As a woman and a mother im sure I have a little bias in my argument, but I am going to tell you what I think anyway. I think the idea of completely making abortion obsolete is a grand idea, but there are limitations such as transfering an unborn fetus into a “modified” pig. Although the idea of using a machine to incubate and essentially develop the fetus until birth sounds appealing, I am still not conviced that it is in the best interest of the fetus.
I am no expert, but can’t help but think what kind of a life the child would live. The adoption system we have is not one to be applauded. There are several flaws, and when it comes to the life of an innocent child we should be more extensive in backgrounding the families that we are giving these children to. Sure there are are a handfull of couple to bless with the child they never had, but there are far more that are not in it for the love of the child. In addition to that, think about the phsycological effects this would have on the child. Would the child be made fun of? Probably so. We don’t know. Never knowing of a “real” mother and father. Sorry to bring up the controversial issue but same sex adoptive parents…what kind of impact will that have on the child?

Call me old-fashioned, but I am a firm believer in non abortion unless under extenuating circumstances (such as rape, or right to live). You choose to have unprotected sex then you should reap the consequences. We are all adults or least when it comes to the matter of sex we want to act like adults; therefore, we ought to be “adult” enough to use contraception. Maybe our fight should not be to find a remedy for abortion, maybe we should first pour some money into our child service system to better it, and then consider the long term effects of the child at hand. There always be pros and there will always be cons. Taking proper steps to correct the problems we already face and then weighing those advantages and disadvantages will present us with a uniform and well-round desicion on what is “best”.

Both of your responses have helped me pinpoint my objections to the idea that justice requires ectogenesis. The first derives from the autonomy of families vis-a-vis the state; the other from the moral status of “UDH” embryos.

As Mike says, a parent’s authority over their child is not absolute, and there are circumstances where the paternalistic state can intervene. When a child is being abused or neglected, welfare agents have a duty to protect them. While group homes in the US may be little better than prisons, insofar as the risk of violence to the child is comparatively less in the foster-care system, the state is justified in separating a child from their abusive parent.

But is violence to a child morally equivalent with violence to an embryo? As Matt pointed out, UDHs “moral stock rises as they take on the features of personhood over the course of the pregnancy.” As this moral gradient declines towards the moment of conception, so too would the state’s duties to its citizens or, conversely, the parent’s authority would rise. Since a developing embryo isn’t endowed with the sentience of a baby or the consciousness of a child, I don’t see why violence to embryos (which do not experience the violence or destruction in any way) has the same repugnance as destroying a baby or child. If the cells of the embryo have yet to even divide into the brain cells necessary to experience pain, then state’s obligations to the potential citizen are not yet enforceable, and the mother’s preference to terminate the embryo does no harm to an innocent person.

So, if both ectogenesis and the foster-care system made adequate advances in cost and quality, the mother’s reproductive rights could be justifiably limited in the later stages of development, once the fetus is demonstrably sentient. But prior to that, the mother’s autonomy is unassailable, because her offspring’s entitlement to the state’s protection has not yet taken effect.

This discussion has helped me refine my views from the brutally unsubtle examples of infanticide I brought up before. If a technology were developed that made abortion unnecessary, I’d now say the state can only enforce it–or that justice only requires it–when the UDH has reached the point of sentience in utero. And in the absence of a liberal state that can enforce these restrictions on the mother and provide these entitlements to the fetus, the prospect of a late-term or live-birth abortion falls from an irresponsible injustice to an unavoidable tragedy.

Seriously–excellent points and questions. And superb job taking a first stab at answers, Mike. You two should sit down and solve some problems together sometime.

My fault for not better qualifying the argument. Indeed, I made too quick a jump from “if it’s technologically possible” to “it’s morally required” without considering the resource implications. To the degree that such technology is prohibitively expensive, yeah–the case for universally available and even enforced ectogenesis is weakened.

As a gradualist, while I think UDHs have great moral value from conception, their moral stock rises as they take on the features of personhood over the course of the pregnancy. Therefore, a young UDH’s life may be worth less than, say, a thousand adult citizens’ educations. That sounds callous, but shoot–my life–if it required some ridiculously expensive treatment to save–may not be worth the education of a thousand.

The problem is that striking the most reasonable balance amongst our values–in free speech, freedom of religion, defense, education, economic liberty, self-sufficiency, economic justice, autonomy, privacy, sexual equality, human life, etc–often seems ad hoc. And articulating precise cost thresholds and acceptable trade offs is impossible to do in a principled way. But I think that’s a conversation we’d just need to have publicly, should the technology come online.

It’s clear that putting UDHs’ lives above ALL else is simply unreasonable. But I think it’s equally clear that they have great value, and thus warrant serious resource commitments.

