did women get that right? They found too many women were killing their children and wanted to give them yet another escape route away from responsibility.
So? Women and men have been killing their unwanted children for millennia. Modern societies like ours are a little more humane about it, of course, but the cold truth of the practice of infanticide is the same now as it ever was since antiquity, when leaving a baby to die of exposure wasn't an uncommon practice. Animals sometimes kill their young; we are animals; therefore, we sometimes kill our young.
Demonspawn:
You confuse the definition of "rights". Just because the state allows a mother to abandon or in fact kill her newborn does not give her a constitutional right to do so.
The right of the mother will become an issue if the state tries to restrict her from doing so. So, if your arguments hold, it would be unconstitutional for the state to prevent a mother from killing her newborn.
Demonspawn:
You confuse the definition of "rights". Just because the state allows a mother to abandon or in fact kill her newborn does not give her a constitutional right to do so.
The right of the mother will become an issue if the state tries to restrict her from doing so. So, if your arguments hold, it would be unconstitutional for the state to prevent a mother from killing her newborn.
The constitutional right to an abortion
Back up that truck for a second. This exists in which constitution, now?
It exists because the supreme court says it does, simple as that.
"I can construct a libertarian argument for a right not to parent, but once the pregnancy leaves the sacred space of the individual body, both the logical and the emotional arguments get a lot weaker. What will society look like when unwanted pregnancies start turning, once again, into unwanted kids?"
It will look like a society that finally has to admit that eliminating unwanted pregnancies benefits society as a whole.
Anyone here want to see our government spending billions of dollars inadequately raising thousands of unwanted children, who then naturally become less well educated and more prone to criminal behavior? The result? The state pays for this external womb or whatever, thousands of dollars just to get the kid through 9 months, only to ship him/her off to an orphanage, only to raise him/her in terrible conditions that cost more thousands per year, only to send a large percentage of them to prison later. Sure, the vast majority would lead relatively normal lives, but at a minimum, they all would be wards of the state for 18 years, and a much higher percentage than is typical would end up being wards of the state for life.
Pro lifers would now have to come to terms with a new moral equation when they're faced with the horrible consequences that result from thousands of orphans.
The unfortunate fact, no matter what side of the fence you are on in the abortion debate, is that abortions are good for society as a whole. We have the luxury of not having to deal with that fact most of the time, but this technology, if ever cheap enough to be considered as a mechanism for ending abortion, would bring that issue front and center. And it would not be pretty.
So the difference is in how our society treats women who which to shirk responsibility and men who desire the same rights. The difference is night and day.
Most people do. Trust me that I'm much much closer to what a right is than you are. A "right" is a belief that you will kill others for or that others will kill others for on your behalf. It matters not what religion, piece of paper, or weapon of war grants said right.
If you want a right that your government is not granting, you go out and take it (in mass is preferable). I'm sure your mouth is gaping open, but realize that's how we became a country in the first place: by taking rights by force.
Now, with that explained:
Doesn't matter. So what? Unless the federal government is going to restrict her right to do so, that the state will protect said right is sufficient.
Wait, MY arguments? What I quoted way up at 9:08 on Aug 1? That's the SCOUTS's argument, not mine. The SUPREME COURT is the one who basically said "we can't force a woman to be a mother against her will! How dare we?!? But if you're a man, pay child support or go to jail!!!"
Slight double standard. Just minor.
But, after it all, the real point of Ectogenesis? If we have that, what do we need women for? What women are good for in society... they've already shirked those roles.
It exists because the supreme court says it does, simple as that.
Comment of the day.
The unfortunate fact, no matter what side of the fence you are on in the abortion debate, is that abortions are good for society as a whole.
Damn, we've got a tie.
I "second" Immoralist's identification of the sad state of affairs our nation is in.
Could it be that women's bodies are made to have kids at around 15-20, and if they have kids then, the recovery is rapid?
By delaying children until mid 20s or later, have women made it much harder on their bodies, and hence, do not fully recover?
Mind you, 200+ years ago, when women had children much earlier in life, life expectancy was like...40 or so.
So you're going to argue this and yet follow up with...
It means she has a de-facto right to do so. If the state will not restrict her right to murder her newborn, then she has said right by default.
So if it's a right the state hasn't restricted, according to your first explanation it is a right, but not according to the second paragraph. Make up your mind one way or the other please.
And yes, if the state stops prosecuting people who do X, then people have a de-facto right to do X. It really is that simple. For example, how many people are prosecuted for false allegations? (rape or DV?) Since the prosecution rate is less than 0.1%, people have a de-facto right to do so, and will without fear of prosecution from the state.
That's what the text I quoted from the decision would appear to say. Again, points 2, 3, and 4 have nothing to do with pregnancy and instead are about how stressful motherhood may be after birth.
