[jakob_r]

bid_em_up, on Aug 6 2009, 11:02 PM, said:

I'd much prefer that such people be required to have a vasectomy or their tubes tied before ever either getting someone pregnant or getting pregnant on their own. Preventative methods rather than post-coital methods would work wonders for this world.

Such ideas have worked wonders already. They were widely applied and applauded in Germany in the 1930ies. The nazis even had the objective criteria (and a few not so objective) that jjbr is suggesting be used for forced abortion. Criminals, degenerates, dissidents, homosexuals (go figure!), the mentally ill and a bunch of others were subjected to forced sterilisation.

http://en.wikipedia....i/Nazi_eugenics

Clearly that made the world a happier and better place.

[helene_t]

A more apt example would be animal rights. I mean, unlike slavery and the killing of 5-year olds, animal rights is actually something which 21st century non-psychopats can disagree about.

[shyams]

I have not read all the posts in detail here. But based on a cursory glance, it appears that the discussion has veered away from 'gender-based abortions' to '.... abortions'

The original post can be (for purposes of my discussion) split into two parts:
1. A one-off (not exactly one event but a rare enough occurrence) decision made by a Swede (or European or American etc) to consciously abort a female foetus for the sole reason that it is female
2. A repeated occurrence in some societies to abort female foetuses.

Part I: My personal opinion is that it is solely the choice of the pregnant woman in question. Most countries has laws on abortion, and the citizens abide by those laws. There are also societal considerations, peer pressure issues etc.
However, if the one-offs in Part I are rare, it would make not much difference.

Part II: I give you the case of India.
Here is one of many articles found on the web (search for "amniocentesis ban India")
http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Gender...7462303415.html

Some interesting quotes from the article:

Quote

the government says around 10 million girls have been killed by their parents - either before or immediately after birth - over the past 20 years

And if the Government says 10 million, it could easily be 20 million

Quote

Over the last four decades, the child sex ratio has been declining, with the sharpest fall from 1981 onwards.
A 2001 census found there were 927 girls for every 1,000 boys in the age group of six-years-old or below, compared to 945 to 1,000 in 1991.

Emphasis added by me.

If the Swedish occurrence ever leads down the slippery slope as with India, I would be absolutely against it.

[jjbrr]

jakob_r, on Aug 8 2009, 04:03 AM, said:

bid_em_up, on Aug 6 2009, 11:02 PM, said:

I'd much prefer that such people be required to have a vasectomy or their tubes tied before ever either getting someone pregnant or getting pregnant on their own. Preventative methods rather than post-coital methods would work wonders for this world.

Such ideas have worked wonders already. They were widely applied and applauded in Germany in the 1930ies. The nazis even had the objective criteria (and a few not so objective) that jjbr is suggesting be used for forced abortion. Criminals, degenerates, dissidents, homosexuals (go figure!), the mentally ill and a bunch of others were subjected to forced sterilisation.

http://en.wikipedia....i/Nazi_eugenics

Clearly that made the world a happier and better place.

"It didn't work in Germany three quarters of a century ago when a dictatorial leader imposed his fanatical beliefs on his brain-washed followers in the midst of a world war, so it stands to reason that it could never work today."

You're right. It's too bad nothing has changed in the past 80 years. We're still trying to cleanse the world of inferior races in one generation, and we're still trying to breed races of genetically superior citizens to fuel our war machines. And there's no end in sight.

[onoway]

Well. When at one time women could be divorced (or even killed) for not bearing sons, or who have themselves lived lives of being considered less than in any way significant to those around them, it isn't surprising there is some carryover once the choice is available. It's Utopian to suggest that all children should be born only to those who want and cherish them and who can provide adequately for their emotional and physical needs, but surely a goal to work toward?

Pro-lifers would have more credibility in my mind if they also were concerned about the children who are already here and living in misery and despair, or if they even concerned themselves with the life the unborn child will have after he or she is born. To any I have run across, that seems to be considered immaterial, which makes no sense to me at all.

A neighbor's married daughter gave birth to a child with extreme physical problems of all sorts. They knew before the birth there were problems, if they knew how severe I don't know, but in any case they are pro-lifers. The family has had a three year rollercoaster ride which has so far left them with a divorce in process, a troubled older sibling and financial disaster as they had to give up their jobs and move to another province to get the care she required. Given our healthcare system, it has cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep the child alive. The doctors have said from the beginning it will take a miracle for her to survive past 5 years of age. Theoretically she is supposed already to have "died" several times but the doctors managed to bring her back. In the meantime the life she leads is one most of us would shudder to think about..it has seemed to me at times as though she is an experimental subject more than a person. Most people would consider it cruel to inflict such an existence on their dog. It is difficult for me not to think it would have been better to abort the foetus.

