Chinese advertisements

[kirisutogomen]

The answer is the tag, rot13'd, but to save you the trouble, I'll tell you. First, the original ad before I mucked with it. (Yes, it was left-right mirrored like most people guessed. I'm still curious as to why among people who are entirely illiterate in Han characters the mirroring was blatantly obvious to some and not at all to others.)




And another for the same service from a competing provider:



These are ads for abortion clinics. Chinese abortion clinics advertise on prime-time television. They offer student discounts. Not sure if they have special holiday sales, nor if you get abortion coupons with your newspaper.

Now, unless you take the position that a fetus at any stage has the moral standing of a lintball but that magically at the moment the head crowns it suddenly becomes a full human person endowed with a complete set of inalienable rights plus a stylish carrying case, there's got to be a point at which you say, "Hrm. My liberal sensibilities tell me that I should advocate fiercely for a woman's right to choose, but I don't actually want people to treat abortion like a trip to the hair salon. What does my victory condition actually look like?"

And then there's the issue of sex selection, which really kicks over a Pandora's hornets' nest of other issues.

Comments

[marcusmarcusrc.livejournal.com]

Ah, but I specified "strongly" for a reason - the chances that a drink of wine will cause problems for a fetus (and therefore, future person) are so small as to be possibly non-existent. A strong teratogen is a different issue. So I do think ingesting a strong teratogen while pregnant should be illegal (as in the state should have a right to step in and stop it), whereas a very weak one should be a taboo. (and with alcohol, I feel like the evidence suggests that the taboo is already stronger than it really needs to be).

Smoking the presence of others should be discouraged, but secondhand smoke is a weak carcinogen. Smoking anthrax-spore sticks, on the other hand, should be very much illegal.

[rifmeister.livejournal.com]

Do you think it should be illegal for a woman to get pregnant after age 40? Do you think it should be illegal to carry to term a baby you know to have Down's syndrome?

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

I just want to say that I am fascinated that this vigorous debate is taking place between a bunch of men, most of whom do not have children.

Carry on.

[kirisutogomen.livejournal.com]

What about that fascinates you?

[twe.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was kind of amusing.

[marcusmarcusrc.livejournal.com]

The latter is easy: no. I'd object to using a magic Down's syndrome wand to intentionally create a Down's syndrome fetus, but if the fetus already has the syndrome, then that's a pre-existing condition.

The former is, in that specific case, also easy - no, it shouldn't be illegal either - the risk isn't that large. (my own mom had me after age 40). However, see my answer to firstfrost below about there not being a clear bright line - as the probability of a behavior causes defects increases, and the severity of the defect increases, the justification for intervention becomes higher. I realize that some might argue that even behavior with 100% of causing a severe defect should be allowed, either because of right over your own body arguments or libertarian arguments, but my opinion differs...

[dcltdw]

Lemme see if I can create a hypothetical situation to highlight our differences.

A woman has condition X for which she takes Y, which treats her condition very well. Y is well-known to cause severe birth defects. Should it be illegal for her to take Y during pregnancy?

My answer is No, It's Not A Legal Issue. Now, am I going to shun her? Quite probably, knowing me. (This makes me go off on a tangent: maybe I should have a helluva lot more compassion for her condition than to judge her so harshly.) But to me, it's not a legal issue, because if she is not competent to not take this action, then Pandora's Box is now open: clearly, if she's not competent enough to make proper decisions about her baby, then she can't be trusted to drive or vote.

Put bluntly, I'd rather most women have complete agency over their bodies if the cost is that there are a few preventable birth defects. I think this -- the chances that a drink of wine will cause problems for a fetus (and therefore, future person) are so small as to be possibly non-existent -- highlights it really well. Where does that line get drawn? Are you okay with a 0.001% risk? 1%? 40%? It's not for anyone to make that decision for you.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

I think that the question of "why would a pregnant woman frivolously and intentionally drink teratogens" is similar to the question of "why would a pregnant woman have a frivolous late-term abortion" or "why would a man expecting a child decide to bankrupt his family spending all his money on saffron". There isn't a lot of it happening.

And yeah, if there was a saffron epidemic among fathers-to-be, it would be worth investigating, because it would be a problem. But I don't think anyone *wants* to ingest teratogens, except in cases like dcltdw mentions, where there are further compelling reasons like medical necessity. (Actually, you do get this sort of thing with cancer - hey, wait, now chemotherapy doesn't cause problems for the fetus? I did not know that! I have derailed myself here.)

[marcusmarcusrc.livejournal.com]

Aha! I have an actual test case: Accutane!

http://www.drugs.com/accutane.html

Apparently there are pretty ridiculous restrictions on "women of childbearing potential" using Accutane - it seems unlikely that there is a punishment for certifying the use of birth control and then deliberately not using it, or for taking someone else's Accutane while pregnant, but here is a case of a well-known teratogen where hypothetically someone could decide to use it for prevention of acne, and where the state has at least made an attempt to limit its use by pregnant women.


Obviously, as laid out, my "rules" don't create a bright line: where is the line between alcohol and thalidomide/accutane where the state should intervene? Certainly, I could believe that medical treatments for the health of the mother outweigh any risk to the fetus... the question is, is there ever a case where the state can come in and say "no, stop doing X".

The other case might be illegal, addictive drugs with teratogenic effects: can/should the state put an expecting mother into custody if they are known to be taking crack?

This might be something like state intervention in child-raising, only with an even more onerous line: ie, the state generally defers to parents on how to raise a kid (feed it McDonald's food every day - fine. sit it in front of a TV for 14 hours a day - fine. Lock it in a closet while you go out to party - the state comes in and takes custody), and would similarly defer to a mother on how to treat her own body except in really extreme circumstances...

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

But here, I think we're looking at the government trying very hard to make sure nobody accidentally or unthinkingly uses a teratogen while pregnant, which is a different sort of thing than trying to make sure that nobody uses a teratogen to intentionally maim their own fetus, which is what criminalization would be for.

I do accept that there are people with very poor decision-making abilities, and addiction probably plays a large role in that. And we do, at some points, take people's control of their own bodies away from them when they seem really likely to damage themselves. We don't lock up smokers for their own good, but we do commit people to psychiatric care when they start making obvious suicide attempts. So I accept that there's a line of "a danger to yourself and others" that can be crossed, where a deliberate danger to a future kid you plan to give birth to can count as "others", but it seems like it would be a pretty high bar, and also it would include a lot of non-pregnant people of both sexes.