The decision states: "The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent.[..She will be forced into motherhood!!]" (paraphrase mine)
Let's take a clearer example. I have the right to practice any religion I want not because the state has not passed a law saying that I can't, but because the constitution clearly says that the state can't pass such a law.
Likewise, I did not have the right to have sex with any consenting adult any way that I want until the Lawrence decision found that right in the constitution even though laws against my behavior were seldom enforced.
I kinda think you understand all this and are being deliberately obtuse.
Listen. it think the justices who favored Roe knew that they were on shaky ground and were throwing out window dressing to bolster their decision.Do you really think that if the technology existed to remove a two month old fetus from a woman and bring it to term in an artificial uterus that the supreme court would find a right for the mother to kill the fetus just becouse she didn't want to raise it? Those arguments might prevent the state form forcing her to care for it.
I "second" Immoralist's identification of the sad state of affairs our nation is in.
I think our nation's better off with Roe v. Wade than without it. And I think we're generally better off with five forward-thinking justices able to create new rights without formal bowing and scraping to hidebound originalist notions of "what would the founders have thought." Who cares what the founders would have thought? They're all dead.
@ D
If you think women should be having children at 15 then you should google "fistula".
Regarding the squabble between Robert Brown and Demonspawn:
Yes, the rational behind the decision is inconsistent with child support laws. However, society has an interest in children being supported. That interest trumps the desire of the man not to pay child support. The man doesn't have a right to force the women to have an abortion because she controls her body. Given these positions, the inevitable result is child support laws.
What surprises me is that nobody has mentioned two basic changes I feel this would cause:
1) Women delaying childbirth. If your physical ability to carry a child to term is no longer a limiting condition, freeze your eggs at 25 and have your children at 50. You can expect to live to 80, so why not? You will be able to have your career and motherhood as well.
2) Single fathers. Buying an egg: 20K. Bringing it to term outside the womb: >>10K. Never having to reign in your rampant misogyny: priceless...
Try practicing a religion that requires female circumcision.
Don't have that right, now do you? Doesn't matter what the Constitution says, matters what those with the ability to project deadly force will allow. Making a little more sense now?
I do understand, but I'm not being obtuse. We have fundamentally different definitions of rights. You think "that which your masters grant you" is your rights (that master can be government or the Constitution). I, on the other hand, have been in situations where rights did not exist. I've been the spear of government to grant rights to others. That's why I talk about "de-facto" rights, and "taking" rights by means of force.
If I claim a reasonable tract of land and have enough force at my disposal such that government does not desire to interfere with my desires, then I have whatever rights I want because I, myself, project the force to obtain said rights. Similarly, women currently have the "right" to turn men into slaves (fitting the definition of indentured servants) by having children with them even though being forced to earn for another is against the Constitution (sans crime, which "becoming a father" is not a crime) because the government will project force to obtain those rights for her. It doesn't matter what the Constitution says, it matters who has force and what they say. Our government, in the case of child support, says "Fuck the Constitution" and gets away with it because there is no critical mass of civilians who, in return, would say "Fuck the government"
"Rights" come from force. No more, no less. I don't give a flip what "right" you think you have... if I can get enough people to say otherwise, you don't have it (or will be forced to die fighting to obtain it).
Something I need to research, but didn't most States, including Texas, already allow for abortion to save the life of the mother? That would mean that point 1 was moot and points 2-4 were the real reason the rights to abortion were granted.
You are being obtuse again Demon. Just because I can't harm others under the guise of religion does not mean I don't have the right to practice my religion.
I am of course talking about the legal sturcture in the United States that assumes certain rights that are natural and cannot be taken away by government. Those who think of rights as I do think that I have those rights even though you are willing to use violence to deny them to me. For instance, I think the people of North Korea have rights that their government is denying them. You beleive they don't have those rights unless government grants them to them.
We have a basic philosophical disagreement and will have to agree to disagree.
Try explaining that one to anti-male circumcision advocates (the act remains legal to "uphold the 1st Amendment").
And your belief means jack shit until you come up with enough force to convince the government of North Korea to bend to your will. Until then, they can "have those rights" only if they are willing to die for them.
Thank you for the succinct example to explain my side of the argument. They may have claim to whatever "rights" you think they have, but that doesn't mean anything at all without force to back up those claims.
Yes, because you seem to think some magical happy faeries grant "rights" while I understand that it is the threat of force that does so. It's not pretty, it's just what is. Mind you, I do have a belief in what I feel is conscionable and unconscionable rights (mainly falling along the lines of self-determination), but that matters not unless I can obtain a critical mass of people willing to kill others to enforce the same belief within the area that I decide to protect. What I want doesn't matter, what IS matters. And what IS is the fact that people only have rights when they are allowed to express them by those who have force, when they have enough force to protect their expression (or decide to die trying), or when they can get enough force from others to protect said expression.
