Sounds like the ‘Embryadopt’ program in ‘The California Voodoo Game’ by Larry Niven and Steve Barnes. I’m sure it will be practical at some time in the future, but I too agree that there aren’t enough people wanting to adopt to handle the number of abortions - especially since this would be a lot more popular than abortion, a lot of women who have moral problems with aborting their embryo would be willing to have it removed and planted in someone else.
Other thoughts: If removed early enough, the embryos could probably be frozen and saved for later. I can easily imagine vaults filled with millions of catalogued embryos waiting for mothers, with the ones from parents with less-than-desirable traits accumulating while all the embryos from blond-haired blue-eyed athletic college girls are snatched up like the cute puppies at the animal shelter.
Cats, dogs, and other animals are euthanatized in vast numbers every year, so why not unwanted children too? As much as I may dislike it, the euthanasia of animals is necessary to control the animal population, even when there is nothing wrong with the animal being put down. When the animal population outgrows the resources needed to support it, the herd must be culled. There really is no way I know to prevent it. The same goes for the human population. If an unwanted and abandoned child can’t be placed in an adoptive home after a reasonable time, then it should be put down humanely.
And this assumes that people will prefer domestic adoptions (if the children are readily available) to foreign adoptions. Foreign adoptions have a lot of advantages to many adoptive parents - less risk of birthmom showing up and making a stink for instance (which happens very rarely, but is such a nightmare that it does factor into a where to adopt from decision for many people). Or, on a more positive note, the opportunity to add a culture to the family. I know several families with kids from South Korea that chose a Korean adoption because of ties there (other family members had Korean kids, or they have a Korean sister in law).
As an adoptive mom, I firmly believe that the “shortage” of domestic babies is best for almost everyone. It makes sure that the babies are placed in homes where there is a standard and where the parents have worked hard to adopt. Less than “ideal” babies are placed - giving most babies the chance for a forever home. It gives the birth mother choices and options - and power - that is very important to her. The only people “hurt” by the shortage are adoptive parents, who have to wait longer and/or make choices they might not make if there were plenty of “healthy white” babies available. And are expected to pick up the costs, since there are plenty of people willing to pay for this. A baby glut will mean that in order to place more kids, more of the costs of adoption will need to be picked up by someone other than adoptive parents.
My son was adopted from South Korea. He was referred as healthy, but low birthweight. He is (perhaps obviously) not white.
I applaud you for saying this. Too many people let emotion try to sway over logic. Not many people can be ruled by common sense. Here’s my take on this whole thing: {Author’s note: I’m generalizing here. But, as Dave Barry put it, if you have a problem with generalization, tough shit}
Up until the beginning of the third trimester (on average), the fetus is not capable of living outside of the mother. It depends on a host to give it all of its oxygen, nutrients, etc. Essentially, a fetus is a parasite. Given that, there is no justifiable reason to keep it alive if it is unwanted. If the mother chooses to give it up for adoption, that’s one thing. But if the mother wants to terminate the pregnancy, then that should be her right. The unborn have no rights.
As George Carlin said, “If a fetus is a human being, how come the census doesn’t count them? If a fetus is a human being, how come there’s not a funeral when there’s a miscarriage? If a fetus is a human being, how come people say ‘We have two children and one on the way’ instead of saying ‘We have three children?’”
I will admit that there are far too many abortions performed daily. I will also say that none of them are any of my business. I happen to be pro-choice, but I try not to condemn pro-lifers, or categorize them as bible-thumpers. All I ask is that both groups remain civil about this issue. And that my final thought is this: I will refrain from trying to impose my beliefs on you if you will extend the same courtesy to me. And I request that no one try to judge me, and I will not judge anyone else.
As Dennis Miller put it, “My fellow Americans, it is time to suck it up. Look deep into your immortal soul (if you believe you have one) and do the right thing. Have the courage and strength to live your own life, by your own standards, and stop trying to call the shots for everyone else. We all live with glaring inconsistencies, and sometimes, when you see something going on right in front of you that offends you to the very core of your being, sometimes the best thing you can do is walk away, because you know that’s exactly what you would want them to do for you.”
