Technically the OP agrees with you, but he was quoting me from another thread. I’d like to point out that there was nothing in that statement reflecting some of the more extreme comments in this thread, i.e. that women would be systematically raped. I was describing a hypothetical scenario where my current stance of “abortion on demand” might be tested.
I’m operating on the assumption that the scenario is so unlikely that my pro-choice “cred” won’t be affected in the eyes of any reasonable person.
A forced pregnancy is by definition not voluntary. And pregnancy is a lot more than an inconvenience, and can do permanent harm to a woman. Or kill her.
I think there’s a difference between making people pay for things for the common good and telling women they have to have babies because there’s a shortage of people.
I’m not really sure how this applies there. But if people genuinely didn’t want to have sex with each other to the point where they found it repugnant, and there was an alternative (growing them in vats), what is the problem? Like, let’s say the hypothetical is, as has been posted, that one day every woman on earth woke up and found sex and pregnancy disgusting and just decided they were fine with associating with men, just not with ever procreating. In a situation like that, since by definition every act of sex and pregnancy is going to be a rape, I just don’t think it’s worth it. It may be individual choice winning over society, but what good is the society if it is inherently bad?
As for hypotheticals, I think jsgoddess is more on the mark. I think the hypothetical where no one has sex because of robot servants is a bit out there. But the one in the Handmaid’s Tale (which I posted about which led her to post that) is pretty realistic. I mean, I don’t think it’s automatically a given that in a society where very few women can reproduce that women’s rights will be severely curtailed.
But it’s not SO out there. We’ve historically had that the case, and we still have places like that today. Not places that are specifically forcing women to reproduce because of shortages but that are still basically telling women what they have to do with their bodies. I don’t think it’s such a stretch that in a society where we’re saying, “Sorry, the right for you to decide what you do with your body needs to be relinquished for the greater good,” we might also start telling women other things they need to stop doing–stop dressing a certain way, acting a certain way, etc. There are already people (and I’m not even talking about places like Afghanistan under the Taliban or Saudi Arabia–people even here) who think that women tempt men by dressing a certain way and often deserve what they get for doing so.
Why are folks saying this is unlikely. When I was single this scenario came up all the time…women were always telling me, “I wouldn’t sleep with you if you were the last man on earth.”
You should have responded, “Babe, if I was the last man on earth, I’d totally rape you - survival of the species, baby!” Chicks really dig that, see, the devotion to the species. Yeah.
Should we force women to get pregnant? No. So the species dies out. Big deal. No one will be around to realize it anyway.
Should we force women to deliver, once pregnant? Of course. We should do that now, with rare exception. There’s no need to introduce near-extinction into the scenario. I marvel at the liberal mindset that allows the killing of an innocent baby so that the mother isn’t inconvenienced. Amazing and ridiculous. It’s more than acceptable to force deliver- it should be demanded.
Could you expand on this? The objection to both would seem to be rooted in personal autonomy. The difference to me seems to be more one of degree of invasiveness versus principle.
Well, for one thing, police, fire department, etc. are things we directly need. Do we need the human race to continue for the existing people to be happy?
Plus, paying out money is pretty impersonal. Forcing something out of a woman’s body is about as personal as you can get.
So what if humans become extinct? Why would that be such a terrible thing? The universe got along just fine without us for billions of years. We are not actually of any consequence.
There’s a difference between actively killing someone and not doing anything to contribute to the future of humanity. Killing someone is wrong. Not having a baby even though you’re one of the few humans on earth who can isn’t.
Who said anything about murdering anybody? Extinction does not mean extermination. We’re only talking about the species dying out naturally, not by violence. How is that comparable to murdering people?
So if a person vehemently disagrees with the war in Iraq, it’s still ok to take their dollars by force and use them in a way they despise? What about less invasive uses of a person’s physical body, like requiring them to dispense abortifacant medication? Compulsory registration for the draft, or the draft itself? How about giving a DNA sample if you’re accused of a crime? Mandatory vaccination in order to access things we consider universal entitlements like public education?
Historically we’ve been all over the line back and forth between economic autonomy and personal autonomy. We still are, really. The idea that there’s just one moral way to view the decision regarding society’s well being versus an individuals isn’t nearly so cut and dried as some in the thread are purporting.
