To wonder if boys should be vasectomised at birth?

[Dutch1e]

If a vasectomy was painless, 100% reversible and could only be reversed when the boy had reached adulthood and had some counselling sessions to help him understand the implications of his decision, would it be a good idea to make vasectomies normal for baby boys?

Just musing on the threads about child services, child abuse and thinking about accidental pregnancies

YetAnotherSpartacus

Bertrand - I'm not sure that a few here have basic comprehension skills... I suspect that thought experiments may be a bit beyond them

I think I'd prefer to be thick than smug and condescending. Your follow up post does you no favours either.

Has anyone provided a full list of the benefits of the programme? I'd like to see that before I make up my whether it's a good idea or not.

Spartacus I think that thought experiments are dangerous in the hands of sophists.

Now put that in your comprehension skills and smoke it.

And Bertrand eugenics wasn't "thought away" quick enough for quite a few people in Germany or India or Australia or the US or quite a few other places.

Yep. Absolutely. That's what every feminist on this thread is saying. Even if their actual words are saying something completely different. How lucky we are to have you to interpret us

Oh come off it.Bertrand you were the one who introduced the completely spurious point about people being outraged by attempts to curb male fertility.

OrchidaceousRose

Spartacus I think that thought experiments are dangerous in the hands of sophists

Now put that in your comprehension skills and smoke it

I don't think it's a great idea and think it could lead to a rise in STD's.

Dh and I have talked about teenage years etc in the past and he's said before that he was always religious with condoms - even when the girl was telling him not to bother a couple of times - because he was terrified of pregnancy. STD's never figured for him in his teenage brain because he had a 'it wouldn't happen to me' or a 'she's a nice girl, she wouldn't have anything' mentality. If you'd taken away the risk of pregnancy completely I doubt he would have been careful at all and imagine that would apply to many more men and boys.

Technically, if we were all born unable to have babies, and we needed a certain treatment or pill before we could pro-create, that would be ideal, as it would stop unwanted pregnancies, the starving millions across the globe having more and more children, (even though they should stop having so many because they can't feed themselves!) and women having baby after baby to stay on welfare (and it does happen, let's not pretend otherwise.)

But like I said earlier in the thread, how do we decide when and how someone is 'worthy' to become a parent? Do they have to be on a joint income of over £35K, do they have to own their property? Do they have to have been in the same job for 5 years? Do they have to have never suffered mental health issues? (Because a screaming newborn depriving you of sleep is not going to help anyone with fragile mental health.)

Most of the above would rule out most of the world's population, and certainly most non-white people. So yeah, it is eugenics, it's weird, and it wouldn't really work.

Best thing to do maybe (although this is probably impossible too,) is to only allow people to have 2 children max. I mean physically.

derxa yes, I haven't read all 13 pages, as they seem to be going round in circles, but if you could do it, why would you? To stop people having children before they are ready? Surely you can do that already through contraception? The reasons people have babies earlier than they should surely is either because they want to, ignorance about contraceptive choices, or sometimes because the only way they can see their future is by making a baby that has to love them. The only thing that will not be solved by making people infertile until they actively choose to have children is the ignorance, and that is likely to be made worse by this after the first child. In any case, surely making the girl infertile would be much easier as the physical burden is on them? What about sticking a copper coil into every girl when their periods start, like a vaccination programme? It lasts for 10 years and is completely reversible. They would be 22 or 23 begore it was allowed to be removed.

little I agree. You realky want to stop people having too manu children. Stopping them from starting doesn't really do anything unless you force them to stop. But they tried that in China. It doesnt really work as well as education of women and readily available contraception.

My main objection to I'll conceived thought experiments is thIs.

Just because you can conceive of something, doesn't mean it can exist. Human thought and language are limited.

There are quite a few koans designed to show the limits of human reason "the sound of one hand clapping" or "what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?".

So you have to be careful when using "hypothetical" situations that you aren't actually using "nonsensical" situations, or dressing up "I sez not" in fancy terms.

Perhaps a non-invasive, non-painful, totally reversible etc vasectomy could exist.

Personally, I think you are stretching the concept of non-invasive a bit if you say that a procedure that causes physical changes to the body is totally non-invasive. Less invasive perhaps, maybe even capable of conforming to "no surgeon's knife shall crease my flesh" type strictures. But totally non-invasive, totally foolproof? Is that even a valid concept.

Thought experiments are a valuable tool- but like so many tools, only when used safely. Like real experiments, best used in cases when you are seeing whether something is true or false and you are prepared accept either answer. They are better used to examine a position and reach a conclusion than to justify and entrench a pre-held conclusion.