Of course, we could always punt the financial burden back to the biological parents… We’d definitely need subsidies for the poor, but hey–to the extent that the costs were burdensome, they would encourage birth control! I like it

(I’m actually on the fence about the permissibility of abortion, but I’ll play the part of someone who’s slightly against it.)

“What are the fundamental reasons why infanticide should be prevented?”

As Matt says, we don’t always acquiesce to parental demands, and we shouldn’t. Most folks find infanticide to be morally repugnant. They find the unnecessary killing of the innocent to be morally repugnant. Justice seems to support this claim. If Justice is “getting what one deserves” then it is difficult to see how an innocent proto-person deserves death. They are not in a position to act, but they have been (and are susceptible to being) acted upon. If they haven’t acted, then it is difficult to see why we should kill (or allow to be killed) proto-people based on an inconvenience that they cause.

[The other side of that claim is that it isn't clear why every proto-person (or full-person, perhaps) deserves life at public expense. It might also be the case that people deserve things that we simply can't give them. That is an injustice to them, but when it's tragic and not capricious it is probably a bullet we can bite.]

“Is there a public interest argument to be made, or are we committed to limitless sacrifice for the absolute value of life?”

It’s interesting to me that some folks will argue that life has a limitless value, but that these same people are in favor of military action and death penalties and other things that result in deaths. I think that, if push comes to shove, there are very few people who are willing to claim that the value of life is literally limitless.

I think that we can certainly make a public interest argument. That argument might (probably will) involve a cost/benefit analysis which ends up saying that we can’t save everyone. I’m not sure that this conclusion will mean that abortion is a morally valid option. Perhaps there’s an ectogenesis-lottery of some sort which gives some lucky women the option of ectogenesis and leaves some women responsible for their unwanted pregnancies. After all, Justice seems to require that we not kill folks unnecessarily.

My mind tends to wonder through a variety of cases in point, from Toni Morrison and President Kadyrov to, say, the raid on the polygamist Yearning for Zion Ranch in Texas last year. But I’ll try to focus on the ectogenesis example, and explicate my intuitive misgivings about that in particular.

Assuming that ectogenesis technology becomes available and legally enforceable on unconsenting mothers, under what circumstances can it be applied? Are there any circumstances under which a UDH should be terminated, foregoing ectogenesis?

From a utilitarian perspective, there may be only so many UDHs that the state can take on before an ectogenesis program becomes cost prohibitive. Say, a certain quota of “rescued” unwanted pregnancies per year. Unfortunately, poorer areas are more likely to see more unwanted pregnancies, so it’s the states and municipalities that are least able to pay for child welfare services that would be most frequently faced with a decision between ectogenesis and abortion. As a matter of course, we can expect the same racial and socioeconomic disparities that structure the current healthcare and child welfare systems to manifest in any future ectogenesis program.

Donations from private religious groups could help, but again, it’s the suburban megachurches in more affluent regions with lower rates of sexual assault and underage pregnancy that have the resources available to fund such programs. In poorer areas, where ectogenesis could probably save the most “unwanted” lives, the technology would paradoxically be less frequently applied.

My mother used to volunteer at a halfway house called “Caring Choices” sponsored by our parish, where women with unplanned pregnancies could find shelter and either access to adoption services or resources for raising the child themselves. But the program’s budget barely covered diapers, much less artificial incubation cells.

Assuming the federal government or a major religious network, on the deontological grounds of a right to life, funded a network of major ectogenesis facilities around the country, there would still be a limit to the number of incubators available. Neither a hypothetical ectogenesis industry nor the existing foster care system are equipped to provide every abortive UDH with a dignified upbringing that will prepare them for adulthood.

In 2005, there where 1.2 million abortions in the United States, or one out of every five pregnancies. Right now, the US foster care system serves nowhere near that many wards of the state, and yet 50% of foster children still become homeless at 18 years of age when they’re no longer protected.

So creating a child welfare system eligible for coercion would require massive public expenditure, through either tax increases or reprioritized health spending, both of which involve their own ethical dilemmas. Using funds from religious groups or other private organizations to sponsor ectogenesis that abortive mothers could be forced to participate in involves another can of worms, using state coercion to place an unwanted child under the auspices of a faith-based institution.

My point, in bringing up all these cost restrictions, is to ask why our society should seek to deliver every child to adulthood, regardless of the parent’s wishes. What precisely is the value of a rescued UDH, and how do we set a limit on the amount of rescuing we do? What are the fundamental reasons why infanticide should be prevented? Is there a public interest argument to be made, or are we committed to limitless sacrifice for the absolute value of life?

