I'm an uber leftist, progressive, environmentalist, feminist. It's nice that you are you, that you're alive. But that's only one data point.
On the whole, ALL of the "fertility" industry is a horror show. No child should be manufactured with sperm and/eggs from randos, it's quite disgusting.
There are 8+ billion humans
There are a bazillion children needing parents already
We should NOT be funding the "fertility" industry, at all.
Fuck Progressivism and the horse it rode in, but I agree. The fertility industry is an insult to humanity.
Regardless, Karl makes the only point relevant to the discussion after this point: rejecting that the ends justify the means doesn’t mean you must reject the product of an end.
It’s good that Karl is here and that Karl’s parents wanted children.
It’s not good that society incentivizes those wanting children to turn to brutal scientific gambles and incur terrible collateral deaths in the hope of becoming pregnant. There are plenty of alternative pathways to be explored — e.g., seeking to discover and mitigate the causes of infertility, or providing guidance to infertile parents on how to accept and live with their burden.
At a certain point, the question needs to be asked whether the juice of facilitating pregnancy in infertile parents is worth the squeeze of millions of killed human lives, especially when it all supports something as inhumane as the medial-pharmaceutical-industrial complex and technological society generally.
My aunt rode the thin edge on this. She's a prog-ish conservative, was heart-broken since age 18, wanted a child as a single mother (I don't support this, even as a hardcore prog) and decided to ask a male friend if he'd be willing to impregnate her, but not play a father-role, and only be revealed if the teen asked for it at a responsible age. I say "thin edge" because she had a career in which it was very easy to take maternity leave, she was a full grown adult, who'd owned 3 homes in her life, and had parents and siblings nearby physically and emotionally close to support the whole affair. My cousin, like most humans, is a mixture of wise traits and stupid traits. She had multiple boyfriends, one seemed like a lifer, they had two kids, and he left soon thereafter, now she's with another man who's doing the fathering since 5 years... will that that last? who the hell knows? But most single moms are accidental or horribly unprepared.
So, somewhere around age 15, my cousin wanted to know, so my aunt explained it to her. My cousin appears to have dealt with it well... appears.
In this "thin edge" example, at least the cousin knows who the biological father is, and at least my aunt knew the physique and intellect of the progenitor.
I find the randomness that accepted by people so narcissistic they MUST have children, even when their body says no, to be horrifying, as horrifying as rape.
I'm a an evolutionary biologist. I subscribe to evolution. Evolution (not eugenics) operates on survival of the fittest (better explained as un-reproduction of the un-fit).
This civilisation's obsession with god-like ADDING reproduction to the un-fit is part of the big picture of why so many humans are ill, why humanity is achingly stupid, why brains and jaws are shrinking, because when people who should not reproduce are made to, we reverse the progress of evolution. There's nothing natural about eugenics. But in a biological world, death and un-reproduction is natural.
Civilisation, even Pro-Lifers, are biophobes, just like Covidians are biophobes.
Herbert Spencer and the eugenics that were a large part of Nazism are unfortunately alive and well-even a child who is born as a Down's Syndrome child is created in the Image of God. Who are are you or anyone else to impose a value judgment on who should be a parent?
"There are plenty of alternative pathways to be explored — e.g., seeking to discover and mitigate the causes of infertility, or providing guidance to infertile parents on how to accept and live with their burden."
Have you ever experienced infertility as a would be parent? Telling someone to "how to accept and live with their burden" is cruel , to say the least
Yes, my wife and I have experienced as much, and yes, I understand that sense of perceived cruelty. People experience cruel circumstances all the time. We can’t solve the full range of human suffering, nor should we seek to try. Our existence is a limited one and we will never succeed in breaking free of those limits.
When the solution to giving a childless couple one child ends up killing a dozen other people at minimum, what kind of a solution is it?
Suffering can be eradicated except for incurable diseases. Infertility is clearly one type of suffering that can be helped via IVF. Our faith rejects an approach whereby man is passive and does nothing to improve his state in this world
Not "cruel" at all, it's just fukin biology. Death is a fact of life. Illness is a fact of life. I say this as an atheist, but people always wanting to play god are horrifying - both religious and atheists.
Do you believe that science can be enlisted to help mankind deal with infertility or should all who suffer from infertility be judged by your standards? Who appointed you a judge , jury and executioner on such issues?
No one "suffers" from infertility. It's biophobic to assume that all individuals are meant to reproduce. Your baseline is erroneous. There's no "judging" here. In Canada, taxpayers pay for this bs. Canadian taxpayers fund two guys hiring random eggs and surrogacy under the LIE of "suffering from infertility", TWO MEN!