The other extreme would be people who want to abort because of something such as the colour of their eyes or shape of the nose or because pregnancy will interfere with vacation plans. I wonder if you really want to force people with such values to be parents at all, much less to an unwanted child.

A thought about sterilization..sterilize everyone over the age of 6 on October 30th 2009! (or some other arbitrary date, Hallowe'en seemed appropriate. ) That avoids the question of privilege. Negative population growth for a minimum of about 8 years would take care of a lot of the world's problems, including feeding the war machine. Think the idea would fly? Could email Sarah Palin and tell her on that date the government is going to release a gas which will cause everyone over 6 to become instantly and permanantly sterile.....wonder if she would hop back on her little dais and alert the public, have everyone afraid to go outside on Hallowe'en.

[jakob_r]

jjbrr, on Aug 8 2009, 07:08 PM, said:

jakob_r, on Aug 8 2009, 04:03 AM, said:

bid_em_up, on Aug 6 2009, 11:02 PM, said:

I'd much prefer that such people be required to have a vasectomy or their tubes tied before ever either getting someone pregnant or getting pregnant on their own. Preventative methods rather than post-coital methods would work wonders for this world.

Such ideas have worked wonders already. They were widely applied and applauded in Germany in the 1930ies. The nazis even had the objective criteria (and a few not so objective) that jjbr is suggesting be used for forced abortion. Criminals, degenerates, dissidents, homosexuals (go figure!), the mentally ill and a bunch of others were subjected to forced sterilisation.

http://en.wikipedia....i/Nazi_eugenics

Clearly that made the world a happier and better place.

"It didn't work in Germany three quarters of a century ago when a dictatorial leader imposed his fanatical beliefs on his brain-washed followers in the midst of a world war, so it stands to reason that it could never work today."

You're right. It's too bad nothing has changed in the past 80 years. We're still trying to cleanse the world of inferior races in one generation, and we're still trying to breed races of genetically superior citizens to fuel our war machines. And there's no end in sight.

If the quoted statement is your interpretation of the point i tried to make or an actual quote of someone else (which i seriously doubt) I'd like to say that the passage of time does not alter my point of view. Eugenics is a sick and sickening idea anywhere at any time.

But since you don't seem at all disuaded, I'd be curious to know if you could provide an outline of the objective criteria according to which people should be forcefully sterilised (or forced to abort). Also how the government agency tasked with the selection should seek out the undesirable parents? Should the unwanted traits of the parents be inheritable or is it enough that the parents, based on objective criteria, must be deemed unsuitable for parenthood?

And what are the reasons for having a particular threshold? Can't further improvement be achieved if - say - certain non-debilitating traits were required to be present?

As an aside that has no bearing to my point at all, the nazi's eugenic program was put into effect 9 years before the outbreak of WWII, so the war was hardly an explanation of why it occured or was allowed to occur. And just to make it perfectly clear that I'm not out after the Germans, the idea of eugenics wasn't fostered by them, but by an American.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

Happy reading.

[helene_t]

jakob_r, on Aug 9 2009, 12:12 AM, said:

Eugenics is a sick and sickening idea anywhere at any time.

I think it's fine if prospective parents take measures to avoid passing defective genes to their children, e.g. by choosing sperm and/or eggs from a donor if their own material has serious defects, or by choosing to adopt children instead.

[mike777]

helene_t, on Aug 8 2009, 06:30 PM, said:

jakob_r, on Aug 9 2009, 12:12 AM, said:

Eugenics is a sick and sickening idea anywhere at any time.

I think it's fine if prospective parents take measures to avoid passing defective genes to their children, e.g. by choosing sperm and/or eggs from a donor if their own material has serious defects, or by choosing to adopt children instead.

I doubt it would be illegal even if people do it for less serious defects.

If roughly in one generation there are 260 million abortions in just one country, I think the discussion has moved on to other issues such as assisted suicide being legal in the heart of Europe.


"March 17, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Dignitas euthanasia "clinic" has reopened its doors in a facility located next to Switzerland's largest brothel.

Dignitas, which has repeatedly made international headlines for its unapologetic mission to assist the ill from around the world to kill themselves,"


http://www.lifesiten...r/08031711.html


http://www.guardian....ssisted-suicide

[jdeegan]

My ancestors moved halfway across the planet to the edge of civilization so some government bureaucratic asshole could tell our women what they could do with with their bodies. I don't think so!

