# The human race nears extinction--is forcing a woman to give birth acceptable? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 2, 2009, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-human-race-nears-extinction-is-forcing-a-woman-to-give-birth-acceptable/508671 "2009-09-02T20:01:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 18
**Author:** ![StaudtCJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/90ced4/32.png) [@StaudtCJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StaudtCJ)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2009, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-human-race-nears-extinction-is-forcing-a-woman-to-give-birth-acceptable/508671/341 "2009-09-12T06:48:37Z")
> [@Voxicitis](#): > > **StaudtCJ** : > When will this return to status quo happen? I’m talking about a government program that isolates the fecund girls from the rest of society. That’s the problem I have with your scenario, right there. If it was the U.S., or Canada, or most other first world COUNTRIES, as the only government_ **s** _ involved, I might agree with you to a significant extent. But we’re not talking about a government. We’re talking about the world. There is no way that we can take the fecund girls and isolate them in one spot in one country. Can you imagine how China would react if the Fecund Girl Camp was in the U.S.? How about how the U.S. would react if the Fecund Girl Camp was in North Korea? How about putting the Fecund Girl Camp in Afghanistan? Think that’ll go over well? How are we going to implement a world-wide government to handle the Fecund Girl Program when we can’t even decide not to bomb or shoot at each other? When we can’t decide that Humans should be able to do any particular thing and have it happen worldwide? We can’t even decide when a female should be eligible for impregnation here on this board! 13? 15? 21? Old enough to bleed, etc.? I don’t get how you think a world-wide human shortage is going to be handled by some not-yet-existent benevolent government. ---
**Author:** ![Voxicitis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc8723/32.png) [@Voxicitis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voxicitis)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2009, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-human-race-nears-extinction-is-forcing-a-woman-to-give-birth-acceptable/508671/342 "2009-09-12T07:47:01Z")
> [@StaudtCJ](#): > > That’s the problem I have with your scenario, right there. If it was the U.S., or Canada, or most other first world COUNTRIES, as the only government_ **s** _ involved, I might agree with you to a significant extent. But we’re not talking about a government. We’re talking about the world. There is no way that we can take the fecund girls and isolate them in one spot in one country. […] How are we going to implement a world-wide government to handle the Fecund Girl Program when we can’t even decide not to bomb or shoot at each other? When we can’t decide that Humans should be able to do any particular thing and have it happen worldwide? […] I don’t get how you think a world-wide human shortage is going to be handled by some not-yet-existent benevolent government. Well, in the movie _Children of Men_, I believe there were few functional governments left, and the movie took place under a British militaristic police state. A group of scientists operating out of the Azores end up with the baby, or so the end of the movie kinda implies. I’ve described a program that I think gets us from one unwilling subject to species survival with (A) minimal risk to the New Generation, (B) maximum chance of survival, and (C) minimal loss of accumulated knowledge and technology and culture, allowing the New Generation to re-emerge into the world without having to rediscover, reinvent and rebuild everything on their own. I think most developed-country governments or organizations would end up creating a program with those parameters. But let’s say that this pregnant girl arrives under a government that doesn’t value those three things. That sucks, but the future of humanity could still be more positive than negative. Their tyranny doesn’t have to last forever, though there may be a long Dark Age before things get better. Let’s say that the world learns that one government has the girl, and doesn’t approve of the future being in that government’s hands. I think that the most acceptable behavior of any involved party would be first to ensure that the species survives, and second to try pragmatically to improve the lives of the New Generation somehow. I can’t work out all the contingencies, but I’d be open to kidnapping girls from Kim Jong Il or the Taliban and raising them in a more liberal society, if it could be done. If the rest of the world does kill off all the New Generation, then that sucks, but we shouldn’t assume failure as an excuse not to try. There is so much potential for good in our survival that we should pursue even the smallest chance of success. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2009, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-human-race-nears-extinction-is-forcing-a-woman-to-give-birth-acceptable/508671/343 "2009-09-12T09:39:55Z")