If the reason why ectogenesis should be forced on abortive mothers is based on the latter, then we’re faced with all the challenges I outlined above. At what point do UDHs no longer become worth rescuing? And what is it about the circumstances of state budget restrictions that make the abortive mother’s preferences suddenly more weighty than the child’s interests? If a liberal state doesn’t help a child reach the age of reason, what exactly is lost or violated, gained or honored?

I’m sympathetic with your respect for the mother/child union, and for the parents’ discretion. But not that sympathetic

I don’t think of the mother/UDH as a necessarily combined unit. Apart from the slowly developing rudimentary relationship, their joining seems more a temporary inconvenience than a feature of their status. Medical necessity has historically intertwined mothers’ and UDHs’ fates, but the whole reason we should be excited about ectogenesis is that it relieves moms from the burdens of pregnancy, and offers a way to rescue unwanted UDHs .

I see parents as trustees of potential persons/citizens, not as owners of biological products. (I’m not pegging you with the latter view–just making the contrast stark.) Parental prerogative does indeed enjoy an impressive pedigree, but so too does the value of the child as growing person. Parents routinely lose their legal rights for no more than failing to send their kids to school. I think this reveals recognition of and respect for kids’ developing personhood.

That said, parents, as causal and biological authors, do deserve wide discretion as to how their offspring are reared. One strategy is to give them a “box” of options, and respect their decisions so long as they remain within that box. So you can teach your daughter about Jesus, or Allah, or Buddah, but not to blow herself up for the honor of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. (Worship the monster, just don’t blow yourself up.)

We apparently disagree on the medical intervention stuff. I think the state should intervene when Western medicine could clearly save a child’s life, even if it somehow dirties the child’s soul in the parents’ eyes. Why? Because the child should be allowed to decide for themselves, once they’ve reached the age of reason, whether they want to continue to endorse their parents’ culture. If a 20-year-old wants to refuse treatment, fine, even if for silly reasons. But minors should be given the opportunity to grow into their own person. One part of that is ensuring they’re adequately educated so they can make autonomous decisions. Another part is keeping them alive.

Of course, UDHs are different than 9-year-olds–far less developed on the road to full personhood. But I think as the burden placed on pregnant mothers is alleviated with ecotgenesis, the reasons for treating UDHs differently than 9-year-olds diminish.

We’re agreed on the “entitlements” issues in A1 and A3/4, but I’d like to look more into defining clear lines for A2, where state coercion comes into play. I’m reminded of “Beloved” by Toni Morrison, where the main character Sethe kills her infant daughter to keep her “safe” from slave-catchers. Significantly, the owner of the plantation that Sethe has escaped is known as “Schoolteacher.” Somehow, as a mere intuition, infanticide in any form seems less reprehensible to me than an enlightened public institution protecting a UDH from an abortive mother. I see infanticide as a normal part of human societies, going back as far as Abraham–or at least, less problematic than an abstract state preserving life for the sake of life.

For that matter, I’m not crazy about forcing parents to let their child undergo chemotherapy, even if it saves the child from an early natural death and severe pain. On the other hand, I do think the state can legitimately intervene in some situations of domestic abuse, protecting children from their parents. So, somewhere there’s a line to be drawn, where I think the parent’s absolute sovereignty ends and the state’s intervention becomes legitimate. For example, the current president of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, gave a speech earlier this year that defended a father’s right to murder his daughter without state interference:

“If his daughter has the phone number of the police saved on her mobile phone … Every Chechen is afraid she’s going to make that phone call: try to tell me a single one of them isn’t afraid she’ll call that number. If he says that today he is a man, tomorrow he might no longer be a man, tomorrow he might no longer be able to answer for his child, to say ‘bang’ and shoot into the middle of her forehead with a pistol. If you can’t kill her like that, what is that? And if he doesn’t kill her, what kind of man is he? He brings shame on himself! Today he is a man, and tomorrow he is no longer a man. He cannot sell out his future that way! Don’t sell your future!”

You’ll be glad to know I feel like that’s over the line; I just cite this as an example of how infanticide or filicide can be more normalized than humanitarian intervention by the secular state. I can see where Kadyrov is coming from, in the same way that I can see where Morrison is coming from. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I’m more ambivalent when it comes to child abuse as the denial of modern medical treatment.

I have a tendency to leave be the internal affairs of a relational whole (mother+UDH), rather than involving a state actor that encounters mother and child as “individuals” abstracted from their relational context. Without reference to the consequences for the UDH (so as not to mince words: fetal death), science and the state should defer to the mother’s preferences, as the sole rational arbiter of a relational whole.

