Of course John sees that, Jake; why do you think he’s proposing it? It is men like John Howard, with their shameless dual standards for women and for men, allowing “respectable men” to have sex with “loose women” and then walk away from any subsequent consequences, that could easily turn me into a man-hater.

I remind myself, however, that not all men are as selfish and irresponsible as John Howard, only some.

Do you see how your plan puts all of the responsibility on women and none on men? Why should women be the ones forced to “push for marriage again?” Why couldn’t your plan involve all men who father bastards being forced to give their entire salary as child-support and having to live in the equivalent of a half-way house until the child comes of age? That way all of the responsibility would be on men. Or better yet, for the purpose of putting the responsibility equally on men and women, why don’t we put people have have children out of wedlock into prison work programs until the child comes of age, take the child away & put it up for adoption and have all income earned by the parents go into a trust fund for the child? We could just make death the punishment for having children out of wedlock! That should also be a disincentive that cuts across gender lines.

Sounds absurd, doesn’t it? But so does your suggestion of putting the all of the responsibility on women.

I am sure about eliminating child support payments, but i was asked to come up with possible punishments. On the one hand, a man should be responsible, but by creating child support for unmarried dads, the state sort of subsumed marriage and made it seem unnecessary for the woman. I think we could disincentivize fornication by eliminating child support, and make women push for marriage first again.

Good catch! So what John Howard is really after is a return to the “good old days” - when “loose women” were punished, men could be as promiscuous as they like without any penalty, and illegitimate children were warehoused in institutions.

I wonder why that doesn’t surprise me?

You’ve got john howard all wrong. He’s not going to punish the man who had unprotected sex with the unmarried woman.

john howard says:
But I would be in favor of more deterrence, perhaps by eliminating the obligations of paternity on unmarried fathers.

See, guy gets off scott-free while the woman and child are punished.

And he considers non-egg&sperm procreation unethical? Sheesh.

Ah. So rather than force a woman to have an abortion, you intend to prosecute her and lock her up? Likewise, presumably, the man who had unprotected sex with her? And who is going to take care of the child? Will you have children in jail with their mothers? Or forced adoption? Or what? You don’t seem to have thought this through at all.

The law can only be enforced by people respecting it and agreeing with it.

Actually, a “law” that is only enforced by people respecting it isn’t a “law”. It’s a custom or a tradition or a statement of belief.

I see no reason whatsoever to respect such a law, and you have not given me any.

See? You can have a law without enforcing it or punishing it to such a degree that the enforcement itself is odious. Obviously, abortion is odious. The child is innocent. The law can on ly be enforced by people respecting it and agreeing with it. Single people should not be allowed to have children, they should be considered criminals if they do that.

The current punishment for unmarried intercourse is “not more than three months or by a fine of not more than thirty dollars,” but I don’t think we even do that anymore. I think it pretty much goes unpunished, and that is appropriate. The reason we don’t punish women is because we have faith that the law will continue to be respected even without a deterent of punishment, and punishing the woman would punish the child. But I would be in favor of more deterrence, perhaps by eliminating the obligations of paternity on unmarried fathers.

Actually, it does. If you’re arguing - and you are - that only married couples shall be allowed to procreate, and that this shall be enforced by law, the only way to enforce that is forced contraception on unmarried people, and forced abortions on women who get pregnant anyway. If you don’t like that, stop advocating it.

Consider that only allowing licensed drivers to drive doesn’t require killing unlicensed people, or putting unlicensed drivers in jail for their whole life.

But driving without a license is a crime, which can lead to fines or even to jail time. There is a punishment for driving without a license; without that punishment, the requirement that only licensed drivers are allowed to drive would be meaningless.

So if only married cross-sex pairs are allowed to procreate, as I think you’ve proposed, then what punishment are you proposing for unmarried procreation?

I disagree with you about the connection between how a fetus is created and human dignity. I see no connection at all. I don’t feel people have any more or less dignity now than they did before the first test-tube baby was born. But I cannot deny that you have the feelings that you express. I think that it’s silly that you expect all others to agree with your belief.