Well. At least you are honest. It seems to me that an overwhelming majority of people who support legal abortion are not consistent about this, as you are. Though perhaps this is changing…
Debating whether or not you are right is for another thread, I think, so I will lay that aside.
What I was talking about was equality under the law.
Take welfare, for example. Let us assume for the sake of argument that we both think that welfare is a bad thing, and should be abolished. Regardless of what we think, however, welfare continues to exist. As long as it does exist, then, it should not discriminate on the basis of, say, race.
In other words, I assume we would agree that even though we dont like welfare, as long as we must put up with it, benefits should be made available to anyone who qualifies under objective criteria, and not just, say, white people.
Given, then, that whether you like it or not, laws do exist that require states to care for unwanted children, and which forbid them to “put them down”, as you would have it, is there any reason why these laws should discriminate between already-born children, and children that are the results of abortions (or terminations of pregnancies) done when the fetus was past the point of viability?
None. I’d heard about it before, but didn’t know anything about the plot until reading the synopsis on Amazon.com tonight. I noticed that it is a young adult book, so I’m not sure how well it would translate for an adult. Is this a recommendation?
Agreed.
Okay, if there is fully developed child grown in an ACME Womb, call it AW, then AW should be treated with equality under the law as a child of equal age from a woman’s natural womb, call it NW. At age of nine months, nine years, or ninety years AW would have the same rights as NW.
Now every fetus starts off as NW, but the law say that it can be aborted at the mother’s choice and it becomes medical waste, call it MW, because it has no rights of its own. Someone would have to take MW and place it into the ACME Womb in order for MW to become AW. Who ever did the placement would have to take the financial responsibility for the “adoption” of AW. The Government could not save MW because it has no rights under the law and no justification for intervention. But if the ACME Womb procedure were 100% privately funded by the “adoptive” parents, then I could see it being allowed, albeit with restrictions, otherwise MW goes were ever medical waste goes. I hope that make sense
You criticized Pyrrhonist for stating a legal principle, because that did not explain whether the law was “wrong.” Then you stated that unless a law is justified, it is wrong because it is against the law (in this case, Equal Protection).
Looks to me like one equals one no matter which side of the equation you start from.
And this is where I have a problem. If a woman abandons a child one week after it’s birth, the child does not become “MW”. “It” is considered a human being, with rights, and is entitled to be taken care of by the state, under the law. However, if the child is abandoned one week before it’s birth, through the mother terminating the pregnancy, it becomes “MW”. This seems to me to be a violation of the principle of equality under the law. What is the justification for the law discriminating in this fashion?
I’m still not sure if I’m following you here. The concept of equal protection under the law is not itself a law, but a constitutional principle, enshrined (in America) in the 14 amendment. It is “wrong” to create a law that violates the constitution.
I don’t think an abortion is legal one week before birth in most circumstances—but that may be besides the point. I still don’t see how equality under the law could be applied to an entity without rights, a fetus. Until a fetus is recognized by law as something other than a fetus, it has no rights to equality. Now if you want to argue the hard line pro-life stance that a fetus should have rights from the moment of conception, you’re entering into an entirely different realm beyond the scope of this thread. For the purpose of this argument, I think it should be assumed that a fetus doesn’t have rights until X and the woman may choose to abort her pregnancy until X. When viewed in this fashion there can be no discrimination for not treating the fetus as something it is not.
Let’s look at it another way: Joe is black; Bob only discriminates against blacks; therefore Bob could discriminate against Joe for being black. However, Bob couldn’t discriminate against Pyrrhonist for being black because Pyrrhonist isn’t black. Pyrrhonist hasn’t meet the condition that triggers discrimination in Bob. Now if movies like The Watermelon Man were true and Pyrrhonist were to suddenly become black overnight, then Bob could discriminate against Pyrrhonist.
Subsequently, a fetus can’t be discriminated against until after X when it has rights. You can only discriminate against its rights if it has rights. Without that there would be no conditions that could trigger discrimination.