I’m aware that this implies some pretty heavy assumptions–denying the transcendent value of the self, not to mention life itself–but I can’t abandon my insistence on relational subsidiarity, without exception for life-and-death situations. In the absence of certainty as to universal moral truths, I have no basis for reaching into the private world of a mother and child and coercing her to conform to my concept of the best course of action. Knowledge of right action comes from the inside out, contingent upon the agent’s subject-position. This may sound relativistic, but I really am hesitant to let go of subsidiarity in this context (even while I’m in favor of the most strident state paternalism in a “future generations” context, if you recall).

My thoughts are still racing on this, but I need to get to bed. Although I’m sure this post is full of holes, I don’t expect you to drop everything and parse my filicidal tendencies.

Q1: Should non-aborting mothers be allowed to go the ecto route as a matter of convenience? A1: I don’t see why not, so long as the technology is roughly as hospitable as a real human womb.

Q2: Great question–if ecto were far better than natural, should mothers be forced to go the external route? A2: In cases where the UDH would clearly be at risk if incubated naturally (say the mother’s uterus is malformed or has a blood clotting disorder), I’d say yeah–just a matter of looking out for its interests, just like we’d step in and force anti-western medicine parents to give their 8-year-old chemo. But with generally healthy mothers with UDHs lacking complications, I’d say the chance for successful birth couldn’t get a whole lot better. (I’m too much of a philosopher to dirty my mind with empirical studies, but I would think that miscarriages are typically caused by UDH problems, not mother problems, which would be problematic regardless of the incubator.) However, to the extent that there’s a safety disparity between natural and ecto pregnancies, the case for forcing ecto gets stronger.

Q3/4: Should the state cover ecto for mothers who want to keep their UDH too? A3/4: Welin actually broaches the subject of voluntary ectogenesis for reasons of convenience (or health) and shares your worries. That part of the article is handled by a fictitious future bio ethicist speaking at a conference once pig ectogenesis has been perfected, and he really doesn’t get into much of an argument. Two things we need to consider are 1) how effective voluntary ecto only for those able to pay would add yet another class layer, and 2) how effective ecto on demand could even the playing field between the sexes. The natural lottery’s already unfair enough–unequal opportunity in the womb/incubator would be a terrible injustice. And though they might still be disproportionately burdened with child rearing, were it available on request, at least women would no longer be overlooked for positions or promotions because they might miss work due to pregnancy. With both those considerations in mind, I’m inclined to support voluntary state-funded ectogenesis–might even say it’s a requirement of justice.

Germinating a human fetus in a pig raises all sorts of weird animal welfare and inter-species issues, so I’ll also opt to focus on synthetic ectogenesis, i.e., the not-gross machines you mentioned.

The first concern you raise is the mother’s authority. Clearly, you were talking about expectant mothers who intend to terminate their pregnancies. But what about planned pregnancies, where the mother simply opts to have her fetus transferred to an incubator, to spare herself nine months of infirmity and the suffering of childbirth? You state:

“Were ectogenesis an option, relieving a potential mother of the burden of pregnancy would no longer require termination. With her interests intact, I see no reason why the genetic mother should be empowered with life and death authority. Authority over her body, yes. But not over the UDH’s life.”

Given that reasoning, would you also support ectogenesis as an option for any mother, and not just mothers intending to abort (Q1)? Particularly if ectogenesis technology could offer fewer risks of neonatal complications, for both the developing fetus and the mother, should we allow any pregnant woman to put their baby in an ectogenesis machine? Any pregnancy involves the risk of complications, so it’s not just about a mother opting for convenience. Assuming the technology advances to a point where it gives better odds than “embodied” childbirth, the mother could be making a choice that’s in the interest of both her and her baby’s health.

Before coming to the second issue of cost, the possibility of non-abortive mothers having access to ectogenesis raises the authority concern in a different way. If we assume that the technology will indeed surpass human biology, we are faced with the scenario of doctors prescribing ectogenesis as a safer alternative to embodied childbirth. Should mothers be allowed to choose embodied pregnancy for personal reasons, even if ectogenesis would be safer for them and their child (Q2)?

Finally, cost. You’ve made the argument that the state should provide ectogenesis for UDHs whose mothers are willing to terminate them. But if ectogenesis becomes safer than natural pregnancy, would the state also have an obligation to provide it for any and all expectant mothers (Q3)? Even if ectogenesis had a success rate comparable to natural pregnancy, we’d still be faced with the absurd scenario of the state only funding ectogenesis on the condition that the mother refuse to raise the child and prefer that it be raised in the foster care system. Once the state makes ectogenesis available to abortive mothers, can it reasonably refuse the same service to mothers who intend to raise the child after the incubation is finished (Q4)?