Politically, I'm mostly a conservative libertarian, and, generally speaking my "knee-jerk" opinion on something is more likely to align with those on the right of the traditional spectrum as with those on the left. In some others, though, I don't really fit anywhere. Specifically, as it matters for this post, I'm both Pro-Choice and Anti-Abortion. This's an odd position to be in, that I've been hoping that technology might remedy for me with the invention of the artificial womb. Alas, this hasn't happened. In light of the lack of invention of the artificial womb, with the desire to see no children who aren't wanted while at the same time seeing no fetuses knocked off, I hereby tender the following proposal:
1. All male children shall receive reversable vasectomies (at public expense)
2. Any mentally-competant male wishing to have the state of his vasectomy altered (either to reverse it or else to re-instate it) shall have the operation performed promptly and at public expense.
3. False testimony about one's "fertility status" shall be a felony.
Spendy, to be sure, but it would ensure that before a child is brought into the world, the would-be parents must take a positive affirmative step that having a child is really what they desire and intend. This is analogous to "opt in" versus "opt out" marketing terminology. I think that all would-be parents should have to "opt-in" instead of the other way around.
1. Undesired pre-infants won't be slain by the gazillion each year.
2. High-school girls who succumb to peer-pressure to have sex will still catch all the latest diseases, but they won't have their futures truncated by the need to care for a child while still laying the foundations for their own lives.
3. The ability to procreate will be tied to one's general societal fitness without regards for race, religion, money or (competant) intelligence, or, in otherwords, eugenics without all the evil.
4. The rearing of children, having become a marginal token of societal fitness, will become an incentive for the formation of more stable marriages.
5. The idea of being properly prepared for the advent of children being part of the general meme, the age at which people become parents will increase -- this may cause additional research expenditures for the prevention of Down's syndrome.
6. Non-marital sex will become even more common, necessitating the need for better immunization against STDs( but also lowering the number of divorces from marriages that never should have been ).
7. Given the larger proportion of children raised in conditions of relative surfeit rather than relative deficit, non "white-collar" crime (violent and property) will diminish.
8. Money spend on social services for single mothers & their children may be diverted into the education or health-care budgets, or eliminated from governmental budgets altogether.
9. Men will also get to feel a little pain bringing a kid into the world.
All for the cost of 2 to 5 outpatient surgeries per semi-capita, surgeries which by then will be so common and standardized as the be cheaper than most airfares.
2 comments:
"all the latest diseases..."
*snort*
And there are so many lately to choose from, aren't there?
Good points:
1) Maybe higher divorce incidence, but perhaps a lower incidence of "early" divorces with children. The question is whether that cost would be worth the other benefits. My divorce, although miserable, tought me a lot of lessons I wouldn't have learned otherwise; Although I don't recommend it, I think there's something to be said for it.
2) Touche'. Perhaps an alternate method?
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