What if we separated conception from sex?

How would we separate conception from sex?  Why would we do it? And what would the effects on society be?  Who would win?  Who would lose?  And most importantly what would it take for a nation to embrace this?

How would we separate sex and conception?

It really isn't difficult in theory.  Putting theory to practice is not going to be easy.  

Theory:  All male citizens over a certain age, say 14, deposit an adequate sample of their genetic material in a national repository.  Afterwards they receive a vasectomy.  They may retrieve their sperm in order to conceive a child under a set procedure that ensures that the woman consents to the pregnancy, that the child will have at least two adults to care for it, that the custodial adults have sufficient income to support the child and that the custodial adults have been evaluated and counselled on their legal responsibilities.

Practice: Well, that would be interesting to enforce wouldn't it?  

Why would we do it?
I'll start the list and anyone who cares to can add to it.
Unwanted pregnancies vanish, as do the associated social and economic costs. I wish I had statistics for these costs.
Abortion is extremely rare and occurs only for reasons of the mother's health or fatal fetal defects.
Women gain great social and economic benefits.  No longer would we have teen mothers.  Women will have every chance to decide exactly when, if at all, they should have children.
Immigration would decline when the puishment for being an illegal male immigrant would be deportation or vasectomy.

What would the effects on society be?
Hard to say.  The birth rate would fall since pregnancy through biological accident would no longer occur.  The crime rate should fall as well.   There will likely be a temporary spike in STDs.  Pharma companies will be out a chunk of revenue since they will no longer be providing chemical birth control to women.  A pill a day for how many millions of women?  Condom use will go up. Sex education can concentrate on SEX and protecting against STDs.  The anti abortion movement will be hunting for a new cause.  Prenatal care will improve and maternal and fetal mortality rates will decline.

Who would win? Women, men and children are all winners.  

Who would lose?  The pharma industry would lose a reliable source of income.

What would it take for a nation to embrace this?
A lot, a whole heckuva lot!  We'd have to reassure men that their genetic deposit is safe and can be retrieved at will and only by them.  DNA from these deposits can not be used as evidence in any crime other than a sex crime. We'd have to sweeten the pot - outlawing abortion except to protect the health of the mother, making federally funded healthcare available to all mothers and children.  Universal healthcare to all would also work.  Give every woman one federally funded college scholarship to give to any one of her children.  This ensures that at least one child in every 'family' has the opportunity to go to college.

The income requirements would have to be minimal. The income requirement could also be met by a third party setting up a trust fund for the child.  This would allow impatient parents to become grandparents by funding their grandchildren.  Religious and other organizations could also create trustfunds for couples below the income thresh hold.  

Custodial parents need not be married or a male/female couple.  Certainly the biological parents need to be male and female, but the custodial parents do not need to be.

No man may be denied retrieval because of evaluation results.   The evaluation and counseling is meant to give a couple an objective perspective on their ability to take on parental responsiblities.  It is quite likely that charitable groups that create conception trustfunds will use evaluations to determine who will be awarded a trustfund.  Evaluations may also be used to target at risk families so they can be tracked and given assistance by government agencies.  

•  Going to bed now!

  See you in a few hours.

  by Fabian on Sat Apr 16, 2005 at 11:46:06 PM PDT

•  I ain't doing it

  off the top of my head:

  1. Pure creepiness.  Remember Brave New World?
     
  2. Single parents aren't always a bad thing, though usually unadvaisable.  It would be blatantly unconstitional and morally wrong to limit parenthood by income.
     
  3. I don't trust the government to lose/accidentally give out mah boys out to someone else.  These are the same fellers who fucked up Iraq.

  It's late...anybody else have any other reasons this is a bad idea?

  by Croatoan on Sat Apr 16, 2005 at 11:56:10 PM PDT

  •  the income restriction would be very low

    likely the federal poverty guideline

    Also couples would be capable of soliciting trust funds to get the cash.  Churches and other religious groups could sponsor couples.  Sure, it'd turn into a special interest sponsorship of reproduction but I think that is the fun part.  Instead of "Thou shalt not use contraception." the churches would have to pony up to get more followers.

    by Fabian on Sun Apr 17, 2005 at 04:07:14 AM PDT

•  Yeah the sperm bank idea is poor

  Far better would be some system of having the default state be infertile for both sexes, yet there would be a self-administered procedure for turning oneself (and only oneself) back "on" when fertilization was desired.

  Forced motherhood and fatherhood should be eliminated just as unplanned pregnancy is.

  Something along these lines may involve a "switch" that is implanted into the vas deferens and fallopian tubes that is switchable by the host with little pain and a good deal of certainty. Only the host could feel it reliably and switch it reliably in the ideal design.

  Both parties would have to willingly turn on at the same time. There would be a slight risk of ectopic pregnancy I guess, but this is in the margin of safety for all methods.