[luke warm]

helene_t, on Aug 8 2009, 06:30 PM, said:

jakob_r, on Aug 9 2009, 12:12 AM, said:

Eugenics is a sick and sickening idea anywhere at any time.

I think it's fine if prospective parents take measures to avoid passing defective genes to their children, e.g. by choosing sperm and/or eggs from a donor if their own material has serious defects, or by choosing to adopt children instead.

but is it still fine if the motives are different? how about if, instead of the woman involved, it's the community who decides - is it still fine?

[Lobowolf]

jakob_r, on Aug 8 2009, 06:12 PM, said:

But since you don't seem at all disuaded, I'd be curious to know if you could provide an outline of the objective criteria according to which people should be forcefully sterilised (or forced to abort).

What are the objective criteria according to which people shouldn't be forcefully sterilised (or forced to abort)? Or enslaved? Or raped or murdered?

[helene_t]

Lobo, you misunderstood. "Objective criteria" doesn't refer to a case for some general policy.

[NickRW]

FWIW, I think that abortion on the grounds of (genuine) risk to the mothers health is always OK. Other cases are extraordinarily distasteful - but making them illegal is difficult as you can always make a case for including or not including some other type of case - where do you draw the line - there seems to be no easy answer.

Nick

[DrTodd13]

Lately, I've been finding these types of questions rather pointless. It is like asking someone for a suggestion of where to go to dinner but not telling them what kind of food you like. Unless you are going to provide a basis on which to make this value judgment then what you are going to get is each person using their own determination of the ultimate good. Why would you value anyone's opinion on right or wrong if it were based on an ultimate good with which you disagreed? All such ultimate goods must be accepted on faith. There is no way of objectively determining the ultimate good. So, if two people share the same ultimate good they can talk about the logical ramifications of that belief. If people don't share the same ultimate good then going beyond that point and arguing the ramifications of those beliefs will only lead to frustration. In some cases there may be coincidental agreement on right or wrong but unless you have agreement on the ultimate good you'll never get complete agreement. Moreover, if people don't agree on the same ultimate good then how can there be an argument about that. Person A tells person B they should stop believing one thing for no reason and start believing something else for no reason. Person B says the inverse. It is impossible to provide a reason for switching the ultimate good because ultimate goods must be axiomatic.

Some people's "ultimate good" is provided by revelation (again faith) from a transcendent being. I suspect most people's ultimate good is some vague notion of maximizing human happiness. This ultimate good is so vague (and comparing one person's happiness to another so impossible) that very few logical truths can be derived from it. I think right or wrong opinions based on this ultimate good often boil down to mere personal gut reaction with zero underlying basis. So, one way to look at these morality questions is that you are asking people what they believe without any reason (axioms) and then asking them to draw conclusions from the ultimate good and in many cases doing so logically is impossible. Add on top of that that people hold logically inconsistent opinions simultaneously and I wonder what the point is.

If I accepted a completely rational outlook on life then my answer would be that right and wrong don't exist.

If I accepted on faith that human happiness is the ultimate good then right and wrong boils down to a democratic vote with each person voting on the basis of what makes them happy. (It may make them happy that women have choice or make them happy that life is maintained or make them happy that the sex ratio stays nearly equal...what makes them happy has no inherent meaningful basis...it is just cultural).

If I accepted on faith that the Bible is God's instructional manual for life then I'd say that murder is wrong and so the question becomes when is abortion murder, the sex of the baby would be irrelevant.

If I accepted on faith that all human interaction should be voluntary then from that I can derive that murder is wrong the question would again default to when is abortion murder. Again, the sex of the child would be irrelevant.

[Codo]

I think it is a horrible idea to allow gender specific abortions.

1. This will lead to an even more man dominated world then it is now, because there will be much more sons then daughters.

2. Where will it stop? All blue eyed and blonde? 1,80 and above? Not much fat? IQ?

3. Who are we to decide which life is worth living?


I myself do not like abortions at all. I have no idea when life starts. Is it after the birth? Is it after 3 month of pregnancy (an accepted compromisse in Germany)? Is it in the moment when the sperm reaches the egg cell?

Who should have the power to define the moment where life starts?

But when life starts lets say after 60 days after the sex, it must be murder to kill any foetus which is older then 60 days. When life starts right in the first moment, any abortion is murder....

