Before birth, destruction is the only way to get rid of your babies. After birth, you can give them away. What’s the word? Donate your babies? Or sell them if you’re lucky. That way you don’t produce a little bundle of biohazards and, for those who don’t like killing people, you have the added advantage of never even coming close to killing it after it gets personhood.
“On the way to victory, if you get to choose between destroying and not destroying without negative repercussions from not destroying, don’t destroy” seems like a reasonable moral precept. If victory is having fewer babies, and it is, birth is an objectively special moment.
If we developed a procedure to remove a fetus from the uterus without killing it, I would see no reason for anyone to choose abortion instead of safe removal. In that sense, abortion is really an artifact of limited technology.
I think we might be better served to put research efforts into developing contraception to the point where both men and women have to decide consciously to conceive. The fact that the process of becoming pregnant is involuntary seems like an artifact of evolution; why keep it that way?
Certainly, that’s also a good point. Separating incubation from humans does seem like it would make people’s lives better (although there is the concern of reducing the mother’s bond with her child). However, as far as the goal of stopping abortions goes, I think it makes more sense to prevent pregnancy in the first place. That goal can be held even by those who don’t oppose abortion as murder (like myself), as we can still recognize that the process of unwanted pregnancy and abortion can take a physical and mental toll on those involved.
If we developed a procedure to remove a fetus from the uterus without killing it, I would see no reason for anyone to choose abortion instead of safe removal.
You would see no reason, or you would see no reason that is more important than the fetus’s safety?
I can think of reasons, and it would be surprising to me if you honestly can’t.
There would still be reason to abort rather than remove, I think, in that unwanted fetuses would be greatly surplus to the demand created by adopters. If you gave up your fetus to gestate elsewhere, it would face a high probability of never reaching a loving home. If you don’t believe that embryos are something morally wrong to destroy, but you do think it’s morally wrong to consign a child to that sort of life, abortion would still be the preferable choice.
Most things are artifacts of limited technology in the sense that they wouldn’t exist if strictly preferred technology that made them obsolete existed. Word.
Removal and growing externally would have to be as cheap and safe for the host as abortion, not just possible. And there would have to be no overpopulation concerns from the policy of turning abortions into extra people. Or other net negative effects from it. But there could also be a positive side, like keeping the not-aborted one in its life-support chamber as it matures for experimentation or organ harvesting. Live fetusectomy could replace the usual sort outright.
I would see reason: Overpopulation, reproduction control laws*, an incompetent foster care environment compared with a lack of people looking to adopt etc.
*(not extant yet in that many countries, but depending on the route of cultural development it may be)
Before birth, destruction is the only way to get rid of your babies. After birth, you can give them away. What’s the word? Donate your babies? Or sell them if you’re lucky. That way you don’t produce a little bundle of biohazards and, for those who don’t like killing people, you have the added advantage of never even coming close to killing it after it gets personhood.
“On the way to victory, if you get to choose between destroying and not destroying without negative repercussions from not destroying, don’t destroy” seems like a reasonable moral precept. If victory is having fewer babies, and it is, birth is an objectively special moment.
If we developed a procedure to remove a fetus from the uterus without killing it, I would see no reason for anyone to choose abortion instead of safe removal. In that sense, abortion is really an artifact of limited technology.
I think we might be better served to put research efforts into developing contraception to the point where both men and women have to decide consciously to conceive. The fact that the process of becoming pregnant is involuntary seems like an artifact of evolution; why keep it that way?
Going down this same road: why we should keep gestating humans inside other humans in the first place?
Certainly, that’s also a good point. Separating incubation from humans does seem like it would make people’s lives better (although there is the concern of reducing the mother’s bond with her child). However, as far as the goal of stopping abortions goes, I think it makes more sense to prevent pregnancy in the first place. That goal can be held even by those who don’t oppose abortion as murder (like myself), as we can still recognize that the process of unwanted pregnancy and abortion can take a physical and mental toll on those involved.
You would see no reason, or you would see no reason that is more important than the fetus’s safety?
I can think of reasons, and it would be surprising to me if you honestly can’t.
There would still be reason to abort rather than remove, I think, in that unwanted fetuses would be greatly surplus to the demand created by adopters. If you gave up your fetus to gestate elsewhere, it would face a high probability of never reaching a loving home. If you don’t believe that embryos are something morally wrong to destroy, but you do think it’s morally wrong to consign a child to that sort of life, abortion would still be the preferable choice.
Most things are artifacts of limited technology in the sense that they wouldn’t exist if strictly preferred technology that made them obsolete existed. Word.
Removal and growing externally would have to be as cheap and safe for the host as abortion, not just possible. And there would have to be no overpopulation concerns from the policy of turning abortions into extra people. Or other net negative effects from it. But there could also be a positive side, like keeping the not-aborted one in its life-support chamber as it matures for experimentation or organ harvesting. Live fetusectomy could replace the usual sort outright.
I would see reason: Overpopulation, reproduction control laws*, an incompetent foster care environment compared with a lack of people looking to adopt etc.
*(not extant yet in that many countries, but depending on the route of cultural development it may be)