Reproductive Rights

[Shalamar]

Ah. Easy solution -- it's not mandatory, but it is freely available. If you have a child without a license, we deport both parents and the child.
Does that comport with your rights better?

Deporting Citizens? And to where would you deport these people, and their children? What country would take them, since you'd have to strip them of their citizenship, and passports?

 

[Darth Rotor]

The model I'd like to propose is the following one (and I agree that we do not yet have the technology to implement it, but we are close). Each individual is sterilized before fertility.

Besides the fact that this screws up a bit of other interconnected hormonal development ...

That statement is more than a little at odds with "first, do no harm" and second "go forth, be fruitful, and multiply" and as well a bloody invasion of privacy, via mutliation, of the state on the citizen ... even if the tech is there to desterilize or sterilize at will.

I am puzzled at your position that one should sterilize a developing child/teen/adolescent.

DR

 

[Arcade22]

So, in the past, we've sterilized specific groups of people. We've also decided that this was bad.

How is sterilizing those who are obviously incapable of breeding and raising a healthy child a bad thing?

 

[ponderingturtle]

I think that the crux of the issue hovers around this.

It's one thing to say that everyone has exactly the same rights and restrictions on reproduction (i.e. everybody is allowed to have x kids, and that's all.) It's another thing entirely to start picking and choosing who has such a right and who doesn't.

We do that already. Look at the foster system and how many parents have had their kids taken away from them.

 

[Darat]

Just to be clear, (as already noted by someone else) society (in the UK) has not given itself the right to compel sterlisation nor abortion.

...snip...

Incorrect. In the UK a person unable to consent for themselves, e.g. mentally disabled can be sterilised if it is considered in their best interest. It is rarely carried out these days as less drastic methods are considered much more appropriate but it is a part of the legal code.

I regard this as flawed thinking, since surely from the perspective of the child (imagine yourself in some pre-conceived state expressing a "view" here) it is always more in your interest to be conceived (and probably born) than not, unless you wish to argue that lack of life can be objectively a better prospect ex-ante than existence of life.

Very illiberal, and enforcement would likely be repellent to many.

The "it's icky" argument is not a very strong argument - plus of course that there are lots of things that we (society) do that are repellent to many people yet as a society we still do them.

 

[Darat]

How is sterilizing those who are obviously incapable of breeding and raising a healthy child a bad thing?

How will you make this determination?

 

[ponderingturtle]

So, in the past, we've sterilized specific groups of people. We've also decided that this was bad.
I'm not so clear on why it's bad to sterilize everyone, and then make parenting a genuine opt-in scenario.

The problem here is that reversible sterilization is no where near perfect. This would seem unlikely to produce a sustainable population structure.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Because it's *my* body and anyone who wants to put a knife to it without my explicit consent let alone against my declared will, will have to kill me first, that's why. (It's also why I cannot support mandatory vaccination no matter how useful or beneficial that would be.)

So you are also gainst treating people who are not alert and orriented times 3. Get knocked out and become unable to consent to the ambulance ride and we leave you on the side of the road to die.

 

[Francesca R]

Not a very strong argument.

The "it's icky" argument is not a very strong argument - plus of course that there are lots of things that we (society) do that are repellent to many people yet as a society we still do them.

But the "it's illiberal" one is very strong IMO.

ETA--And repellent enforcement is, frequently, an efficacious reason why various laws never get made, or get made then rescinded or watered down or ignored. Right down to having to paint speed cameras bright yellow so that they don't "repugnantly entrap unsuspecting motorists"

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

How is sterilizing those who are obviously incapable of breeding and raising a healthy child a bad thing?

Hold on. Is anyone even considering sterilizing someone incapable of breeding? And further, how do you know their children will be healthy? (Isn't it more of a challenge to raise an unhealthy or disabled child anyway?)

So you're just talking about sterilizing someone that you (or Big Brother or Palin's death panels or some such) think is incapable of raising a child?

You don't see what's wrong with letting you (or Big Brother or Palin's death panels or some such) make that decision?

 

[ponderingturtle]

What is the mischief we are trying to solve here?

I am not at all sure. The benefit would seem to be greater if you just make people apply to adopt their kids, instead of giving them automatic rights until they get caught harming them sufficiently.

