Ectogenesis--How does this change the abortion debate?

[dyermaker]

Can you reconcile that position with the specifics of Roe V. Wade?

 

It's an oversimplification to say that women have a right to choose abortion. The right to choose is based on the right not to be pregnant. Abortion is legal means of pursuing that right. simply because of the fact that a fetus can't survive without it's mother. If it could, there'd be no ethical reason to kill it. It would no longer be the mother's choice, because it wouldn't have to be.

 

Take Thomspon (?) and his famous violinist example. If there was a way for a woman to disconnect herself from the violinist, and the violinist still survives, there'd be no right to go back and kill the violinist. That's overstepping her liberty.

[SoleMate]

Shouldn't the term be "exogenesis"?

 

And why is my contribution being TOTALLY ignored?

[faux]

Originally posted by dyermaker

Can you reconcile that position with the specifics of Roe V. Wade?

 

It's an oversimplification to say that women have a right to choose abortion. The right to choose is based on the right not to be pregnant. Abortion is legal means of pursuing that right. simply because of the fact that a fetus can't survive without it's mother. If it could, there'd be no ethical reason to kill it. It would no longer be the mother's choice, because it wouldn't have to be.

 

Take Thomspon (?) and his famous violinist example. If there was a way for a woman to disconnect herself from the violinist, and the violinist still survives, there'd be no right to go back and kill the violinist. That's overstepping her liberty.

 

I believe that ectogenesis would allow for enough controversy to support abortion. Perhaps this would not draw upon Roe Vs. Wade, but it would draw upon future court battles. I think it would be justifiable to allow abortion, however, as there are instances in which a woman knows she would be giving birth to a child with no arms, or no legs, or a severely debilitating mental disorder. I can understand women, or men and women, who think that to allow their child to be born with this condition is not truly living.

 

I do not know if this satisfies your curiosity, but at this precise moment, it is all that I can offer. I strongly believe that ectogenesis will never, ever, make abortion illegal. It may be best, however, to see what happens over time. The choice is not left up to me.

[blind_otter]

Could I ask a practical question? How complicated is the procedure? I had a D&C with suction after my second trimester miscarriage because my body wouldn't miscarry naturally, which risked sepsis (blood poisoning). Although the procedure was extremely painful, I assume the process to remove the embryo and the placenta, which is attached through a rich network of bloodvessels to the wall of the uterus, would be much more invasive and complicated, no?

 

I could barely walk for about 4-5 days after the D&C. The recovery time after harvesting the embryo and placenta must be longer, they would have to make an incision in the abdomen similar to a C-section, right? Maybe I'm wrong.....

[Papillon]

I'm behind Curly on this one, all the way. And not because her new avatar is gorgeous.

[CurlyIam]

Hum.... Pap, you're sharing phantacies on the wrong forum.... LOOL !!!

[CurlyIam]

Sh*t, I meant "phantasies"!

[Pocky]

Oh...but it's not your DNA...

 

 

I am not a pod. I not a vessel to be used for reproduction. My body belongs to me. Not to you, not to the government and not to anything that wants to grow inside of me. It forms from my body, it's created within body and is a part of my body and therefore my decision to make as to what will happen to it while it is in my body.

[CurlyIam]

Not to be mean, but apparentely not in dyer's country !

[bluetuesday]

pocky, are you a womb owner? just that your biog says you're male. makes no difference to me, i still disagree with your argument, i just wondered.

 

dyer's arguing from an anti-death stance curly, and his argument on this thread is not about who owns what. none of us owns anyone else. those cells are a life. not your life, not the father's life, a separate and unique entity. you don't want to be pregnant, no-one with a heart would make you carry a baby to term you didn't want. but wanting your baby to die rather than live goes way beyond pro-choice.

 

wishing to preserve life, particularly in this case where dyer is promoting a method that would allow a child to live and is no more harmful to the woman than an abortion, is entirely admirable. i wish there were more like him.

[Pocky]

pocky, are you a womb owner? just that your biog says you're male. makes no difference to me, i still disagree with your argument, i just wondered.

 

Womb owner. Funny stuff. I just changed my profile. I always just put bogus stuff because I hate giving out personal information. I am in fact a womb owner. A womb owner that had an abortion and is and will always be thankful that I had that right to make the decision for myself.

 

wishing to preserve life, particularly in this case where dyer is promoting a method that would allow a child to live and is no more harmful to the woman than an abortion, is entirely admirable. i wish there were more like him.

 

An egg isn't a human being.

[bluetuesday]

Originally posted by Pocky

An egg isn't a human being.

 

no it isn't, but then you don't abort eggs, you abort foetuses.

 

as we have no idea when life begins, knowing it is merely somewhere between conception and birth, we have no idea if what we're ending is a life. but that opens up a massive debate about what constitutes 'life' and this is not about that.

 

i'm sorry you had to go through it though pocky. i'm glad you're ok.