Banning non egg and sperm procreation? Yeah, I could live with that. But I could also live without all the various egg and sperm methods (particularly in terms of fertility clinics) that we have now. But that has to do with my belief that we are suffering from overpopulation that is going to severely and adversely affect future generations.

But will I loudly advocate it? Hell, no. It is just not a realistic goal - just as my goal of education & 3/4 child coupons is not realistic. I don’t understand why people would want to go through the pain and expense any non egg&sperm reproduction would involve (or why they would want to go to a fertility doctor). I also don’t understand why anybody would want to skydive. I’m not going to work to outlaw either activity, though. I will speak out to make people aware of the dangers of overpopulation, but I’m not going to rant about the “immorality” (which is subjective, by the way) of having multiple children.

>The right to procreate was found in Skinner

Would have been helpful if you’d supplied a link, but I googled. Okay. So, “the right to procreate” has been established in law in the US - it is illegal to enforce sterility on someone who wishes to reproduce. I wasn’t aware of that.

and the right to do it with the person of your choice (that was their words, what they meant was no matter what race they were) was found in Loving. They said there are valid reasons to prohibit marraige, but mainaining white supremacy was not one of them.

Okay.

>I have no idea if you’re right that it would be unsafe. It’s probably not yet
>possible by the current technological limits. I cannot see how it could be
>unethical, if it were possible.

Of course it would be unsafe, there is no way to predict how human egg and sperm inprint each other’s genes, and how their absence or their doubled presence would affect the person’s development. It is unethical to purposefully create a person in the first place, let alone in a risky, untested and likely tragic manner.

Um. Well, this is actually a reasonable argument for current bio-technological limits. It is not a reasonable argument to make on principle or as a sweeping claim that it would never be safe to do. I don’t know that, and nor do you. But, as a general principle that one shouldn’t experiment on conscious human beings, I will agree that it would be unwise and unethical to do it right now.

>>Babies should not created this way, or any way besides combining the >>egg and sperm of a man and a woman who are married to each other.

>Now you’re moving into the realm of the definitely unethical. How on
>earth can you enforce this?

We enforce fornication laws when we say “no, we should wait until we are married.”?

No. You’re talking about an ethical principle that some people hold by and others don’t. Some people feel they should not have sex until they’re married. Others feel that it’s better to have sex only inside a committed relationship, whether or not it’s civil marriage. Yet others feel that what matters is being honest and kind and considerate - behaving well towards all or any sexual partners. All of these are possible ethical positions to take. None of them are enforced by law, and none of them have anything to do with your initial and unethical proposal: “Babies should not [be] created [in] any way besides combining the egg and sperm of a man and a woman who are married to each other.”

The natural way to create a baby is for a fertile egg in a woman’s body to combine by a fertile sperm from a man’s body. That I will grant you. It would still be a perfectly natural way to create a baby if one took sperm from a willing sperm donor and implanted it by a syringe: and, requiring more technological assistance, but still proven to create perfectly normal babies, if the egg is fertilised outside the woman’s body and then implanted, either in that woman’s body or in another woman’s body. None of these methods of creating babies can be considered inethical in the same sense as experimenting with combining the gametes from two eggs, as all simply involve fertilisation of egg with sperm and incubation of foetus for the usual nine months, product, one normal baby. (Combining the gametes from two sperm would be trickier, as the combination would have to avoid two Y chromosomes.)

We can enforce the egg and sperm law by telling labs and scientists not to try SSP experiments

Well, you could. And in the US, where conservatives don’t like science much, I’m fairly sure that would work. But I doubt it will work outside the US, and yes, I think scientists will probably experiment with this, though I would strongly object were they to experiment with human eggs or human sperm until they had gone through several generations of large mammal experimentation. (Dolly the sheep proved that cloning was possible, but also showed long term that it would be unwise and unethical to attempt cloning a human being until the wrinkles had been ironed out.)

>>Force abortion on every woman who conceives outside marriage?

no, of course not. banning SSP does not require forcing anyone to get an abortion.

That wasn’t what you said. You said: “Babies should not [be] created [in] any way besides combining the egg and sperm of a man and a woman who are married to each other.”

If you wish to retract and apologize for this assertion, I am very willing to accept it. But you have to see that this statement, taken literally, requires forcing every woman who gets pregnant who isn’t married to have an abortion.