Yes, in Canada, two men can get public funded healthcare under the narcissism of "infertility" to hire out anonymous eggs, and surrogates. In Canada, surrogacy can not be "salaried", only "expenses" paid, but the surrogacy expenses are vast.
At all levels, "fertility" treatments are hyper financially expensive.
Americans like to think Canada's healthcare is "socialised", it's not.
What we have is tax-payers funding the Medical Industrial Complex. The Medical Industrial Complex controls the policies and facilities, and they get all the profits. The fact that Canadians go through the front door for free is just marketing, like corporations "funding" sports teams.
I have been greatly blessed; I was able to become pregnant the old-fashioned way and give birth to a child at age 40. Couples who need a bit of assistance in achieving their miracle ought have no scorn aimed at them. There's a profound difference between bearing a child, which is a matchless experience, and adopting someone else's baby. The love one gives to each may be equivalent but still there is a primal hunger to feel the kicking of a living child within one's own body and the joy of a man seeing his woman's belly grow round with a wanted baby
Every new technology brings with it wonders and horrors. The rent-a-womb business is a pretty ugly one. The spectre of Eugenics haunts assisted reproduction, though I certainly strongly believe that avoiding the birth of children with life-limiting congenital diseases is good for everyone.
It must have been very hard for your parents to reveal to you a secret that might have endangered family ties and caused unending ripples that could have no easy resolution. But they wanted you so badly and they must be so proud of you now, and so glad they had the courage to find a way to bring you into the world.
It would be very helpful for you to give context to the ruling and provide a PDF of the actual ruling. When I looked it up I was not surprised to see that, as usual, the left has run screaming that the sky is falling and msm is spinning it without actually reading the ruling. Basically my understanding from reading online is that three couples whose frozen embryos were destroyed when an unauthorized person accessed and opened a cryo tank and pulled them out and destroyed them sued the IVF facility. The three heartbroken couples sued the IVF facility claiming that its poor security protocols deprived them of their right to have children in the future using the embryos. A lower court sided with the facility so the couples appealed to the Alabama supreme Court. Alabama apparently does not have up to date laws re:IVF so they had to go back to laws that predate IVF technology. Rather than "legislate from the bench" the justices applied existing law as they rightly should have. This case brought to light a need for new legislation in this state. My reading indicates that the AL state legislature is now addressing that need. The laws need to be balanced. Certainly, the 3 couples who lost the chance to have their embryos implanted lost more than just "property". But did they experience the same level of loss as someone whose child was hypothetically killed by a drunk driver? Was failure to adequately protect the embryos malpractice? Certainly anyone undergoing IVF should want laws to be strict enough that the involved facilities are incentivized to maintain strict security. New law should most definitely require contractual language to cover all the anticipated possibe outcomes. Those who undergo IVF should then really have their own attorney review the documents before signing to make sure their specific interests are represented Undergoing IVF has the potential to be legally very complex yet I wonder how many patients sign consents they don't fully understand without legal representation.
The moral inconsistency of Pro-Lifers supporting IVF (or ALL fertility "treatments") is laughable. But then again, religious moralists are always inconsistent.
Just look at the adulation for multi-divorced anti-family man non faithful Trump! hahaha
That's the biggest problem in society, people don't fukin know themselves.
Make offspring well, or don't make offspring at all.
It's the people who want it both ways who are the problem. I chose the latter (because I KNEW I wouldn't be a good mother), most chose the former, but a whole shitload of people make life decisions without truly thinking about them. That is the horror.
An IVF baby, Christopher Brunet, takes on the Alabama issue, and does a great job of explaining why some people oppose IVF.
(Imagine finding out at age 24 that you came to life by technology that most often involves purposeful killing. Possibly (depending on the practitioners) a giant litter of siblings were killed. )
Some vital issues: The Alabama Supreme court decision is limited primarily to allowing parents to sue if the IVF companies throw away their embryos without their consent. People are screeching, either out of ignorance of this limit, or because recognizing that humans are human from the beginning of development should cause us to more respectful of the life giving faculties. That's Not profitable to some very large industries.
The reason 3 clinics stopped doing IVF is more likely because they don't want to be held liable for the sloppy way they create excess human embryos, then clean out their freezers.
That being said, humans belong to the Creator, and have the same intrinsic value, despite how they got here, and none should be purposely killed, sold, or enslaved, as is happening now, worse than ever.
