The Death of Shulamith Firestone and the Inevitability of Machine-Based Human Reproduction

[jordan179]

Shulamith Firestone (1945-2012) was found dead on the 28th, an event of which I first learned from reading Nicola Griffiths' blog entry "RIP Shulamith Firestone."  Griffiths' entry is something of a commemoration:  my own opinion of Firestone and her effect on society is a lot lower.

Firestone was one of the founders of "radical feminism," a

Comments

[polaris93]

The question is, how successful will in vitro gestation be? Technology has its limits, and gestataing a fetus in an artificial womb may not be as successful as hoped.

[haikujaguar]

I would not be surprised if, even if it is less successful, it still develops and is used in the same way that formula is still used when breast milk is cheaper and (usually) better.

[polaris93]

Depends. By "successful," I meant "able to gestate a human baby to term alive and with no significant birth defects." As far as I know, this hasn't been done successfully with any animals, whether those carried in the mother's body or those starting from eggs. If an artificial womb/egg can't produce a live, viable organism without birth defects (at least 95% of the time), then nobody's going to use it.

[haikujaguar]

Oh, of course. This presupposes that the technology will reach a certain level of usefulness. But it seems safer to assume we will reach that point technologically, rather than we won't. Particularly since pregnancy is noxious to a lot of women, but having families isn't.

[expanding_x_man]

I agree that Shulamith Firestone's founding of radical feminism is not to be lauded. She was certainly an interesting thinker, but even in my youth, I always thought she was off-the-wall and a bit extreme. Of course, that form of feminism has morphed somewhat, but the basic principles remain of woman as oppressed and man as oppressor in a "class" struggle where men wield power over women. There has been truth to that throughout history, but she's also missing a whole lot of the picture. To my mind a lot of women's actual power does come from her ability to reproduce and to * know * the child is indeed her own. Men have power biologically in other ways, and there is an African story that says that men were given more brute strength by the creator in order to equalize power between the sexes. Otherwise, men would be drone and slaves to women, and would feel wretched in comparison to the sex that can bear children. I think that is a clever creation myth about the sexes. Shulamith would differ, and she is not entirely wrong in

[polaris93]

Seeing 50% of the world as oppressors/monsters/abusers is not a good strategem for those who want to keep their sanity, especially those who are in the other 50%. She must have been an unhappy lady.

[marycatelli]

IIRC, she had a seriously unhappy childhood.

[polaris93]

That could do it, right there. I'm still in the throes of PTSD left over from early to mid childhood, and I'm 67. That sort of thing can poison one's entire life, and it sounds like that's what happened to Shulamith.

[rowyn]

It is also likely that the current controversy over abortion will die out as it becomes increasingly easy due to biochemical and cybernetic technologies to both to prevent conception at the will of either party to a sexual act, and also to remove fetuses from human wombs and carry them to term outside the womb should the woman involved not want to personally carry them to term.

I agree that this will ease some of the current demand for abortion. I'm not sure it will eliminate it. It's true that, in America right now, there are more people who want to adopt newborns than there are newborn babies available for adoption. But I don't think it follows that this will always be true. Adoption statistics are pretty sketchy; this article from the Boston Globe puts global adoptions at 250,000 per year. Wikipedia puts the global abortion rate at over 40 million per year. While it's certainly possible that there are another 40,000,000 families interested in adopting who don't due to discouragement or other problems with the adoption system,

[marycatelli]

The overwhelming majority of those abortions would never have occured if abortion had been illegal, because the child would never have been conceived in the first place.

It happens again and again and again in all sorts of behaviors: make the behavior less risky, and people indulge in it more, often to the point of making it more risky than it was original just from frequency.

Given that it won't be a roll-out of today we have nothing, tomorrow all babies can survive in an external womb, it's more likely than the technology will slowly crush abortion.

One also notes that there may be many families willing to adopt more than once.

[marycatelli]

Plus of course the free availability of abortion is evolution in action.

[gothelittle]

If newborn babies have every single need met, food, warmth, safety, cleanliness... but are handled as little as possible... they stop growing and die

[marycatelli]

I'm working on a story where there are such artificial wombs, and they get lugged around all day exactly so as to stimulate the child as if in vivo.

[headnoises]

Do you know if they controlled for voluntary vs medically required post-labor c-sections?
(First child by emergency c-section after many hours, second one was scheduled...and then showed up a week early with REALLY strong labor pains.)

I can see hard-birth dropping it, but then I can also see getting the kid out at minimum of a week before they're ready to leave being an issue.

[gothelittle]

This isn't about a blame game or anything... a friend of mine had hers by C-section due to many hours of unproductive labor. :)

But seeing as they found medical reasons behind it that involve passage through the birth channel, I'd say it's very likely the same for voluntary vs medically required.

But like I said, it's not about a blame game. C-section is better than dead, or whatever impairments might have happened with a long labor!

The point behind my bringing it up was that if everything up to the actual birth canal is set up on purpose to give the kid the best possible start in life, I don't see how any artificial womb will ever do as well.

[headnoises]

I'm afraid that artificial wombs will end the abortion debate, because it's not so much the pregnancy that is unwanted-- it's the child. (Want evidence? Famously, Obama opposed a law requiring children accidentally born alive during abortions be treated as any other birthed child. For that matter, the existence of late term abortion, rather than induce-and-adopt-out.)

Would it work for the cases that are often used to justify abortion? Yes, in theory, as well as being a great life saver when the mother needs treatment or other dangerous situations.

Assuming we can figure out how to do it without hurting the kids. IVF kids have a higher risk of issues later on, and it's thought that it may be due to their conception and extremely early development being outside of the woman's body.

[marycatelli]

How true. However, given that society can manage just fine with men being told that since they had sexual intercourse, they are on the hook, I dare say it can manage with women being told the same thing.

[headnoises]

Much agreed.

But I've thought that since I first found out that some insane folks actually induce miscarriages-- I knew about them from being around cattle, and considered them one of the saddest things possible. (Know how cute calves are? Now imagine one that can fit in a pickle jar, and other than not having hair-- is perfectly formed. That's early second trimester pine needle abortion. Means the mother was starving, ate pine needles, and lost the calf.)

[marycatelli]

Yup. Most of the "coat hanger" abortions of the illegal days were that sort of insanity, and they were not stopped by legalization. There was a woman who died of trying to induce a miscarriage the day before she had an appointment for an abortion.