My son suffers from cystic fibrosis’. When he was born, his future seems to be about 15 years of life, full of pain, harm and hospitals. The medicine improved dramatically. His life is much better and much longer then expected. He is 16 and still has some twenty years, more likely even more.
And as far as I can tell his life is worth living. But when he was born they talked about screening for CF and abortion of kids who suffer this Illness.
If we had made the abortion, we had killed him before he was born. This had been a very bad idea. People who kill a foetus because of a genetic damage had killed my son and f.e. Beethoven and others.

Sorry, I really dislike their position. It is not to us to decide which life is worth living and which is not. There may be exceptions, but if you have ever talked to parents who decided to get their baby despite the fact that the life of their kid will be just some minutes or some days, you may change your position.

So, I would very much prefer to make the hurdle for an abortion very high (around the lines of very specific illnesses, rape, risk for the mother, teen-age parents etc).

Of course, if you can convince me that life begins at day xyz, any abortion before this day should be legal. But how can you convince me that your definition (or the one from my government or from the church) is correct?

[matmat]

just to throw a little more fuel on the fire.... I don't think a woman should have to give a reason at all for the first trimester (or some other predetermined time period).

[Gerben42]

Quote

My son suffers from cystic fibrosis’. When he was born, his future seems to be about 15 years of life, full of pain, harm and hospitals. The medicine improved dramatically. His life is much better and much longer then expected. He is 16 and still has some twenty years, more likely even more. And as far as I can tell his life is worth living. But when he was born they talked about screening for CF and abortion of kids who suffer this Illness.

I think this must have been a very hard time for you and your wife, and I think it was a very brave decision to have the baby and one can only applaud such braveness on your side. The point here is that it was your decision and yours only, and not that of the state, who should not either force you to have the baby or force you to abort the pregnancy. Either way sounds pretty horrible to me.

Quote

I myself do not like abortions at all. I have no idea when life starts. Is it after the birth? Is it after 3 month of pregnancy (an accepted compromise in Germany)? Is it in the moment when the sperm reaches the egg cell?

I am happy with this compromise, it is not up to the government to judge over us. If you believe in some God, perhaps (s)he will judge you for your decision. What is true for everyone is that your direct environment will judge over you too. I cannot imagine the women in the opening post having many friends left after this story...

[helene_t]

Codo, on Aug 10 2009, 03:03 PM, said:

Of course, if you can convince me that life begins at day xyz, any abortion before this day should be legal. But how can you convince me that your definition (or the one from my government or from the church) is correct?

Well a definition is just a definition, it is not correct or incorrect.

Anyway, a fetus is of course alive. So are the egg and sperm cells before gestation. So are bacteria.

[Codo]

helene_t, on Aug 14 2009, 04:15 AM, said:

Codo, on Aug 10 2009, 03:03 PM, said:

Of course, if you can convince me that life begins at day xyz, any abortion before this day should be legal. But how can you convince me that your definition (or the one from my government or from the church) is correct?

Well a definition is just a definition, it is not correct or incorrect.

Anyway, a fetus is of course alive. So are the egg and sperm cells before gestation. So are bacteria.

But this is crux Helene,

We decide that is a allowed to kill bacteria.
Most of us allow to kill animals.

We decide not to kill human life. (With some expections in selfdefence or in some states as a penalty).

But who defines human life? When is the beginning, when is the end?

Both dates are very arguable and I am quite happy that nobody asks me to be the judge.

[kenberg]

matmat, on Aug 10 2009, 09:39 AM, said:

just to throw a little more fuel on the fire.... I don't think a woman should have to give a reason at all for the first trimester (or some other predetermined time period).

This is pretty much my view also.

The conflict between society's right/obligation to intervene and the right of individuals to make a choice is never more difficult than in the case of potential or real children. It seems right to me for the responsibility to evolve. Adults are free to use birth control (probably everyone on the forum agrees, but agreement is not universal). In the early stage of a pregnancy, the woman should be, I think, the one with total decision making power. Boyfriends have no rights here. Husbands are a trickier issue but I see it as a marital dispute if they disagree. The woman gets to choose the course of action on keeping the pregnancy, after which the husband can choose his course of action on whether to stay married.

Later in the pregnancy, society and most definitely husbands acquire a greater right to impose some conditions. This shift continues after birth. Parents have a lot of rights about how the child will be raised, but not total control. The child must be educated. Schools may require vaccinations. Religious objections to health care are a particularly thorny issue but I think I am in favor of intervention in at least some situations.

Some arbitrariness in deciding who gets to decide what is unavoidable. My instinct is to butt out unless a clear case can be made that society must intervene.