Actually thought experiments are quite often used in philosophy, mathematics and physics, just for starters. As far as I know, no one ever died from one, apart from maybe (or maybe not) Schrödinger's cat.

Here's one of the most well-known ones from the C20th.

spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm

I think the OP raised some interesting points, as did Bertrand.

That's completely mental !! YABU
However men should have more contraceptive options available to them by now not just a condom which may fail them.

"Thought experiments are a valuable tool- but like so many tools, only when used safely."

"Always Think Responsibly"

Perhaps a non-invasive, non-painful, totally reversible etc vasectomy could exist.

If it was of central importance to the OP for it to be done via vasectomy then it is unlikely that there

btw thought experiment threads ALWAYS bomb in AIBU because the whole place is full of people with apparently zero imagination telling you 'but that doesn't exist!' and 'but that would be really painful to the babies' just as if they can't work out what the statement 'if vasectomies where 100% painless and reversible' means.

If you do not "imagine away" (or temporarily ignore) objections to the practicalities of specific methods of achieving an aim, how would you know whether you agree or disagree with the aim itself?

Great, so you know you would object to vasectomies on babies because of practical and moral arguments against such invasive procedures. But then they go and invent a pill or "" vaccine" injection or other method which does not require an invasive procedure and could be given to babies.

Well, you could delay your thinking on the underlying principle until if an when that ever happens, but there is nothing wrong with sorting out what you think about the aim itself ahead of time. And if you do not wish to...then don't and just leave the thread?

Oops bad editing. That second line should have gone on to say ...will be. But I suspect that vasectomy was just a "tool" to tease out a discussion about removing fertility, rather than being of central importance.

Thought Experiment
noun
A mental assessment of the implications of a hypothesis.

Most of the posters on this thread have discussed the implications of vasectomising babies. The possible health, ethical and social implications and the consensus seems to be that it would be a bad idea.

I am sadly not at all surprised that some of the FWR regulars here have taken these posts to mean that the rest of the MN membership are stupid, lack imagination and are just outraged because we are talking about doing it to boys. It's always good to be reminded of just how little "MN Feminists" think of the rest of us.

It's always good to be reminded of just how little "MN Feminists" think of the rest of us. Yes Dione And it does hurt. Much as I try to brush it off. It's not a good recruitment tactic for the feminist cause.

Oh, Dione, give it a rest. You know perfectly well that is a completely erroneous interpretation of the thread. There isn't a single person who has said that "vasectomising" baby boys is anything but an utterly horrific idea.

What the fuck?

"And it does hurt. Much as I try to brush it off."

Fascinating then, that it appears to be absolutely fine to say anything at all to and about "Mumsnet feminists" (whatever they are). Have a quick look through this thread, for example, and see who has been "bashed".

There are no eugenics-style mandates to use contraception before applying for benefits

Except that this HAS happened. Google "Project Prevent". In the US and UK drug addicts have been offered frankly quite paltry sums of money in return for agreeing to sterilisation.

That one isn't mandatory but others have been. A few US states were forcing sterilisation right up until the 70s and 80s either because the person was considered too poor or mentally deficient to raise children. Feminists had to fight to stop the routine sterilisation of poor immigrant women into America in the 70s during caesarian sections. These women were often not even informed after the procedure had been done, let alone before.

Women inmates in California prisons were sterilised without the proper consent being sought this century. Many of them given complete hysterectomies. There is a pattern amongst the women "offered" this treatment in that it was almost always women who had been in prison more than once.

And again. Just because something isn't happening now, doesn't mean it won't happen ever in the future.

t's always good to be reminded of just how little "MN Feminists" think of the rest of us.

Who is us? An assumed majority of posters who agree with you or the set of names you know agree with you of whatever size?

To modify the original approach.
Let us say there is an option simply to switch on a gene which blocks fertility in both sexes for the first 20-25 years of life. It only works for that period so no opt in is needed to regain fertility - instead the young adult would have to opt to stay infertile. The gene has no other effects.
This then frees adolescents and young adults from the need for early and interventionist methods for contraceptive purposes and to some extent from mistakes. Would you then still see it as a problem?

For example, several people have suggested I am a closet eugenicist. And somebody else said something about me being happy with "chopping up baby boys" Now given a choice between that, and somebody saying that maybe I hadn't grasped the premise of the thread- well, I know which I'd prefer.

I think it's pretty salutary for feminists to sometimes be shown quite how non feminist think about them.

If the discussion is just about artificial large scale population control, its nothing revolutionary. Its a sci fi staple, from Margaret Atwood to Doctor Who to Superman. Its always done at the behest of the powerful and to the detriment of the anti establishment and free thinkers.