As to the original question of the thread, I’m guessing the short answer is “no” and the long answer is “no, of course not, what kind of stupid question is that?”
Do the parents in this scenario have any claim on the baby? Any duties?
In any case I’d be against such a law. As to whether it’s constitutional, I leave that to the gavel-groupies in the audience.
Of course, even if the Bible DID provide such support, there’s that pesky problem of “separation of church and state”.
I think the constitutionality initially turns on the risk. You state “no more medical risk than aborting would cause” but I am not sure the degree of proof there. Even if we accept that part as proven, we then need to look if it is the same risk. Risk isn’t solely about quantitative factors here - we have a right to determine what types of risk we will expose ourself to.
It becomes a hard question if the procedure for extracting the fetus is identical to that of an abortion - smae magnitude and nature of risk. You’d run into issues under the case preventing sterilization, I think. I would imagine precedent stating that you cannot force a person to not have children would be applicable to whether you can force them to have children.Also, under Casey I would imagine such a law would be unconstitutional in the first trimester, but stand a chance of being considered constitutional later (earlier comment re sterilzation apart).
We can certainly imagine that the law includes a terminal of parental rights, so that there’s no claim on the baby and no claim by the baby on the parents.
Why would you be against it? As I understand it, the major objection to forbidding abortion is that doing so forces a woman to carry a child. This, too, is why the fathers involved don’t have much if any say on the issue; it’s the woman undergoing the risks associated with pregnancy. In this hypo, we erase those concerns.
Let’s assume, for the purposes of this discussion, that it’s identical to that of a D&C-type abortion, that precisely the same technique is used, but instead of destroying the mebryo or fetus, it is preserved intact and can be implanted in the Wombot 2050.
Is extraction without consent any different from forced abortion without consent? Or even forced ingestion of a morning after pill? If for some reason all fertilization was done outside the womb, then we’d be talking.
Medical risk has nothing to do with it, since none of the principles involved change no matter if an abortion is more or less risky than a full term pregnancy.
Now, in your scenario, say a technician tripped over a cord and caused the fetus in the artificial womb to die. Would that evoke an involuntary manslaughter charge (or whatever the right charge would be if it were a full grown person who died.) Or would there only be civil liability?
Say that due to the limits of technology 30% of artificial wombs failed. Would that affect the charges in the previous question? How about if 90% failed?
If a very young fetus - a few dozen cells - died I’m sure you could find a priest to give it last rites. (Or could you?) But would you expect the average set of parents to hold a full funeral for the cells?
Very interesting hypothetical.
I went on to deal with that.
My gut reaction is:
Unconstititional under Casey for the first trimester. There’s no balancing of rights in that period under current law.
An interesting debate would ensue under the sterilization line of cases - if you cannot constitutionally prevent someone from having a child, can you force them to have a child. But then again, that make not take us further than Casey. Currently we accept the state has an interest in protecting the potential life of a fetus, and after a certain point that interest permits legislation. Presumably this device would then come into play as the only abortion option after the point where the government is permitted to prevent abortion.
I can see a problem you might run into re health and safety of mother rules here. What happens if a doctor says that allowing the child to be born through this artificial womb is damaging to the mental health of the woman to such a degree that under current law a late term abortion would be permitted?
My personal opinion of this is, if the woman wants an abortion, then she is calling for the fetus and all risk of parental responsibility to be removed from her body. If this can be done without killing the squirmy parasite without increasing risk or difficulty to the mother, then in my opinion the doctor/the state should be allowed to say that once the parasite has been removed, it’s no longer the woman’s problem.
If the doctor then wants to put the think in an artificial womb and raise it as a pet, or to put it in formaldehyde and use it as a demonstration sample in his classrooms, I consider that a reasonable option for him. At that point the fetus (or what’s left of it) is his problem and responsibility, not the woman’s.
This position, I will note, relies on the woman not being asked to undergo a more difficult or risky procedure, and on the woman not having these fetus things remaining her responsibility. Though, I suspect only the first concern has a legal basis. And I’m not a lawyer so I’m not even sure of that.
Ignoring the issues of constitutionality, my gut response is that this is a toss-up. Like villa mentioned, what about the woman’s mental health? Even if parental rights/responsibilities are terminated, she still knows that she has a kid that’s biologically hers out there. She probably won’t be as attached to it as she would had she carried to term then put it up for adoption, but the link could still be a problem.
