Legal Scholar Calls for ‘Fetal Rescue Programs’ to End Abortion Debate [View all]

[yurbud]

I've had my students write rebuttals to fake arguments for and against fetal transfers to artificial wombs replacing abortions as an over the top, out there hypothetical.

Now some legal scholar is arguing it for real, and people are arguing the other side for real.

This is why it is so hard to write satire....

At this point, without the technology for a zygote, embryo, or fetus to survive outside the womb, “In practice, elective abortion inevitably results in fetal death,” writes Giles. “For that very reason, the woman has no choice in the matter: Should she elect to terminate her pregnancy, the fetus will die even if she wants it to survive.”

Presumably, the patients Giles has in mind here are women who allegedly terminated pregnancies because they were not “ready” to parent, either for financial or emotional reasons. In other words, they were uncomfortable with the thought of terminating their pregnancies, but saw no other choice. In turn, he notes there is a stigma associated with carrying a pregnancy to term and then relinquishing parental rights in adoption. While it sounds like he’s trying to be sympathetic to these patients by painting them as grieving would-be mothers, his so-called “solution” for the “problem” of these women choosing abortion is, of course, to take that choice away.

That solution, as he sees it, is what he calls a “fetal rescue” program, in which the state bears the burden and expenses of gestating the terminated pregnancy, including the burden and expense related to caring for any live birth that results. Here’s Giles’ proposal:

It [fetal rescue program] puts the woman in what we might call the gestate-or-relinquish dilemma: carry the fetus to term or relinquish it to the state prior to viability for attempted rescue via AW [artificial womb]. The gestate-or-relinquish dilemma can best be characterized as a pre-viability, pre-natal version of the raise-or-relinquish dilemma. Like its post-natal analogue, it frustrates the woman’s interest in ensuring the death of the fetus. If she opts not to carry the fetus to term, she must relinquish it to the state, and if AW succeeds, her biological child will be raised by others....

http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2015/01/05/legal-scholar-calls-fetal-rescue-programs-end-abortion-debate/