Also make improper prenatal care a crime.

 

[Darat]

What is the mischief we are trying to solve here?

I thought it was just a "chewing the fat" discussion, I am sure no one can really think that in the near to mid future that we will see the law in regards to "reproductive rights" in countries like the UK change significantly.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

So you are also gainst treating people who are not alert and orriented times 3. Get knocked out and become unable to consent to the ambulance ride and we leave you on the side of the road to die.

If someone has advance directives or something else that expresses a DNR order, yes I am against treating them against their will.

In the absence of such orders, treatment is based on the assumption that they would consent if they could. If you wait until they are able to consent, they might be dead or permanently injured.

(ETA: I know it's absurd, but in the case where someone has gone unconscious, it would be completely illegal and unethical to assume they consent to getting breast implants.)

But forced sterilization isn't something you can assume anyone would consent to. You need expressed permission to do something like that.

Unless not sterilizing someone is life-threatening, it's not analogous. (And when it is, and there are no advance directives to the contrary, yes, I'm in favor, for example, of a performing a hysterectomy that's necessary to save the patient's life.)

 

[Arcade22]

So you're just talking about sterilizing someone that you (or Big Brother or Palin's death panels or some such) think is incapable of raising a child?

Yeah, like people who are prostitutes, career criminals, junkies or etc.

You don't see what's wrong with letting you (or Big Brother or Palin's death panels or some such) make that decision?

No, i see nothing wrong in that.

 

[ponderingturtle]

If someone has advance directives or something else that expresses a DNR order, yes I am against treating them against their will.

In the absence of such orders, treatment is based on the assumption that they would consent if they could. If you wait until they are able to consent, they might be dead or permanently injured.

(ETA: I know it's absurd, but in the case where someone has gone unconscious, it would be completely illegal and unethical to assume they consent to getting breast implants.)

The thing is that you have no way of knowing exactly what a patient would or would not consent to. Maybe they are JW and blood transfusions are right out, or maybe they are christian scientists. You can't know what anyone would or would not consent to. So yes there is a standard of care that needs to be met, but he was talking about being against things that he did not consent to, not just things that were below the standard of care.

So for example someone with undiagnosed diabeties, they get into altered consiousness and you have to let them die as they have not previously consented to treatment, and can not now give consent.

Unless not sterilizing someone is life-threatening, it's not analogous. (And when it is, and there are no advance directives to the contrary, yes, I'm in favor, for example, of a performing a hysterectomy that's necessary to save the patient's life.)

The statement I was responding to made no specific mention of what procedures one would have to treat him over his dead body, just that any treatment he did not consent to would be administered over his dead body. Funnily enough that is exactly what would happen.

 

[ponderingturtle]

You don't see what's wrong with letting you (or Big Brother or Palin's death panels or some such) make that decision?

Personaly I am for the sterilization of Big Brother contestants.

 

[bookitty]

Ah. Easy solution -- it's not mandatory, but it is freely available. If you have a child without a license, we deport both parents and the child.
Does that comport with your rights better?

Deport people for having children? We don't even export our criminals.

As for the rest of it. Tubal ligation and vasectomies are difficult to reverse. The only way this scenario would work is if birth control was made mandatory. Since taking someone's word for it would be out, that would mean the Depo-Provera shot for women only. The male version is not available.

So every woman of breeding age who was not OK'd for children would be forced to take a hormonal medication that has known and dangerous side effects. It is immoral in the extreme.

 

[AvalonXQ]

As for the rest of it. Tubal ligation and vasectomies are difficult to reverse. The only way this scenario would work is if birth control was made mandatory. Since taking someone's word for it would be out, that would mean the Depo-Provera shot for women only. The male version is not available.

So every woman of breeding age who was not OK'd for children would be forced to take a hormonal medication that has known and dangerous side effects. It is immoral in the extreme.

As my original explanation acknowledged, the technology is not currently up to implementing the program. These problems don't concern me overmuch; I agree that we should not implement any program like this until doing so is very, very safe.

 

[Fiona]

May I ask if you have been voluntarily sterilised, AvalonXQ?

 

[AvalonXQ]

May I ask if you have been voluntarily sterilised, AvalonXQ?

Not yet. Anyone else here?