An odd hypothetical, but I’ll have a stab at it. Since I doubt that all humanity would be in lockstep over this, it seems to me that you get to see evolution in action in a pretty short timeframe. Those males who would be reluctant to do what it took to ensure the survival of the species would get bred out of the gene pool in a generation. Those females who were determined to ensure the death of their reluctantly-conceived offspring would follow them. You can see easily enough what the genetic makeup of the survivors would be.
We are willing to set such a high value on a woman’s right to choose because we can afford as a species - as a culture, even - to do so. Were extinction the alternative, we might just see our choices differently. I need not paint myself as one of those whose genes would be passed on in order to point this out. But we have in previous discussions as to the evolution of morals and ethics attributed these not to some behavioural code hard-wired by God but to the favouring by natural selection of those behaviour patterns which have helped those who possessed them to ensure the survival of their genes. By that measure, a disposition to prefer a woman’s right to choose over the continuation of the species is functionally “evil”.
I find it odd that we should even take into consideration the physical hazards of pregnancy and childbirth, especially since I presume we are not supposing that obstetrics has been forgotten overnight in this hypothetical. The blood of my grandfather’s generation, and my uncle’s too, cries out from the ground like Abel’s at the memory of a time when surviving to the end of a tour of duty in the Somme trenches, or as bomber crew over Nazi Germany, was a heavily odds-against proposition. Set against that, the comparatively minor health implications of pregnancy and fraction-of-a-percent perinatal mortality rate don’t seem so onerous, and such male duties weren’t imposed as an alternative to the extinction of the species, either. We’re just prissy about it because the hypothetical duty involves someone’s private parts. :dubious:
When it comes to your tax dollars, no, that’s not the same as your personal autonomy over your body. The government can and often does things with our money that we don’t agree with. We have voting and political rights to try and influence.
As for the abortive drug or the non-abortive morning after pill, they aren’t forcing you to do something with your body. You have the right to not become a pharmacist. Do you really think that requiring a pharmacist to dispense drugs is the same as invading a woman’s body?
I and many others don’t believe in the draft.
DNA samples for a crime–you’ve actually done something that necessitates it. What has a woman done to necessitate her having to give birth?
Again, with mandatory vaccine, can opt out. You just have to forgo access to things like education because if you aren’t vaccinated, you could infect others. It makes sense. And no, I don’t see the parallel to a forced pregnancy here either.
There’s a reasonable argument that this has already happened. Consider the unusual nature of human female fertility. In most species there is a specific signal given off when in estrus and mating occurs then, and almost only then. Very few species mate for recreation, although most are capable of it. Even among those who do mate recreationally, there are usually clear signs of estrus. In mankind’s closest animal cousins, there are clear signs of estrus. Why don’t human females know when they’re fertile, why are there so few obvious signs? Basal temperatures aren’t exactly stark indicators.
The argument I’ve heard, which makes sense, was that human females who saw their sisters, mothers, aunts, etc. die in childbirth correlated the mating with later death in childbirth. Humans have a much higher incidence of complications from birth, resulting in maternal death, than most other species. Combine this with the ability to deduce the future from observing the present and past(a key feature of intelligence) and you get some women who put two and two together and avoid a messy death nine months later by avoiding male contact during estrus. Natural selection kicks in and now we’re clearly descended from women who didn’t show obvious signs of estrus.
The fact that hardwired emotional responses facilitate the survival of populations is incidental, not conscious. Contrary to what you’re saying, emotional responses like empathy are triggered precisely by seeing an individual woman in distress, not by any conscious desire to perpetuate the species, any more than the sex drive has anything consciously to do with wanting to pepetuate the species. There is no hardwired, conscious impulse to perpetuate the species, only to fuck, to nurture our own offspring and to watch out for our own “tribe.” The human brain is not programmed to give shit about propogating the species beyond its own immediate generation. Those long term concepts are cultural and intellectual, not innate
That doesn’t really make any sense to me. How would the human females of yesterday have seen their relatives die and childbirth and even known why they were pregnant? Sex doesn’t always result in pregnancy and said pregnancy doesn’t even show until a few months later.
I also think there’s a difference in people not being able to control when they got pregnant/gave birth (due to a lack of birth control/abortions) due to circumstance/nature and us actively saying, “You must give birth.”