I like that it gives an option to women who, for whatever reason, aren’t in a position to have a child. I don’t like that we’re forcing all women (who would normally abort) to keep a link that may be damaging. So make the procedure as widely available as possible and many (most?) would take advantage of it, just don’t make it required. I think that’s a decent compromise. Pro-lifers reduce the number of abortions, while pro-choicers still retain choice.
But men face the exact same issue today. If a man has sex with a woman, and she becomes pregnant, he has no say over whether that pregnancy goes to term, or is terminated. The choice is entirely hers, because the pregnancy happens in her body.
But if that were no longer the case, then the woman is in the exact same position as the man. She can have the fetus removed from her body, but what happens next? If the fetus is no longer inside her body, then the rights and responsibilities of the two parents should now be exactly the same.
As the law stands now, the non-gestating parent has no right to demand the pregnancy continue. A parent can sign away their parental rights, but this only takes effect if both parents do so. If one parent wants to give the baby away, but the other doesn’t, the first parent can be required to pay child support until the baby becomes an adult, regardless of whether they want to be a parent or not.
Note that currently it is very common for the father of the baby to become detached from this process. And so we hear about mothers giving their babies up for adoption, and the father is nowhere to be found. If the mother can’t or won’t identify the father, then there’s no way to get the consent of the father, and so the baby can be put up for adoption with his implied consent. But if the father is around and doesn’t agree, the mother cannot put the baby up for adoption unilaterally. But if the mother doesn’t want custody and the father has to agree to take custody. If the father has custody of the child then the mother will be ordered to pay child support just like the father usually is. It’s just that it turns out that mothers are much less likely to give up custody of their newborn infants than fathers are, for reasons that should be no surprise to anyone who studies mammal reproductive strategies.
In any case, once the fetus is no longer biologically dependent on either parent, laws that distinguish between male parents and female parents become obviously unfair. The custody and parental rights and responsibilities to the in vitro fetus should be assigned without formal reference to the gender of the parents, just like parental rights to full term children.
Would you think it should be legal to harvest dna from people and create a child from them without their permission?
Shouldn’t you have a say as to whether you have genetic progeny?
Apparently we’re already able to create DNA from a profile – that is, given a DNA profile, but no actual genetic material, we can create genetic material that matches thta DNA. This is not 2050-type stuff; this is reportedly NOW.
So I would invite you to consider the thought that at some point soon, your permission to have genetic progeny is irrelevant. Indeed, twins share identical DNA, but we don’t now require one twin to get permission from her sister before reproducing.
Yes! I would be one of the top campaigners for it.
It sounds like the typical strawman that pro-choice people make whenever confronted with the idea that potential life can and should be protected. Why, did you think it actually meant something substantive? We can legislate actions that cause direct and substantial harm to that potential life. But saying I support that doesn’t mean I support making it illegal to have a glass of wine while pregnant.
That’s an interesting perspective. Assuming we’re removing the cells within a few weeks of conception, there’s less to distinguish male and female responses to transferring things over. I’d be interested to hear the opinion of women on how fast attachment grew once they found out they were pregnant.
The harvesting DNA and using it part is done all the time. A company can get hold of your DNA and use it for their own profit and they owe you nothing.
Because admitting that you do, admitting that that is what your viewpoint directly leads to is politically and rhetorically unpopular. But you are already demanding that women risk their lives and health; like every other pro-birther you are making it clear that you regard them as less important that a lump of cells. So why not control what they eat and drink? Why not chain them down so they can’t get an abortion?
Since you regard women as having the rights of animals at best, it’s not unreasonable to think that you’d treat them like animals or worse if you could get away with it.
Sure, protect it. Protect the heck out of it with improved prenatal care and making life easier for pregnant women and such as long as they are active and willing participants in the process. After all, what’s the point in protecting a life whose own mother doesn’t want it?
No, seriously, what’s the societal advantage of forcing pregnancies to come to term against the mother’s wishes?
Punishing women for the terrible crime of being a woman, that’s what it really boils down to. It’s certainly not any concern for “the children”, or else they’d actually show some concern for prenatal care, or for the children after they are born. But they don’t.