Thank you for sharing this.... I don't have children and refused IVF or any fertility drugs...that was a choice I made..... I wish more people would stop and and ask WHY all this fertility.....I don't judge others that have done it but we need to ask the right questions.... it's become too big of an industry, sort of like the cancer industry.... and both industries also play into people's hopes and dreams..... some even promising things that never come to pass.... I believe that both the cancer and fertility issues are linked with the GMO foods, air, vaccines, etc..... we need to get to the WHY not necessarily just the HOW.....
We have our traditions, and decisors of Jewish law who have permitted IVF which has enabled many couples dealing with infertility to have children. and raise families. Don't tell someone whose faith values are different than yours that they are wrong-if you want to dissagree that's fine-but we have our traditions and decisors who deal with such issues and others ,
I understand your point of view and I’m glad you take your faith at least somewhat seriously.
Your faith, like all faiths that aren’t Catholicism, propagates erroneous and inconsistent beliefs and practices that end up leading people away from God. A faith’s stance on issues of human ethics, like we’re discussing here, is the best evidence for such.
I'm an uber leftist, progressive, environmentalist, feminist. It's nice that you are you, that you're alive. But that's only one data point.
On the whole, ALL of the "fertility" industry is a horror show. No child should be manufactured with sperm and/eggs from randos, it's quite disgusting.
There are 8+ billion humans
There are a bazillion children needing parents already
We should NOT be funding the "fertility" industry, at all.
No eggs
No sperm
No surrogacy
No multiple embryos
No to the entire disgusting scheme.
Fuck Progressivism and the horse it rode in, but I agree. The fertility industry is an insult to humanity.
Regardless, Karl makes the only point relevant to the discussion after this point: rejecting that the ends justify the means doesn’t mean you must reject the product of an end.
It’s good that Karl is here and that Karl’s parents wanted children.
It’s not good that society incentivizes those wanting children to turn to brutal scientific gambles and incur terrible collateral deaths in the hope of becoming pregnant. There are plenty of alternative pathways to be explored — e.g., seeking to discover and mitigate the causes of infertility, or providing guidance to infertile parents on how to accept and live with their burden.
At a certain point, the question needs to be asked whether the juice of facilitating pregnancy in infertile parents is worth the squeeze of millions of killed human lives, especially when it all supports something as inhumane as the medial-pharmaceutical-industrial complex and technological society generally.
I could say fuck the opposite too! 😋
My aunt rode the thin edge on this. She's a prog-ish conservative, was heart-broken since age 18, wanted a child as a single mother (I don't support this, even as a hardcore prog) and decided to ask a male friend if he'd be willing to impregnate her, but not play a father-role, and only be revealed if the teen asked for it at a responsible age. I say "thin edge" because she had a career in which it was very easy to take maternity leave, she was a full grown adult, who'd owned 3 homes in her life, and had parents and siblings nearby physically and emotionally close to support the whole affair. My cousin, like most humans, is a mixture of wise traits and stupid traits. She had multiple boyfriends, one seemed like a lifer, they had two kids, and he left soon thereafter, now she's with another man who's doing the fathering since 5 years... will that that last? who the hell knows? But most single moms are accidental or horribly unprepared.
So, somewhere around age 15, my cousin wanted to know, so my aunt explained it to her. My cousin appears to have dealt with it well... appears.
In this "thin edge" example, at least the cousin knows who the biological father is, and at least my aunt knew the physique and intellect of the progenitor.
I find the randomness that accepted by people so narcissistic they MUST have children, even when their body says no, to be horrifying, as horrifying as rape.
That is an extreme case-what about married couples whose best bet on overcoming infertility is IVF?
Why should society pay for narcissism? I know many people who used IVF, they are all narcissists.
This is a hilarious take that shows little more than your levels of personal insecurity.
Many are married couples Go to a clinic and take a look who are the patients
If those couples knew they’d cause the deaths of 20 humans in order to conceive, would they go through with it?
millions of killed humans, or the millions of taxpayer dollars diverted, when they should have gone to making our existence on Earth HEALTHIER
Is why ALL public research/funding in "fertility" must end. ALL of it, no cherry-picking.
I’m very much in favor of this. The dedication to “mere life” in so many sectors of society is nauseating.
Do you subscribe to eugenics? The Nazis certainly did
I'm a an evolutionary biologist. I subscribe to evolution. Evolution (not eugenics) operates on survival of the fittest (better explained as un-reproduction of the un-fit).
This civilisation's obsession with god-like ADDING reproduction to the un-fit is part of the big picture of why so many humans are ill, why humanity is achingly stupid, why brains and jaws are shrinking, because when people who should not reproduce are made to, we reverse the progress of evolution. There's nothing natural about eugenics. But in a biological world, death and un-reproduction is natural.
