Abortion in the age of "oven babies"

More importantly, will it be a conveyor oven or traditional wood-fired brick hearth? The former is more convenient for high-volume preemie production, but the latter provides better crust texture and flavor.

Where the hell did you get that “the state gets your genetic material” or “decides to combine them with some other person’s genetic material” ?

The OP is about couples who, for personal reasons or for medical reasons, decide that their test tube baby (which they both wanted and was conceived from the couple’s sperm and egg), instead of being implanted in the mother’s uterus, is put in a fetus incubation oven, where it will stay for 9 months, or until they pull the plug.

The question is, for this couple, should there be any restrictions on if/when they can pull the plug.

You must be reading a different thread.

Since men’s “right to not become a parent” is subservient to the woman’s decision (whether she decides to abort or not, and if she gives birth, whether to give it up for adoption or not) I would say there is no universal “right to not become a parent”.

True rights are not subservient to other people’s decisions on the matter.

Example scenario: A couple are happy together, they decide to have a baby, they put it in the baby oven and wait. A few weeks later, one of the two cheats on the other, so they break up, and neither wants the baby any more. I can certainly imagine them wanting to terminate the fetus in the oven (especially before it becomes sentient, has a nervous system, etc)

As I mentioned above, people don’t currently have an absolute right to give up their parental rights and responsibilities. Such rights are currently dependent, for men, on the mother’s desire to keep the baby or give it up for adoption.

For our current situation, where babies are born naturally, do you favor keeping the existing system? (i.e. making the father financially responsible for the baby if the mother decides to raise it). If you (the general you, not just DianaG) favor keeping the existing system in today’s world (e.g. because society has to find someone to pay for the kid), do you favor keeping the same system in an “oven baby” future world?

If the mother of the oven baby wants to keep it, but the father doesn’t, should he be able to choose “abortion”? What if the father wants to keep it, but the mother doesn’t? In those two cases, if the baby is eventually born, does the parent who didn’t want it have financial responsibility for it?
(BTW, in today’s world, what happens when the mother wants to give the baby up for adoption but the father wants to raise the baby? Does the father get it, and if yes, does the mother have any responsibilities towards the baby?)

Wrong. Yes, the father has no say in an abortion, since he’s not pregnant he can neither force a woman to have an abortion nor force her not to.

However, after birth both parents have equal say in adoption. Yes, the father can’t decide the baby should be put up for adoption over the wishes of the mother, but neither can the mother over the wishes of the father.

It just so turns out, due to the mechanisms of mammalian reproduction, that in every case a baby is born, the mother is right there, whereas the father might be more difficult to track down. So if there’s no way to identify the genetic father of the baby, the baby has no legal father. So this single new mother can decide unilaterally whether to put the baby up for adoption if the father can’t be found, whereas it is impossible for a single new father to do the same, because the mother of the baby was right there when the baby was born.

If the mother of the baby wishes for the baby to be put up for adoption, but the father does not, then the baby cannot be put up for adoption. Both parents have to consent. It is possible for one parent to be given custody, and the other parent’s parental rights/responsibilities terminated, but the state will not do this except in the best interests of the child unless there is someone else willing to step in and adopt the child.

So it is true that if the mother wants the baby, yet the father does not, the father is SOL, and will still have to contribute (at least) child support, unless the mother can find another man to adopt the baby. However, it’s also true that if the father wants the baby, yet the mother does not, the mother is SOL, and if the father gets custody the mother will have to contribute child support.

Of course there is no universal right not to be a parent. It is sometimes possible, if society deems it in the best interest of the child, to sever the parental relationship. But we do this for the child’s sake, not the parent’s. If you don’t want to be a father, there’s a simple solution, don’t ejaculate your semen into a woman’s vagina.

The availability of uterine replicators makes it simple to treat the developing fetus exactly the same way we would a postnatal baby, and we can treat the two parents exactly the same. The only reason we can’t do this at present is because of the aforementioned mechanisms of mammalian reproduction. Any pregnant men should have the exact same rights as pregnant women–just because men cannot (as a matter of fact) become pregnant doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to be treated the same, if they could (which they can’t).

???

[QUOTE=Lemur866]
So it is true that if the mother wants the baby, yet the father does not, the father is SOL, and will still have to contribute (at least) child support, unless the mother can find another man to adopt the baby. However, it’s also true that if the father wants the baby, yet the mother does not, the mother is SOL, and if the father gets custody the mother will have to contribute child support.

[/QUOTE]

Are there documented cases where a baby is born, the mother doesn’t want it, the father wants it and gets it, and then the mother pays child support? (I’m not saying there aren’t; just curious if this happens)

In any case, if the baby is born, if one parent wants it and the other doesn’t, the parent who doesn’t want it still is responsible financially, so there is no absolute right to not be a parent. Which you seem to agree with, so I’m not sure what the point of your post was.

My disagreement was your idea that the mother gets to decide, and the father has no say. That is incorrect.

Forget warts – hormones. Perhaps there will be no post-partum depression, but this would royally fuck with bonding (not a knock to adoptive parents or children, but I’m still trying to imagine how this thing is ‘born’ in the first place).

Oh, yes. Those hormones set us up.

I don’t. My personal feeling is that either parent should be able to opt out. A woman may choose to have an abortion, or to forfeit her parental rights and responsibilities to the father. A man may choose to forfeit his parental rights and responsibilities to the mother, who may then proceed to have the baby or not as she chooses, knowing she’s on her own.

I think that if one parent wants the child, they should be responsible for supporting it. Neither parent should be able to unilaterally decide to abort. I also believe that they should be able to abort if they agree to, if there is no one else to support the child.

Seconded, with the note that obviously, the government could declare that it itself was going to support the child. If the government was that opposed to fetal termination or felt some pressing need* to have a bunch of spare gestating fetuses around, I mean.

  • perhaps to be grown into a supply of worker for the salt mines or something.