[blind_otter]

I used to be stridently pro-choice, and after I had actually been pregnant I changed my mind about what I would do if pregnant again, even if it were inconvenient, even if I knew my child would not necessarily be 100% perfect and healthy. I felt life inside me the moment I conceived on both occassions, 2 weeks before any test could confirm the hormonal changes in my body.

 

However, even knowing this - even feeling as I do (because I cherished the daughter I lost and I respect life to the utmost) - I do strongly feel that all life, even a single cell, is life - even having seen the tiny heartbeat on the ultrasound at a mere 6 weeks! A tiny flashing light that fluttered rapidly, tied to a pencil-thin umbilical chord, floating around.

 

I know that to legislate a personal private, personal, moral decisions is a complete and utter impossibility.

 

And in a fictitious world where exogenesis could be comparable to a $500 abortion, a percentage of women who choose to get abortions may choose exogenesis. However, this is an impossibility. Finances are a reality. WHO will pay the $10,000-$20,000 it would take to gestate the embryo to term?

 

If you're a man you simply cannot understand this. But having something inside of your body that you do not want there is intolerable. It makes you feel violated. And I am one of those crazy women who thinks that male opinions of abortion are nice to hear, but not based in any real life experience. Men can't know what it feels like to be pregnant. Men can't know the complex emotional associations involved in the reproductive directive.

 

I feel very strongly about how beautiful pregnancy is. But I accpet the fact that not everyone can or will share my views.

[CurlyIam]

Originally posted by bluetuesday

 

dyer's arguing from an anti-death stance curly, and his argument on this thread is not about who owns what. none of us owns anyone else. those cells are a life. not your life, not the father's life, a separate and unique entity. you don't want to be pregnant, no-one with a heart would make you carry a baby to term you didn't want. but wanting your baby to die rather than live goes way beyond pro-choice.

 

wishing to preserve life, particularly in this case where dyer is promoting a method that would allow a child to live and is no more harmful to the woman than an abortion, is entirely admirable. i wish there were more like him.

 

Imagine a carpenter. He's got the tools, he's got the wood. One day he decided to try on his new tools and makes a sculpture. Does the sculpture automatically belong to the National Patrimoin of that country?

 

Let's go on. HE then pays no attention, slips and cuts of the arm of the sculpture. Is the authorities to take the sculpture away for abuse? Is it not his to keep or to destroy? Are we to make paintures not throw away theis work because it's art and thus nolonger belongs to them? Where would it stop?

 

 

 

 

Blue, to me this not a problem of eliminating death,but a problem of whom legally owns LIFE. The state, the system, the authority do not owe life. They are not to take or to give life to anywone.

 

none of us owns anyone else.Of course you do. Let's take dyer's exemple. In wild life, moms who don't want their puppies leave them to die or get eaten by predators. We owe our children, women are beingpossesed by their men, wemay call ourselves civilised, but w're not. Our action are still based on instincts.

 

 

 

 

those cells are a life. not your life, not the father's life, a separate and unique entity That life is not formed in an office. That life is formed as a result of people's action. It is a result of some person's action. It has their flesh, their genetic legacy, it develops in their body. It belongs to them. The decision not to have children NEVER in someone's life belongs to the individual. If by mistake that happenes, that person has the right to do as they choose.

 

 

 

 

Something tells me that the minute ectogenesis becomes mandatory, the abvortions will skyrocket. Less women will go to doctors and generally this will affect all society. You'll see women throwing themselves off the stares, etc etc.

 

What frightens me here is not the abvortion per se. I will not get pregnant and if God helps me, all the babies I make will live with me. What scares the sh*t out of me is loosing freedom.Loosing freedom to choose. I mean the damn procedure ain't even 100% safe yet and you people talk of making it mandatory? That is barbaric! Each women has the right to choose whather to procreate or not !

 

If one makes an abvortion when the "baby" is 3 weeks old, how is that different from women taking the emergency pill 2 days after she had sex? Ain't that abvortion too? I may get carried away here, but that is BARBARIC!

[bluetuesday]

Originally posted by CurlyIam

Something tells me that the minute ectogenesis becomes mandatory, the abvortions will skyrocket.

 

What scares the sh*t out of me is loosing freedom.Loosing freedom to choose. I mean the damn procedure ain't even 100% safe yet and you people talk of making it mandatory? That is barbaric! Each women has the right to choose whather to procreate or not !

 

If one makes an abvortion when the "baby" is 3 weeks old, how is that different from women taking the emergency pill 2 days after she had sex? Ain't that abvortion too? I may get carried away here, but that is BARBARIC!

 

curly, do you think this is what the discussion has been about?

 

NO-ONE has ever spoken of making anything mandatory. ectogenesis is being discussed here as AN OPTION, nothing more. a way of preserving life at no additional harm to the mother. i too would be against making it mandatory.