> [@Voxicitis](#): > > Let’s make this explicit: you’re saying that nobody could be involved in this who would not become aggressively brutish. > Here’s what’s involved with the First Mother: [ul][li]Restraining at all times one woman who refuses to allow the whole species to survive - suicide watch, physical restraints.[/li][li]Keeping her alive and keeping her body healthy[/li][li]Artificial insemination (perhaps several dozen times over a 30-year period)[/li][li]Birth (perhaps 15 times over same time period)[/li][/ul] You think that this cannot possibly be done without the people involved becoming aggressively brutish with her? No, not any more than you can find torturers who restrain themselves. > [@Voxicitis](#): > > You think this automatically devolves into Rapetopia? You don’t think that, with this woman’s health being the very last hope for the survival of the species, someone could devise a way to do it that kept the woman safe from being brutalized beyond the necessary violence of the program? I mean, an _awful lot_ rides on making sure that the people who interact with this woman don’t endanger her future usefulness. Which basically means “no blows to the belly”. Crushing her hands and feet so she couldn’t escape would be just fine. And it’s For the Good of Humanity, so therefore a Tragic Necessity. It would devolve because at best you would have people who spend years convincing themselves that what they are doing is good and that she is wrong to oppose them. They would demonize her, even in the unlikely event they didn’t start out hating women. > [@Voxicitis](#): > > This could easily be done in a banal fashion. You tell people that what they’re doing is necessary for a great cause like the survival of the species, you supervise them in a very controlled environment, and there’s no reason that the monstrousness is anything but by-the-book. What do you think is going to happen in that environment? Brutal sadism, just like every time someone tries that sort of thing. Torment for the fun of it. > [@Voxicitis](#): > > It wouldn’t be hard at all to find these people. If you can find people who would take a bullet to protect a politician, you can find people who would go to any length to protect the last hope of species survival. They’d consider professionalism downright heroic. They’d consider her as the _ **enemy** _ of species survival, and treat her accordingly. > [@Voxicitis](#): > > Please justify this statement. You can’t imagine girls being raised to _want to_ have lots of healthy babies? I can’t imagine people who act like this _ **caring** _ if the girls want babies or not. What if they say no anyway? It’s rape time again! > [@Voxicitis](#): > > You think that a program full of people trying to save the species would look on the last people capable of saving the species with contempt? People who are able to do what no one else in the world can do? Yes, because that’s how women who are looked at as breeding stock have always been regarded, and treated. > [@Voxicitis](#): > > With the First Mother, she is kept very safe and her location is kept a totally black secret. I don’t see any reason why this program couldn’t be _run_ entirely by women. In fact, that would probably make the most sense of all. You think that they’d be dumb enough to trust _ **women** _ to run a _ **forced breeding** _ program? ---
**Author:** ![Voxicitis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc8723/32.png) [@Voxicitis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voxicitis)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2009, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-human-race-nears-extinction-is-forcing-a-woman-to-give-birth-acceptable/508671/344 "2009-09-12T10:01:06Z")
Der Trihs, you assume the absolute worst about people. You say you can’t imagine anyone capable of participating in this and treating the women any way except one way: with the greatest possible brutality. May I suggest that you adopt a more flexible view of human nature? People with different belief systems, values, and temperaments behave differently even in extreme situations… and I’m talking about a fairly strictly controlled environment. Institutions can be devised with redundant checks on misbehavior. People can be trained. You allude to unnamed breeding-stock situations in the past but don’t talk about the societies that created them or how the personnel who ran them were selected. You say “just like every time someone tries that sort of thing” and I have to ask, when has anyone tried to supervise the last hope of survival of the human race? And you ignore my argument that unless 100% of women in a given time period refused to have babies, the program could continue without any need of coercion. As for the daughters themselves, they can be molded without all that extreme coercion you’re talking about. Heck, half the job could be done by raising them Catholic. The parameters of a program like this wouldn’t require very much in the way of cooperation or coercion to succeed. They would require isolation, properly selected personnel, and a halfway intelligent indoctrination program. > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > You think that they’d be dumb enough to trust _ **women** _ to run a _ **forced breeding** _ program? Strike “be dumb enough to” from that question, and my answer is yes. In fact, I consider it more likely than having men run it. Oh, what, you don’t think any woman could possibly take part in such a thing? You have a narrow view of what women are capable of. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2009, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-human-race-nears-extinction-is-forcing-a-woman-to-give-birth-acceptable/508671/345 "2009-09-12T13:19:24Z")
