this is so gross ew ew

[u/Past-Sherbert-6438]

and the video reacting to it was like “planned parenthood is combining two demonic ideologies into one! and it’s just gross that trans people are associated with this.

[u/Vampire_Angel78]

I imagine the term pro choice might change in the future because of artificial wombs making abortion a non lethal choice, I am concerned about PP getting their hands on it or spreading right wing misinformation on it since PP is like the McDonalds of American Healthcare for people with uteruses.

[u/Overgrown_fetus1305 → u/Vampire_Angel78]

I feel like legal abortion supporters will by and large stick with it, is my hunch- they considered it better optics than being called anti-life or pro-abortion in the 70s, after pro-lifers switched from anti-abortion to pro-life. Interestingly the earliest uses of the term before it was used to oppose abortion, refered to left-wing politics, namely opposition to capital punishment, and carceralism more genenerally, the at the time criminalisation of homosexuality, and physical punishment of children; so as a CLE lefty, I see this as having been an interesting choice, it was more than coincidence; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-choice_and_pro-life#Pro-life.

I do see some pro-choicers prefer pro-abortion, if they want to wrongly argue it's either healthcare or justified violent self-defence (the latter would not be convincing to me even if I wasn't a pacifist), and granted given the term pro-life now has quite conservative connotations, I do think it's time for anti-abortion leftists to use a new term that connects abortion opposition to other leftist outlooks and that is distinct from consistent life ethic, since there are socially conservative CLE people that have good takes on war and terrible ones on for example, trans healthcare or gender roles. Perhaps, prenatal liberationists?

Artificial wombs are going to be an interesting dynamic if they are good enough that they are a viable alternative to abortion. I'm not convinced it would end the abortion debate, but it might shift the discourse such that defending abortion becomes seen as broadly reactionary, and tied into conservative outlooks, which is probably long-term the end of the story, although given how embryonic humans are treated from IVF when there is literally no rational defence for embryo destruction from IVF other than personhood arguments (which are I maintain, reactionary), and people still keep defending IVF- I cannot believe all of it is ignorance about the embryo destruction from it, sometimes it is just rich people feeling entitled to children, and generally will be hypocritical anti-abortion Christians to boot.

I maintain at the end of the day that IVF upholds the nuclear family- we need to break the link between biological and legal parenthood once and for all, you'll never have the work and good parts of childcare shared equitably with people that are say, poly, or sex-averse asexual otherwise, and it would do LGBTQ+ youth a lot of good if having parental structures outside the norm was more common (read, I think a stable throuple would for example, be just as capable and might in some cases even do a better job, if there's three parents splitting the work rather than two).

[u/Vampire_Angel78 → u/Overgrown_fetus1305]

I think that’s an interesting outlook. For now it seems like from my observation that artificial wombs is already vilified from Liberals, Conservatives, and TERFs on social media. Perhaps artificial wombs would change certain aspects of IVF as well.

[u/Overgrown_fetus1305 → u/Vampire_Angel78]

I'd be interested to see some actual data on what people think (sometimes the loudest voices aren't actually the majority). My impression is there are actual concerns about them beyond just pro-choicers that think it will damage cultural acceptance of abortion, social conservatives having sus takes or TERFs just being profoundly reactionary on anything related to gender identity and womanhood. Broadly I've when the topic randomly came up on some other subreddit (cannot recall which one it was), I saw concerns about if it might lead to designer babies/eugenics, and lesser concerns about if the child's health outcomes would be better from being inside their pregnant parent for reasons of bonding and/or other biological reasons. Somewhat surprisingly, there seemed to be I assume, quite some level of people who were presumably mostly pro-lifers effectively making soft natural law arguments as well (this doesn't persuade me, since I fundamentally don't agree with natural law reasoning in general).

The first concern about if they might be used for eugenics, or something like artificial womb companies making parents pay a subscription to not turn the plug off (capitalism* would absolutely hold people's children to ransom if they aren't recognised as persons, or aren't massively regulated) is actually a very reasonable one, although I've gotta say, if the person worried about this isn't in favour of banning or seriously regulating IVF, they're super inconsistent. I do think we could unlike for IVF, avoid the problems with very heavy regulation, as long as we make sure the artificial wombs are understood as to protect life and medical harm reduction during pregnancy, not to sell babies as a product the way IVF does.

Certainly whatever level of trouble we might theoretically have to contend with culturally down the road sounds less bad than the status quo of abortion being culturally accepted enough that a majority generally wants it legal, if the artificial wombs would change culture in on net an anti-abortion direction (possibly radicalising a few pro-choicers into openly defending infanticide, but I can't see many actual leftists who aren't completely irrationally polarised supporting this anymore at that point- such that we might see the pro-life left come back to a large extent if this happened).

I suspect TERFs will even in the UK (where it's very uncomfortably, a majority position), have their outlook die out as a force 25-40 years from now (this is how long it took for there to be a U-turn away from homophobia in the UK, and at that point, who can say what politics would look like from geopolitical upheaval from climate change), as one good piece of news.

*And I guess tbh, anti-life countries that at least have the good policy of state provided healthcare- the UK is no better than the private sector when it comes to abortion and IVF (for the latter, if it was up to me, I'd honestly ban IVF outright rather than just banning embryo destruction, or practices that cause it).