  But the gov't or other power structure must not be able to interfere. And furthermore, the species must retain the ability to reproduce in the absence of availability of some chemical or other. This is why I am putting forward a physical switch as opposed to some pharmaceutical one.

  by peeder on Sun Apr 17, 2005 at 12:12:41 AM PDT

  •  I was just sitting around this evening

    wondering how better government could control the everyday events in my life. Of the necessities - air, water, food, shelter, community - only air is "free," unless you live near a Union Carbide plant.

    The next level of control would be the visceral pleasures, and among those sex seems a natural pick, Freud claimed that a population deprived of ample and healthy sexual expression would turn to crap.

    That seems to be our goal.

    by doorguy on Sun Apr 17, 2005 at 01:12:34 AM PDT

    •  What would the abstinence only advocates do?

      Don't do it! Sex BAD!

      why not?

      Pregnancy!  STDs!

      condoms. no pregnancy risk.

      um......

      by Fabian on Sun Apr 17, 2005 at 04:11:06 AM PDT

  •  I like that - nanotechnology to the rescue!

    by Fabian on Sun Apr 17, 2005 at 04:08:39 AM PDT

•  weird

  but interesting, in a huxleyish sort of way.

  gut reaction: no government nurse will be welcome to compulsorily vasectomise my 14 year-old son if i have anything to do with it!

  and here's something else: i have no scientific info to back me up, but am very curious to see if any kossaks can kick in an opinion.

  sperm of a 14-year old may well have the most motility, and have its dna relatively undamaged by the vicissitudes of adulthood, but if we evolve our dna during our lives, and hopefully imbue ourselves with more wisdom, won't the benefits of that be lost in a system such as you present?

  of course some people would like to have babies by social stars, and in some ways this is understandable. if i don't really love my mate and think my precious genes will have a more prosperous future if wedded to an egg from j-lo, and there's one for sale, and my mate will carry 'our' baby, or vice-versa, my mate decides i'm useful to change tyres and bring in a paycheck, but she'd rather have magic johnson's seed fertilising her genetic essence...

  if i'm right, your system would guarantee a large proportion of healthy babies with almost zero life experience in the last male generation.

  kinda explains why some people act the way they do.

  no this is too damn weird, i can't go further.

  big yuck, basically

  by melo on Sun Apr 17, 2005 at 01:56:33 AM PDT

  •  It isn't a sperm shopping mall.

    Both the mother and father(or two other adults) have to consent and take legal responsibility for the child - minimizing sperm shopping.  The legal responsibility includes the financial obligation.

    Men would have the ultimate control over their reproductive success.  They could have as many children by as many women as they could gain the consent of.

    I think that comitted couples as parents would still be the norm. We tend to be wired that way.

    You do bring up the specter of some interesting gender games. One could be women who hook up with men for material support and string the men along pretending to be interested in having their children.  But when push comes to shove - they're outta there!  

    The other one is what I nicknamed the bow-wows - Bitches On Wheels.  Bow-wows are women who decide early on they have no intention of becoming pregnant.  Without the burden of pregnancy or childrearing, they can have uninterrupted careers like men, leading to a spike of women in high demand careers.  Since they still have their birthright of a college scholarship, they can endow it upon other girls who want to follow in their footsteps.  

    by Fabian on Sun Apr 17, 2005 at 04:30:27 AM PDT

  •  Lysenkoism

    Yikes:

    if we evolve our dna during our lives, and hopefully imbue ourselves with more wisdom, won't the benefits of that be lost in a system such as you present?

    This is what is known as Lysenkoism, much beloved by Joe Stalin, but not good science.

    by Dancing Larry on Sun Apr 17, 2005 at 04:38:55 AM PDT

•  the big key is VOLUNTARY

  no one's ever gonna trust a mandatory system.  ever.  

  voluntary though... what if you were offered free vasectomies and vasectomy-reversals, with free sperm storage to boot just in case the reversal didn't work.  and the stored sperm is secure and can't be used by anyone else without your consent.  

  then, you're free to get a vasectomy and not worry about unwanted pregnancy or queasy abortion.  if you're the guy, that is.  the woman would have no way of really knowing whether her partner had had the operation or not.

  the total number of abortions ought to go way down, although STD cases would probably rise.

  all in all, still pretty bizarre, with some mixed-bag effects.  
  

  by texas dem on Sun Apr 17, 2005 at 02:28:49 AM PDT

  •  I'm not sure about the STD rising thing

    With universal reversible infertility, much of the wind about be taken out of the abstinence-only sails, the stigma on talking about sex would start to go away, and pregnancy would no longer be the primary concern. This would leave STDs as the primary concern and people would be educated about them primarily.

    Furthermore, as sites like technicalvirgin.com illustrate, many of the kids taking abstinence pledges are resorting to extensive oral and especially anal sex, which is contributing heavily to an observed increase in STDs in that group of proto-fundies.

    These alternatives to intercourse aren't being done for STD avoidance, they're being done for pregnancy avoidance (plus avoiding the wrath of Gaud or their parents or whatever haunts their well-washed brains). That goes away with the right technology.

    by peeder on Sun Apr 17, 2005 at 03:32:21 AM PDT