Civilisation, even Pro-Lifers, are biophobes, just like Covidians are biophobes.
Herbert Spencer and the eugenics that were a large part of Nazism are unfortunately alive and well-even a child who is born as a Down's Syndrome child is created in the Image of God. Who are are you or anyone else to impose a value judgment on who should be a parent?
Who is anyone to say they deserve to be pregnant when their very biology - that is, the way God designed them - disagrees?
If the infertility is environmentally caused, then let’s change the environment.
Pooey, gawds! I don't believe in bs "gods" or "genders" or "identities".
My life is reality and nature based. The accusation of "nature fallacy" is itself a fallacy of the religion of Humanism.
The fertility industry is already degenerating into selling children, frequently to perverts. And wait till more advanced biotech gets involved.
Conservatism without Authoritarianism is ok
Progressivism without Authoritarianism is ok
The problem is bipartisan, Authoritarianism is ALWAYS bad.
Authoritarianism is the only form of government ever to exist. Anyone ruled lives at the mercy of the ruler.
As with Monarchies and faiths, there is a spectrum of authoritarianism 😋
My parents were in the 90% range of authoritarianism, so I lean to the 10% side.
It's that ever elusive fukin "balance" right?
You wrote in relevant part:
"There are plenty of alternative pathways to be explored — e.g., seeking to discover and mitigate the causes of infertility, or providing guidance to infertile parents on how to accept and live with their burden."
Have you ever experienced infertility as a would be parent? Telling someone to "how to accept and live with their burden" is cruel , to say the least
Yes, my wife and I have experienced as much, and yes, I understand that sense of perceived cruelty. People experience cruel circumstances all the time. We can’t solve the full range of human suffering, nor should we seek to try. Our existence is a limited one and we will never succeed in breaking free of those limits.
When the solution to giving a childless couple one child ends up killing a dozen other people at minimum, what kind of a solution is it?
Why should not man strive to solve the full range of human suffering or even try?
Who are we to say we shouldn’t suffer?
Suffering can be eradicated except for incurable diseases. Infertility is clearly one type of suffering that can be helped via IVF. Our faith rejects an approach whereby man is passive and does nothing to improve his state in this world
Not "cruel" at all, it's just fukin biology. Death is a fact of life. Illness is a fact of life. I say this as an atheist, but people always wanting to play god are horrifying - both religious and atheists.
Do you believe that science can be enlisted to help mankind deal with infertility or should all who suffer from infertility be judged by your standards? Who appointed you a judge , jury and executioner on such issues?
No one "suffers" from infertility. It's biophobic to assume that all individuals are meant to reproduce. Your baseline is erroneous. There's no "judging" here. In Canada, taxpayers pay for this bs. Canadian taxpayers fund two guys hiring random eggs and surrogacy under the LIE of "suffering from infertility", TWO MEN!
Taxpayers fund the surrogates???
Yes, in Canada, two men can get public funded healthcare under the narcissism of "infertility" to hire out anonymous eggs, and surrogates. In Canada, surrogacy can not be "salaried", only "expenses" paid, but the surrogacy expenses are vast.
At all levels, "fertility" treatments are hyper financially expensive.
Americans like to think Canada's healthcare is "socialised", it's not.
What we have is tax-payers funding the Medical Industrial Complex. The Medical Industrial Complex controls the policies and facilities, and they get all the profits. The fact that Canadians go through the front door for free is just marketing, like corporations "funding" sports teams.
Giving birth to children and raising them properly is a Divine Blessing-not grooming as you described
Bwa hahahahahahahahaha!
A lovely and graceful essay.
Just FYI, Marc Girardot thinks there's a lot of overwrought hysteria suggesting women who put off childbearing until their, say, late 30s are gravely endangering their fertility. https://covidmythbuster.substack.com/p/whats-driving-the-infertility-boom
I have been greatly blessed; I was able to become pregnant the old-fashioned way and give birth to a child at age 40. Couples who need a bit of assistance in achieving their miracle ought have no scorn aimed at them. There's a profound difference between bearing a child, which is a matchless experience, and adopting someone else's baby. The love one gives to each may be equivalent but still there is a primal hunger to feel the kicking of a living child within one's own body and the joy of a man seeing his woman's belly grow round with a wanted baby
Every new technology brings with it wonders and horrors. The rent-a-womb business is a pretty ugly one. The spectre of Eugenics haunts assisted reproduction, though I certainly strongly believe that avoiding the birth of children with life-limiting congenital diseases is good for everyone.