Again, I've been the "spear of force" to grant rights for others (myself included, I guess), so I have a much more unitarian understanding than you can ever grasp without being in the position to project force to guarantee rights.
Take away all the police and military and we'll see how long you keep your "natural rights". How long do you think that will last? It takes two shits of a warlord for them to vanish, I've witnessed it with my own eyes. Your "rights" come from the force of your protectors (government). And because of that, it doesn't matter what the government SAYS are your rights (Constitution, Law, etc.), it matters what the government ALLOWS as your rights (until we once again get a critical mass to say "Fuck the government", that is).
Now, you may think that only applies to "lawlessness" or "totalitarian" states. But that applies even here in the good old USA. People will do more of what they have a "right" to do. That's why more women had abortions once the Federal governments told the State governments "allow this or we'll kick your ass." It's why women will present false rape/DV allegations to gain legal power over a man... it doesn't matter that it's illegal, since it's unpunished it's become a "right" of women to do so. Hell, it's why the South is even still a part of the Union! They had every right to succession but the greater force of the North told them otherwise. It didn't matter that the "right" was granted in the Constitution (10th Amendment), it mattered that the North had more force to overwhelm the "rights" of the South.
So yes, we have a VERY deep philosophical disagreement that is likely never going to be resolved until you are faced with projecting your own force to protect your own "rights." Until then, you just won't get it... even as much as I would love to find some way to explain it to you. So we can consider this tangent "done" and move on to other points in the discussion if you wish.
OK, OT, but
I had never heard of "PANKO" bread crumbs until Meg's post of a Mac & Cheese recipe. I saw them today at the supermarket (Kikkoman brand, in a suburban DC store). I bought them, used them to bread my fish fillets before frying, and all I can say is WOW. It looks like the 4C people have dropped the bag on R&D in the 1950's.
I have been skeptical of recipee blogs, but trust me, fellow carnivores - fish, and probably fowl - taste darned good dipped in scrambled egg, then panko, then into hot peanut oil.
Umm did I say say fish? I meant "string beans". They're vegan, right?
Once in a while you get shown the light, in the strangest of ways if you look at it right..
Lab Rat,
You dork, Kikkoman's contains yeast, so they're not even vegan.
I hope you eschew alcholic beverages, Megan, so as not to exploit and promote suffering among our fungal bretheren.
"what pro-choicers really care about: not having a kid."
You've got us, Megan. We don't care about individual reproductive freedom, we just hate kids.
It exists because the supreme court says it does, simple as that.
Still haunted by the ghost of that 'F' in high school Civics, I see. There is no "right" to abortion in the constitution, either explicitly, or by Supreme Court inference; nor was Roe premised on such a thing. And you will you do your own arguments no service by appealing to this alleged constitutional right, because it doesn't exist.
Still haunted by the ghost of that 'F' in high school Civics, I see. There is no "right" to abortion in the constitution, either explicitly, or by Supreme Court inference; nor was Roe premised on such a thing. And you will you do your own arguments no service by appealing to this alleged constitutional right, because it doesn't exist.
From Justice Blackmun's majority opinion: "[The] right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy."
Leaving the purported source of a woman's constitutional right to terminate her pregnancy aside, I think you've missed the point of the previous poster, which was: The right to have an abortion is not conditional on its explicit or implicit presence in the Constitution; it exists because a majority of Supreme Court justices decreed that it exists.
This is where you'll probably respond that the right to terminate a pregnancy--and probably the right to privacy, as well--has little to no constitutional basis. And, well, you're right! The justices did more or less invent it from wholecloth. I'm happy they did, though. I don't really give a damn about constitutional niceties when it comes to something I want. I'll take a sloppily reasoned opinion with the force of law behind it any day of the week. That's power in bank, baby.
Yep, the "I'm not right, but I've got a big stick to back me" method of justification.
But hey, you at least understand how it works, so I've gotta give you props for that.
FYI the same method works for creating laws. The "stick" is votes. Never mistake politicians as people with power. They have as much power as a chafferer. Both goes where the employer (voter) tells them to go lest they get replaced.
Re: By delaying children until mid 20s or later, have women made it much harder on their bodies, and hence, do not fully recover?
A couple of things about this:
Early marriage and childbirth was not necessarily the rule throughout all history. In fact, many moralists and medical authorities advised against it in the past, including the far past. Also, many people had to wait until they were financially able to start a family, and that often meant delaying marriage until they were into their twenties.
Also, life expetancy figures are deceptive for the pre-20th era, since the numbers are skewed downward by the horrible rates of childhood mortality. A 20 year old in the past had a much longer life expectancy than a mere 40. "Three score and ten" was the general rule even in the distant past for those who survived the Darwinian selection process of childhood.