I can think of one particular item, on the abortion issue: What will something like Huxley's tanks, or Weber's uterine replicators, do to change the cultural perspective?
The pro-lifers (not necessarily anti-choice, but more "choose adoption" types), have a mantra of "carry the baby to term, then give it up for adoption". The problem, of course, is that the pregnancy itself can harm the woman in one or more of several different ways.
For instance, suppose a rape has resulted in pregnancy. IMO, it is NOT acceptable to force a woman to carry the rapist's spawn for 9 months. Enter the various SF authors' tanks-of-choice. Quickie outpatient procedure, plop the fetus in the tank, and be on your way. Call it "giving up for adoption, as soon as you find out you're pregnant".
That technology alone could probably fuel a good hour's worth of panel discussion.
We're already running up against the hard limit for survivability of profoundly premature infants--our tech for getting them out is better than our tech for keeping them alive and unscathed afterward.
Bujold has at least mentioned a lot of this in passing--in Shards of Honor, the problem of what to do with the conceptuses of rape, frex.
How much of the emotional closure of abortion is getting the unwanted conceptus out of you, and how much of it is knowing that it will never turn into a child you didn't want? We don't have the tech right now for that to be an important distinction, but I bet it will become so.
Fatness is used as a signal of evil, dissolution, and/or moral decay, usually with the unspoken assumption that it's completely obvious that fat people are immoral and disgusting. (Note: This does not mean all fat characters in stories must be good guys. We're just tired of seeing fat used as a cheap shorthand signifier of evil.)
Someone wants to kill someone else, and that's perfectly reasonable because, after all, the victim-to-be is fat.
The story spends a lot of time describing, over and over, just how fat a character is, and how awful that is.
Physical contact with a fat person is understood to be obviously revolting.
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The pro-lifers (not necessarily anti-choice, but more "choose adoption" types), have a mantra of "carry the baby to term, then give it up for adoption". The problem, of course, is that the pregnancy itself can harm the woman in one or more of several different ways.
For instance, suppose a rape has resulted in pregnancy. IMO, it is NOT acceptable to force a woman to carry the rapist's spawn for 9 months. Enter the various SF authors' tanks-of-choice. Quickie outpatient procedure, plop the fetus in the tank, and be on your way. Call it "giving up for adoption, as soon as you find out you're pregnant".
That technology alone could probably fuel a good hour's worth of panel discussion.
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Bujold has at least mentioned a lot of this in passing--in Shards of Honor, the problem of what to do with the conceptuses of rape, frex.
How much of the emotional closure of abortion is getting the unwanted conceptus out of you, and how much of it is knowing that it will never turn into a child you didn't want? We don't have the tech right now for that to be an important distinction, but I bet it will become so.
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