It must have been very hard for your parents to reveal to you a secret that might have endangered family ties and caused unending ripples that could have no easy resolution. But they wanted you so badly and they must be so proud of you now, and so glad they had the courage to find a way to bring you into the world.
> The rent-a-womb business is a pretty ugly one.
And that's just the start of the horrors biotech can unleash.
Giney! There you are!
It would be very helpful for you to give context to the ruling and provide a PDF of the actual ruling. When I looked it up I was not surprised to see that, as usual, the left has run screaming that the sky is falling and msm is spinning it without actually reading the ruling. Basically my understanding from reading online is that three couples whose frozen embryos were destroyed when an unauthorized person accessed and opened a cryo tank and pulled them out and destroyed them sued the IVF facility. The three heartbroken couples sued the IVF facility claiming that its poor security protocols deprived them of their right to have children in the future using the embryos. A lower court sided with the facility so the couples appealed to the Alabama supreme Court. Alabama apparently does not have up to date laws re:IVF so they had to go back to laws that predate IVF technology. Rather than "legislate from the bench" the justices applied existing law as they rightly should have. This case brought to light a need for new legislation in this state. My reading indicates that the AL state legislature is now addressing that need. The laws need to be balanced. Certainly, the 3 couples who lost the chance to have their embryos implanted lost more than just "property". But did they experience the same level of loss as someone whose child was hypothetically killed by a drunk driver? Was failure to adequately protect the embryos malpractice? Certainly anyone undergoing IVF should want laws to be strict enough that the involved facilities are incentivized to maintain strict security. New law should most definitely require contractual language to cover all the anticipated possibe outcomes. Those who undergo IVF should then really have their own attorney review the documents before signing to make sure their specific interests are represented Undergoing IVF has the potential to be legally very complex yet I wonder how many patients sign consents they don't fully understand without legal representation.
Congratulations!
The moral inconsistency of Pro-Lifers supporting IVF (or ALL fertility "treatments") is laughable. But then again, religious moralists are always inconsistent.
Just look at the adulation for multi-divorced anti-family man non faithful Trump! hahaha
Don’t cut yourself on that edge, grandma.
I won't, thank you much. KNOW THYSELF.
That's the biggest problem in society, people don't fukin know themselves.
Make offspring well, or don't make offspring at all.
It's the people who want it both ways who are the problem. I chose the latter (because I KNEW I wouldn't be a good mother), most chose the former, but a whole shitload of people make life decisions without truly thinking about them. That is the horror.
An IVF baby, Christopher Brunet, takes on the Alabama issue, and does a great job of explaining why some people oppose IVF.
(Imagine finding out at age 24 that you came to life by technology that most often involves purposeful killing. Possibly (depending on the practitioners) a giant litter of siblings were killed. )
Some vital issues: The Alabama Supreme court decision is limited primarily to allowing parents to sue if the IVF companies throw away their embryos without their consent. People are screeching, either out of ignorance of this limit, or because recognizing that humans are human from the beginning of development should cause us to more respectful of the life giving faculties. That's Not profitable to some very large industries.
The reason 3 clinics stopped doing IVF is more likely because they don't want to be held liable for the sloppy way they create excess human embryos, then clean out their freezers.
That being said, humans belong to the Creator, and have the same intrinsic value, despite how they got here, and none should be purposely killed, sold, or enslaved, as is happening now, worse than ever.
Thank you for sharing this.... I don't have children and refused IVF or any fertility drugs...that was a choice I made..... I wish more people would stop and and ask WHY all this fertility.....I don't judge others that have done it but we need to ask the right questions.... it's become too big of an industry, sort of like the cancer industry.... and both industries also play into people's hopes and dreams..... some even promising things that never come to pass.... I believe that both the cancer and fertility issues are linked with the GMO foods, air, vaccines, etc..... we need to get to the WHY not necessarily just the HOW.....
Orthodox Jews who also have traditional moral values see IVF as a permissible way for couples who have fertility problems to have children.
They’re wrong.
We have our traditions, and decisors of Jewish law who have permitted IVF which has enabled many couples dealing with infertility to have children. and raise families. Don't tell someone whose faith values are different than yours that they are wrong-if you want to dissagree that's fine-but we have our traditions and decisors who deal with such issues and others ,
I understand your point of view and I’m glad you take your faith at least somewhat seriously.
Your faith, like all faiths that aren’t Catholicism, propagates erroneous and inconsistent beliefs and practices that end up leading people away from God. A faith’s stance on issues of human ethics, like we’re discussing here, is the best evidence for such.
Many would disagree with you on this issue.
They’re wrong, too.
Well, since concubinage is discouraged these days, science must step in.