>Enforced contraception (or find a means of reversible sterility) on all
>unmarried couples? The very thought of such totalitarian-style control >makes me twitchy. It’s a disgusting and repellent idea.

Yes it is, and not at all what i am talking about.

Then please, retract your statement : “Babies should not [be] created [in] any way besides combining the egg and sperm of a man and a woman who are married to each other.”

Have it simply as: “Babies should not be created in any way besides combining egg and sperm.” That’s a reasonable ethical statement for our current level of bio-science, and does not impose enforced abortion or enforced sterility or enforced contraception or enforced childlessness on anyone. Lesbian couples can easily have children via sperm donation, just as het couples who aren’t interfertile can: gay male couples can either adopt or partner with a lesbian couple. And of course, any couple - whether or not they choose to have children or are able to have children with each other- should be able to get married.

I am talking about banning SSP.

You may think that’s what you’re talking about, but it’s not what you said. Your statement”: “Babies should not [be] created [in] any way besides combining the egg and sperm of a man and a woman who are married to each other.” strongly suggests that you are not trying to ban only an experimental and risky procedure, but trying to prevent any woman from having children outside heterosexual marriage - and since the only way to do that would be forced contraception, forced sterility, or forced abortion, all of which would be (as you have pointed out) illegal by the Skinner decision, you reallly shouldn’t even try.

The right to procreate was found in Skinner, and the right to do it with the person of your choice (that was their words, what they meant was no matter what race they were) was found in Loving. They said there are valid reasons to prohibit marraige, but mainaining white supremacy was not one of them.
>I have no idea if you’re right that it would be unsafe. It’s probably not yet possible by the current technological limits. I cannot see how it could be unethical, if it were possible.

Of course it would be unsafe, there is no way to predict how human egg and sperm inprint each other’s genes, and how their absence or their doubled presence would affect the person’s development. It is unethical to purposefully create a person in the first place, let alone in a risky, untested and likely tragic manner.

>>Babies should not created this way, or any way besides combining the egg and sperm of a man and a woman who are married to each other.

>Now you’re moving into the realm of the definitely unethical. How on earth can you enforce this?

We enforce fornication laws when we say “no, we should wait until we are married.” We can enforce the egg and sperm law by telling labs and scientists not to try SSP experiments, and they can be re-pointed to work on more pressing problems. I am sure they will respct that ban. They certainly wouldn’t be able to get any grants or advertise their SSP service, anyway. There’d be serious jail time for people sho do it anyway.

>Force abortion on every woman who conceives outside marriage?

no, of course not. banning SSP does not require forcing anyone to get an abortion.

>Enforced contraception (or find a means of reversible sterility) on all unmarried couples? The very thought of such totalitarian-style control makes me twitchy. It’s a disgusting and repellent idea.

Yes it is, and not at all what i am talking about. I am talking about banning SSP. Saying that something should happen in such and such a way doesn’t mean that it always does, or that people have to be punished when it doesn’t. And the fact that bad things happen doesn’t mean that you can’t say they shouldn’t, or that things should be done a certain way.

People can marry now matter how old they are. There are no (upper) age limits . Once they marry, they have a right to procreate, like all marriages.

I do think it would be wrong for a young person who has never married to marry a 60 year old, but if that is their choice, the law allows them, and i can’t see how it would be better if there were age limits.

i can see how it would be better not to allow someone to marry someone of their same sex, though.

now answer mine, are you for or against banning non egg and sperm procreation?

Any sufficiently advanced wingnut becomes indistinguishable from a troll. And vice versa.

It might be possible, that’s the whole reason I think it should it should be banned now. There is no need to take the risk, or rather, to impose the risk on the innocent people who would be created. There is no health problem that needs to be solved. Animal experiments won’t take that risk away. Even if we plowed ahead and worked out the kinks, it would be bad to start making children that way, in fact it would be worse if they are succesful at it than if they fail a few times and stop doing it. But there is no way we should ever face that future, because we should not allow the first baby to be born that way, we should keep procreation the same for everyone - we all have to find a person of the opposite sex and marry.