 

you were once a tiny foetus. you were never inanimate. no mere piece of wood could have become the amazing, unique human you now are. you were always a miracle, even from the moment of your conception. i believe that to be true of every human being, born or as yet unborn.

 

which is why i think an abortion after 2 days, 3 weeks or 22 weeks is the same. the ending of a life.

[CurlyIam]

Dyer kept on saying "ectogenesis" and "mandatory". If you read my posts - I admit, they're long and don't exceed in logic , you'll see I said that ectogenesis is a very interesting OPTION. As long as it's not mandatory.

 

I totally agree to your last paragraph. As I said before, it is not the abolition of abvortion per se that gets me worried, but limiting my freedom.

[CurlyIam]

To be more specific, read this:

 

That's just bad science. The egg is only half of the human.

 

It's not your body. It only needs your body to grow, because we're mammals. Ectogenesis removes the "my body, my decision" argument, because the child no longer needs your body to grow.

 

Roe V Wade doesn't gaurantee the universal right to kill anything growing inside of you. It simply gaurantees you the right to not be pregnant, which, currently, abortion is the only solution to, and because of fetal inviability, abortion is legal.

This would still gaurantee you the right to not be pregnant. It would still give you full control over your body. Instead of killing the baby, it would allow it to live.

[CurlyIam]

Or this:

 

To you, and all: What's the justificaiton for keeping abortion legal, if this were a (pardon) viable option? What problems remain for you?

 

This is where you're crossing the line from 'pro-choice' to 'pro-death'.

 

Both of them are from dyer's posts.

[Mr Spock]

I don't wish there were more Dyers...he would like to criminalize abortion........

[dyermaker]

Originally posted by Pocky

I am not a pod. I not a vessel to be used for reproduction. My body belongs to me. Not to you, not to the government and not to anything that wants to grow inside of me. It forms from my body, it's created within body and is a part of my body and therefore my decision to make as to what will happen to it while it is in my body.

Listen, Pod , I still have some questions.

 

Originally posted by Pocky

An egg isn't a human being.

An egg is only half of the picture, no one aborts haploids.

 

Originally posted by Mr Spock

I don't wish there were more Dyers...he would like to criminalize abortion........

I wish those who opposed me ideologically would still approach it like I do. Don't you agree, whether you support abortion or not, that Roe V Wade would be threatened by this in its entirety?

 

Contrary to popular belief, Roe V Wade is not about the universal right to abort.

[ladyangel]

Originally posted by SoleMate

I see a problem with ectogenesis, dyer, that you may want to consider. Leaving aside the technology issues, there are serious legal/financial problems. Would society be forced to pay pay the doubtless high costs for artificial wombs and incubation? How much are we talking here - probably USD20,000-30,000 per pregnancy even AFTER the technique is perfected and becomes common. These would be fetuses/babies with NO acknowledged parents and probably minimal or zero health history. They would inevitably have a higher rate of medical problems, due to the troubled circumstances of their conception (such as a woman who took toxic medicine or was exposed to rubella before realizing she was pregnant). There will also be alcohol and crack exposure in some babies, plus the whole cohort of fetuses that were planned to be aborted because of severe chromosomal or other prenatal defects. Of course, some will be healthy, but I believe that proportionately, there will be a much higher rate of medical and developmental problems.

 

Finding adoptive parents is already hard enough. Where are you going to find 1 million sets of parents a year for a high risk, medically questionable population? If adoptive parents cannot be found, do these unfortunate, parentless children then end up in the hellish orphanages that we have all seen the pictures and which CurlyIam alludes to? The reality is that abortion happens because the natural caretakers of the future child, its progenitors, feel themselves UNABLE or UNWILLING to care for the child. That's a big gap in caretaking ability.

 

Let's see:

 

(1 million averted abortions/year) * (USD 25,000 for womb space + USD150,000 for 18 years of support and medical care) = USD175,000,000,000 per year.

 

And that's conservative, becuase I didn't account for major medical problems, just ordinary support. I am compassionate, but can't fathom our rich society absorbing this kind of burden. Much less the poorer countries.

 

I'd rather use that money on the "already-born", not to mention pregnancy prevention, better contraception, drug treatment, education, etc., thus attacking the problem of unwanted fetuses at its ROOT cause. I see abortion, particularly of early stage embryos or medically impaired fetuses, as a sometimes painful necessity, but not a crime equivalent to murder. And guess what? So does most of the US population.

I'm a little behind in reading threads, so pardon me for coming in so late. I think you raise a lot of interesting questions, SoleMate; questions that need to be answered before I could back such an "alternative" to abortion. I certainly would not back it as a "replacement" for abortion in any event; in other words, making abortion illegal.

 

In theory this sounds good, but I don't think it would work in practice. I'm willing to go out on a limb here and say that the majority of abortions are most likely elected by low-income women. So yeah, who's going to foot the bill for this new idea? Too many loose ends.