Being a wordsmith, I hate the whole debate. There are two sides: Anti-abortion and pro-choice. The anti-abortion people should start using these terms, as they correctly reflect the whole fight. Whoopi Goldberg is definitely pro-choice and when her 15 year old daugher chose not to terminate her pregnancy, she supported that choice. Not that the anit-abortion crowd gives her any credit for it. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2009, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-human-race-nears-extinction-is-forcing-a-woman-to-give-birth-acceptable/508671/346 "2009-09-12T14:32:09Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > If the movie had been more rational, the real focus would be to medically study the pregnant woman at length in hopes of discovering (and then medically extending) whatever principal allowed her to overcome the mass sterility. > > Of course being an unwilling medical guinea pig is already pretty bad, and being unwillingly pregnant just makes it worse. Although it’s almost a MacGuffin in _Children of Men_, the whole point of the journey was to transport the pregnant woman to a place where she could meet up with The Human Project’s ship. She would then be in the care of scientists who are working on finding a cure for human infertility. Whether the Human Project is actually trustworthy or even competent is an open question, as no one seems to know a lot about them and the movie ends as soon as their ship comes into view. But the goal of the main characters is to get the pregnant woman to a safe place where she will be studied by what they believe are the best available scientific experts. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2009, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-human-race-nears-extinction-is-forcing-a-woman-to-give-birth-acceptable/508671/347 "2009-09-14T23:27:40Z")
> [@Voxicitis](#): > > No, I’m arguing that just as suffering is negative, happiness has a positive value all its own. You’re not harming a theoretical child, you’re simply not allowing it to exist, and if it were to exist, it would likely value its own life (despite suffering) and be valued positively by others. > If you couldn’t bring a child into the world that would bring more happiness than suffering to the world (in the big scheme of things), I’d say don’t bring the child into the world. But I don’t think the human race does or ought to regret its existence. > > I can’t argue for any kind of objective “worth,” because I only know of objective physical properties and truths. “Worth” is subjective. > > But I know I value the happiness of future generations. It would please me to know that in the future there will be billions or trillions or more people living fulfilling lives, even if I don’t get to be there for it. And I care about that being the authentic truth – I wouldn’t just want to be plugged into a machine that made me _believe_ that that’s the truth when it’s not. > > I know that if I didn’t exist, I wouldn’t be around to care, but I _do_ exist, and I do value my life and my happiness. Through a veil of ignorance, I would want there to be maximum fulfilment in the future. You ignored everything I said. As can be demonstrated _quite_ explicitly, it’s madness **-madness-** to find fault with a failure to produce additional children based on any factor that scales proportionately with the number of children under discussion, because the number of children you will fail to produce is by definition infinite and therefore your failure will by definition infinitely surpass your success. The **only** way to avoid this irrational madness is to find a metric by which you can someday say “I have enough children - it’s great if I don’t have any more.” And let us note that the metric “every person that could potentially be born is an opportunity for happiness that cannot be missed” does **not** allow you to be satisfied with any finite number of children. For any N kids you produce, the N+1th that you _didn’t_ have is a crime, by that metric. Ergo, it is inevitably the case that no rational argument can be made that it is bad if more people aren’t born on the basis of the happiness they won’t have. Inevitably. Now, you _could_ find some other goal you wish to achieve, such as “survival of the species”, which would give you a finite reachable number after which no more kids need to be produce, and thus which a sane man can argue rationally for. However the reason for this goal would have to spring from elsewhere than the lack of shortage of human happiness due to population deficiencies, because that argument is circular. To repeat in a small, digestible sentence - For every rational argument for sustaining the species, there will be an amount of people where you have _enough_ people - otherwise you irrationally chase an unattainable goal. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2009, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-human-race-nears-extinction-is-forcing-a-woman-to-give-birth-acceptable/508671/348 "2009-09-15T06:11:17Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > Multi year commitment? You know there are safe surrender laws hear in the US where immediatly after birth you can leave the child to be adopted. Just for laughs, let’s say half of the elective abortions in the U.S. instead get carried to term and the resulting newborns are safely surrendered. So that’s… what, four to six hundred thousand infants up for adoption per year? Let’s call it an even half-million. Are there enough people willing to adopt this surplus? [This governmental website](http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/s_adopted/s_adoptedf.cfm) cites stats for selected years from 1987 to 2001. I’m sure more recent stats exist, but over that period, adoptions ran pretty steadily in the 118,000 - 127,000 range. Let’s make some additional assumptions and maybe for every person (or couple) who successfully adopts, there are four waiting, so if the gates were thrown completely open and the adoption process was near-instant, then the half-million babies find new homes. What about the following year and the one after that? Will every couple who adopted a child gladly take another one? At what point do the orphanages start filling up? Please take three minutes and think about the consequences of what you propose. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2009, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-human-race-nears-extinction-is-forcing-a-woman-to-give-birth-acceptable/508671/349 "2009-09-15T06:16:52Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > Although it’s almost a MacGuffin in _Children of Men_, the whole point of the journey was… I dunno, the whole movie to me liked a masturbatory exercise in bleak British film-making where fascism takes over YET AGAIN. Saw the same thing in _28 Days Later_ - the villains weren’t the rage-zombies but the conveniently stereotypical military nutcase. On reflection, it’s kind of amusing that in contrast, American dystopian cinema often assumes the commies have taken over. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2009, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-human-race-nears-extinction-is-forcing-a-woman-to-give-birth-acceptable/508671/350 "2009-09-15T11:32:58Z")
> [@Voxicitis](#): > > Der Trihs, you assume the absolute worst about people. You say you can’t imagine anyone capable of participating in this and treating the women any way except one way: with the greatest possible brutality. > > May I suggest that you adopt a more flexible view of human nature? People with different belief systems, values, and temperaments behave differently even in extreme situations… and I’m talking about a fairly strictly controlled environment. Institutions can be devised with redundant checks on misbehavior. People can be trained. Exactly the same sort of argument used to defend torture; which would result in the same utter failure. Such a situation would not arise in the first place unless everyone involved was either at best amoral, or too terrified to say “no”. There would be no meaningful controls, no checks. Anyone who considered objecting to abuse would just note the that the entire enterprise is ruthlessly evil and realize that even worse would happen to them if they objected in any way. I am assuming the absolute worst, because the people doing this would BE the absolute worst. > [@Voxicitis](#): > > You allude to unnamed breeding-stock situations in the past but don’t talk about the societies that created them or how the personnel who ran them were selected. You say “just like every time someone tries that sort of thing” and I have to ask, when has anyone tried to supervise the last hope of survival of the human race? And you ignore my argument that unless 100% of women in a given time period refused to have babies, the program could continue without any need of coercion. The kinds of scum who would do this wouldn’t care if there was any “need” for it. And I fail to see why people who are not only engaging in something evil, but think that they are saving humanity by doing so will be nicer or more scrupulous. They’ll just have the perfect excuse to handwave anything they want to inflict on their victims as “necessary for the survival of humanity.” > [@Voxicitis](#): > > Strike “be dumb enough to” from that question, and my answer is yes. In fact, I consider it more likely than having men run it. > Oh, what, you don’t think any woman could possibly take part in such a thing? You have a narrow view of what women are capable of. First, the sort of men -and it WOULD be men - who would set up such a program would never trust a woman for any reason. And you are ignoring the rather high likelihood that the women would feel sympathy for the breeding slave ( because let’s be honest; that’s what she is ), and recognize that this is an enterprise fundamentally hostile to womankind. And women are “capable of” recognizing the concept of “Us versus Them”, and that’s what this is. Men against women. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2009, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-human-race-nears-extinction-is-forcing-a-woman-to-give-birth-acceptable/508671/351 "2009-09-15T18:34:02Z")
Hey, if you’re not against the authoritarian roving rape gangs, you’re _with_ the authoritarian roving rape gangs. ---
**Author:** ![Voxicitis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc8723/32.png) [@Voxicitis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voxicitis)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-human-race-nears-extinction-is-forcing-a-woman-to-give-birth-acceptable/508671/352 "2009-09-16T13:22:48Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > You ignored everything I said. > > As can be demonstrated _quite_ explicitly, it’s madness **-madness-** to find fault with a failure to produce additional children based on any factor that scales proportionately with the number of children under discussion, because the number of children you will fail to produce is by definition infinite and therefore your failure will by definition infinitely surpass your success. The **only** way to avoid this irrational madness is to find a metric by which you can someday say “I have enough children - it’s great if I don’t have any more.” It’s not always true that having an extra child will increase happiness more than it increases suffering. If you can’t provide for that child, for example, or if having an extra child would make it that much more difficult for your other children to meet their potential and become happy people. > [@](#): > > And let us note that the metric “every person that could potentially be born is an opportunity for happiness that cannot be missed” does **not** allow you to be satisfied with any finite number of children. For any N kids you produce, the N+1th that you _didn’t_ have is a crime, by that metric. Not a crime. A crime is an act against an actual person. > [@](#): > > Ergo, it is inevitably the case that no rational argument can be made that it is bad if more people aren’t born on the basis of the happiness they won’t have. Your priors were false. I had already provided the reasons why your critique is wrong. > [@](#): > > Now, you _could_ find some other goal you wish to achieve, such as “survival of the species”, which would give you a finite reachable number after which no more kids need to be produce, and thus which a sane man can argue rationally for. However the reason for this goal would have to spring from elsewhere than the lack of shortage of human happiness due to population deficiencies, because that argument is circular. No, it’s not, and questioning my sanity won’t help you. All numbers of human beings are bound to be finite. If human beings can keep expanding and keep on being happy, what’s the argument against that? Maybe if they were displacing something else that was just as valuable… but as far as we have yet seen, the universe has a lot of empty space. > [@](#): > > To repeat in a small, digestible sentence - For every rational argument for sustaining the species, there will be an amount of people where you have _enough_ people - otherwise you irrationally chase an unattainable goal. My goal here isn’t to reach a certain number, but to maximize good outcomes. You don’t ever have to completely attain it to rationally pursue it. ---
**Author:** ![Voxicitis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc8723/32.png) [@Voxicitis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voxicitis)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2009, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-human-race-nears-extinction-is-forcing-a-woman-to-give-birth-acceptable/508671/353 "2009-09-16T14:19:39Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Exactly the same sort of argument used to defend torture; which would result in the same utter failure. Such a situation would not arise in the first place unless everyone involved was either at best amoral, or too terrified to say “no”. There would be no meaningful controls, no checks. Anyone who considered objecting to abuse would just note the that the entire enterprise is ruthlessly evil and realize that even worse would happen to them if they objected in any way. I am assuming the absolute worst, because the people doing this would BE the absolute worst. > > The kinds of scum who would do this wouldn’t care if there was any “need” for it. And I fail to see why people who are not only engaging in something evil, but think that they are saving humanity by doing so will be nicer or more scrupulous. They’ll just have the perfect excuse to handwave anything they want to inflict on their victims as “necessary for the survival of humanity.” You haven’t answered to what I said earlier: you’ve implied that I am in fact a monster who would descend to the most monstrous evil if I tried to run such a program. You imply that I would not actually implement the controls and checks I’m talking about here. And you imply that I wouldn’t trust women to run such a program, though I’ve said I think that would be more likely. I find it only slightly amusing that you tell me what I think and what I would do. You imply that people doing what they believe is necessary to a greater good would automatically feel okay with doing more terrible things than necessary. I disagree; it takes effort to overcome people’s natural reluctance to harm fellow human beings (though it can be done through training and conditioning), and only true sociopaths, a tiny minority of the population, are capable of doing such things without feeling some guilt. How they deal with guilt is another matter, but my point still stands. > [@](#): > > First, the sort of men -and it WOULD be men - who would set up such a program would never trust a woman for any reason. And you are ignoring the rather high likelihood that the women would feel sympathy for the breeding slave ( because let’s be honest; that’s what she is ), and recognize that this is an enterprise fundamentally hostile to womankind. And women are “capable of” recognizing the concept of “Us versus Them”, and that’s what this is. Men against women. So you do believe that all women would think the same thing; that they would be unerringly so sympathetic to one woman that they would rather end the human race (including all of “womankind”) than allow her suffering to continue. You believe that no amount of training, screening for temperament, or redundant checks would prevent this. I disagree. How could you be convinced that it is otherwise? You wouldn’t accept as evidence that women have been cruel to other women historically, or that other women (and men) have behaved professionally rather than allowing unfiltered emotion to rule their actions? Even true slavery, as horribly evil as the institution was, had a wide range of treatment of slaves – some were the type who would ruthlessly beat and kill their own slaves, some would refrain from anything that threatened the value of their slaves, and some seemed to genuinely care about their slaves, with various degrees of conflicted feelings about the whole institution. Or, take war. Extreme situation, high stakes, uncontrolled environments, deception and mistakes – yet there’s a wide range of behavior, from unmitigated and disorganized barbarism to professionalism according to codes of conduct and pre-established doctrines. How do you account for such things? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-human-race-nears-extinction-is-forcing-a-woman-to-give-birth-acceptable/508671.md?page=17)