Abortion

Abortion

© Eric R. Pianka

Let us now consider Abortion.

Abortion is one of the most hotly contested divisive issues with its militant anti-abortion "pro-life" versus abortion rights "pro-choice" mass movement groups. Pro-lifers claim that an embryo is human with a right to life and say that abortion constitutes murder. Proponents of choice assert that a woman has a right to decide about matters that concern her own body including whether or not to bring an embryo to full term. Balancing foetal rights against those of its mother is at issue, and bodily privacy has become a women's right issue in America. Debate over when does life begin is intimately tied to our irrational religious notion of spirituality and has spawned the nonsensical question "When does a newly fertilized egg or zygote acquire a spirit and become a person?" Laws vary from country to country with states and governments declaring abortion legal in some but criminal in others. Laws banning abortion lead to unsafe abortions and maternal mortality. Abortions were illegal in the USA until the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision. Since then, public controversy over the moral, ethical, and legal issues surrounding abortion has been extensive and seems to have reached a stalemate.

Once again, we missed our chance to ease into a stationary world.

LA Times article on impediments to family planning



A NEW KIND OF SPINSTER

In centuries past, a woman unmarried, childless, was barren and unfulfilled. Nulliparous, unable to secure a mate and companion. Embittered, eliminated by Darwin's sexual selection.

Yet just as surely, those who succeed at mating and reproduction are victims of society and the insidious forces of Darwinian selection, too.

But now, fully emancipated, on stands unfettered by the bonds of her culture and the shackles of natural selection. Freed from the desire to have children, she can follow a different lifeline.

Not defiant, not at all. Simply confident and sure of herself -- a spinster, and proud of it, too!


JOHNNY ANTI-APPLESEED

Another solution is theoretically possible. I call it the "Johnny Anti-Appleseed Solution." -- Instead of being cursed with our fertility, I would bless us with infertility. Now this could happen naturally with male sperm counts falling because of the many estrogen mimics in plastics. I asked a reproductive physiologist years ago about this. I said, "could you design a molecule that you could administer once that would turn off reproduction and make people sterile?" And he said, "yes, theoretically." And I said, "well, if you did that, could you design an antidote that would unmask it just briefly for a few seconds?" And he said, "yes, probably." So this is what we need. We need to sterilize everybody on the Earth and make the antidote freely available to anybody who's willing to work for it. Immediately you'd get responsible parenthood, no more juvenile delinquents, or unwanted kids. If you wanted to have a child, you had to work, and you had only a few seconds to do it in.


Read LA Times article on impediments to family planning

Download essay on Human Fecundity

Download Weber's "Healing the Earth"