Since the Catholic Church is opposed to both abortion and contraception I'd opt for delivering all such children to the Vatican.

For a life of indoctrination at best and sexual abuse at worst? You're an evil man Jamiet

"Will technology solve this debate?"

Not fully, because...

"In a few years will we have artificial wombs which can receive an embryo from just after conception (of from any time thereafter) and take them to full term?"

And are you going to force mothers to give up their children to those wombs rather than abort? For lack of a better way of phrasing it...

If a mother (for whatever reason) doesn't want to give up her embryo to the artificial womb OR carry it to term...are you going to "go in and get it," as it were? Are you going to have a judge demand a woman be subjected to an invasive procedure like that against her will?

Abortion isn't just about the fetus--it's about the mother and her right to choose (says the very-pro-choice damned dirty liberal, of course.)

But really--are you going to allow that, to allow someone to essentially go in, open a woman up against her will, and seize her fetus?

Good luck getting THAT to fly.

And if the answer is yes and the rationale is "Well, we'd take a child away from a harmful situation in the real world, why not rescue it in this situation?"...

1. That's assuming a fetus or embryo is a child, in which case, well, you've just legally redefined what a human being is and when life starts--who feels safe in the assumption that ANY government should have the right to redefine what is and is not a person under the law?

2. So we're to supersede the rights and liberties of a living person "already born" for a being yet to be born/leave the womb? Since one of the most universal agreements on abortions is that it's at least somewhat permissible when the life of the mother is at stake, are we to reverse that and value the life of the unborn in favor of the mother? Since both religious and non-religious groups often favor the "when in conflict, save the life of the mother" approach, this would seem rather contrary to a basic intuition we have about the meaning and definition of life.

3. I say again--good luck getting any group north of the Bible Belt to agree to forcibly ripping a woman open against her will and removing an embryo due to a court order. A woman says "No, don't touch my body, it's my body, my choice," and you're going to potentially arrest, anesthetize, and forcibly remove something from her body? That sounds like a good idea?

While I agree with obiwan, I also think that there could be conservative opposition to this. This would be very hard to push through, politically.

So I post a link to a discussion about whether the Bible regards a fetus as a human life, and we're immediately having a debate about Brave New World-style robot wombs that haven't been invented yet. Ok...

Anyone care to address the interesting issue in the article I originally linked to?

Isn't it strange that the religious pro-life lobby now takes it for granted that abortion represents taking a human life, when just 30 years ago that wasn't the view of most religious scholars at all?

I'm not arguing a position here, just flying a kite.

I'm glad you joined the debate Obi as your position is clearly pro-choice (or any other label you choose).

I think you have also argued in the past that human rights sometime conflict and society has to choose which rights to uphold. At the moment I can well see the arguement where the mother's rights override the rights of the cells. The cells may or may not be regarded as human life, but may regard it as inhuman to force a woman to carry a child full term. Is this arguement weakened when the mother doesn't have to be forced to carry a child full term but has to submit to something akin to a smear test?

Perhaps I asked the wrong question. Rather than changing laws, would women be more likely to opt for transferring their cells/feotus/child to an artificial womb as an alternative to abortion?

To be honest, Jamie, the robowomb is a tad more interesting than the whims of US religious scholars. And the technology is very much within reach if we wanted it..

I dare say we could do it now if we wanted to, with a fairly high rate of success. Of course the technology would have to be foolproof before it is put into use, as the public will certainly not stand for an unborn baby to be put in an articifial womb where it then goes on to die (why this is more objectionable than an abortion I don't know, but I feel it is). 1 or 2 stories like that would kill off the idea before it begins.

Sorry about the derail Jamiet, but now Octavious has called it the Robowomb, I fear the derailment is permenant.

obiwanobiwan, your posts here are revolting. If we ever each the point where an embryo can be taken from a woman and carried to term in an artificial womb then there never needs to be another abortion again, and there never should be.

The justification, such as there is, for abortion is that the woman should have a choice with what happens with her body. That condition is satisfied when the embryo is taken out of her. All you need to do is write the law so that the woman gives up her parental rights when the embryo is moved. There's no reason AT ALL for any potential human to die if this hypothetical (and, we must assume, universally available) technology someday exists. You're crossing the line from being pro-choice to being just pro-termination.

"Isn't it strange that the religious pro-life lobby now takes it for granted that abortion represents taking a human life, when just 30 years ago that wasn't the view of most religious scholars at all?"

Can't speak for other faiths, but it's always been a mortal sin in Catholicism.

If you are going to take such a harsh stance against abortion, take the opposite stance against contraceptives. Stop promoting abstinence, it only makes sex sound more fun and promotes "curiosity" - I'm completely serious. That's how I felt when they told us all that crap in middle school.

As a teenage guy, hell to the fucking no I'm not going to abstain, and neither are the girls. Promote safe sex and face the reality that people are going to have sex regardless. Help local organizations to provide contraceptives so that we don't have unwanted babies that are either a) aborted, or b) abandoned. Promote adoption in childless families. Create consistent sentencing policy for rape; don't let people get away with it. Quit objectifying women, specifically young women. Let them choose how to look and feel beautiful.

Do these things and it is reasonable to talk about making abortion illegal without infringing on a woman's sexual rights.

I love contraceptives. Pin that canard on someone else.

I wasn't pinning it on anyone. That was just a general statement...

Then don't write "you." Write "one" or, better yet, structure the whole thing differently.

For fuck's sake shut up Invictus.

Yeah Invictus "For fuck's sake shut up"

@ Invictus:

"I love contraceptives."

I can't speak for other faiths, but contraception is viewed as "intrinsically wrong" by the Catholic church.

I never said I wasn't a sinner.

If you "love" sinning, that doesn't make you a very good Catholic, does it?

I never said I was a very good Catholic. Anyway, this is a silly discussion about future artificial wombs, not a silly discussion about my moral condition.

To be fair it was not my intention to create a discussion about the Robowomb

There's a few things that I can see going wrong. How much is it going to cost for this artificial womb to exist? Would they be everywhere? What would we do with all these extra children when the adoption system is already overloaded? It's not nearly so cut and dry Invictus. I have a feeling that the technology will be expensive. By making abortion illegal you'll just be sending it underground again for people who wouldn't be able to afford to pay for the artificial womb service.

Why would anyone debate The Raging Abortions? I mean maybe the weren't the most original early 80's punk band, but for what they did, it wasn't bad. They were no Adolescents or Exploited, but certainly nothin to have a debate over.

The Exploited ..... there is a blast from the past !!

I had to throw something English, I could have gone for suicidal or circle jerks or black flag (dont ban me Jmo, they were a punk band back in the day), but I figured you'd appreciate a GB/HC reference.

"Isn't it strange that the religious pro-life lobby now takes it for granted that abortion represents taking a human life"

It is indeed, interesting. In 1971 the Southern Baptist Convention endorsed legal abortion. But in the 1980s the a certain coterie of influential Evangelicals decided to make a strategic alliance with conservative Catholics (who they historically despised) as well as Mormons, with abortion being the issue that united them. They did this because their traditional issues of concern - opposing desegregation, was no longer politically tenable in the late 1970s/ 1980s, and their economic agenda and foreign policy agenda - free market capitalism and a hawkish foreign policy - could be inculcated into Catholic voters.

Why are pro-lifers not anti-war?

All the conspiracy talk is overblown. There was an internal debate within Christianity and the pro-abortion side lost -- that's all. There were plenty of voices concluding against abortion even within evangelical protestantism in the early 70s. An example from before Roe v. Wade:

http://www.opc.org/GA/abortion.html