This is frustrating. We seem to be arguing in circles. The fact that the fetus is an “entity without rights” is itself the violation of the principle of equality under the law that I was talking about.
Under the law, as you say, a fetus 10 days away from being born has no rights. The same child, 10 days after being born, does have rights, under the law. Hence, this law violates the constitutional principle of equality under the law. IOW the law itself is unconstitutional.
Assume just for the sake of argument that a fetus has no rights until X. If that assumption were true–Would you then agree that if a fetus is aborted before X than there’d be no violation of equality under the law?
Okay, you say the fact the fetus is not granted right is itself a violation. I think the burden of proof is on you to show that a fetus before X it is an entity deserving of “human” rights. Dogs don’t get human rights. Grecian Urns don’t get human rights. Sperm doesn’t get human rights. Medical waste doesn’t get human rights. Why should a fetus get human rights?
It seems to me a much more significant implication of the OP is not as an alternative for abortion, but an alternative of nine months of pregnancy! Imagine the social changes that would take place in a world where a woman would only have to be pregnant for, let’s say, three weeks. Talk about culture-changing!
Yes, it’s a young adult book, however it’s assigned in many college English classes for future educators(including the English Teaching seminars I took in 98-9) because it is considered to be that valuable a book. I know many people who did not read it until they were an adult, and it tends to reach adults more deeply than other YA books that are semi-popular with grownups (like Harry Potter.) because while its main character is young, its theme is not. By all means, don’t let it’s YA label keep you from reading a book about a very scary “utopia” in which the unwanted and elderly are released.
Obviously, if we assume from the beginning that the fetus has no rights until X, than you can do whatever you want until X.
In the first place, we haven’t said what “X” is. I assume you mean the moment of birth. So let me turn your question around. A child, 10 days after it has been born, has rights. A child, 10 days before it is born, has no rights. What effective difference is there between the child at birth+10 and birth-10, except that it is physically located in it’s mother womb, to justify the law treating them so differently?
I never defined X because that is the point in which the law grants a fetus human status and entitled to human rights. X could change with the tightening or loosening of laws, so for the purposes of argument I intentionally left it undefined. Now I personally don’t mind setting X as the moment of birth, it has good and bad points, neither of which needs to be discussed at this time, but I don’t think that is the law in most cases. Okay, so what is the difference between the entity in the mother’s womb and a child just born? Simple. Legal acknowledgment. Birth or X is the benchmark when the entity gains its human rights. Whether or not this benchmark is arbitrary or wisely chosen is a different question. Other legal benchmarks exist that may be equally arbitrary, the age of majority, for example. The is no magic on a person’s eighteenth birthday that transforms him into an adult with an adult’s rights, but the law has set this as the fixed time to become adult. An eighteen year old has the right to vote, but the seventeen and eleven month old does not. Is truly any difference outside the law between the two? But that doesn’t mean the seventeen and eleven month old should ever get the right to vote, even if he is every bit as capable as the eighteen year old. Every one would agree that an eight year old is not an adult and should be granted an adult’s rights, but that change sometime during the next ten years to adult status. There may not be a magical transformation point when someone becomes adult, but the law has to fix a point. The same goes for defining the moment the fetus can be acknowledge as something deserving human rights. The law has to pick a point. Claiming that a fetus has human rights from the moment of conception would be as absurd as claiming as child is an adult at the moment of birth.
I think abortion will be in less demand in the future but not for the reason described in the OP.
The technology to reduce elective terminations of pregnancy is here today. It’s implementation largely depends on social factors.
The technology is emergency contraception. Within 72 hours of unprotected sex a woman may take a large dose of the same mediaction used in oral contraceptives. This prevents implantation of a fertilized zygote into the uterine wall (Note-this is not the abortion pill). Since the definition of pregnancy is implantation of a zygote into the uterine wall, and abortion is the termination of a pregnancy, use of emergency contraception does not constitute abortion.
I understand the the American Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is encouraging health care providers to offer emergency contraception to their sexually active female patients. The idea is that if people have this medication at home, they’ll use it. If this becomes standard practice, expect a drastic falloff in abortion rates.