undefined | Better HN

0 pointskirsebaer10y ago0 comments

Are you going to force women to abort "unlicensed" children? Force women to have birth control implants?

Up until the 1990s in Spain, many thousands of children were systematically stolen from political activists and others with the wrong politics or wrong lifestyle. Parents were told that their newborn had died. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15335899

0 comments

6 comments · 1 top-level

adrianN10y ago· 5 in thread

A less severe form would be financial incentives for licensed parents. You're still free to have children if you want, but you're only supported by the state if you got a license. Pair this with free birth control implants and abortions for everyone who wants them and you get most of the effect without the use of force. You could even pay men to get a vasectomy.

kalleboo10y ago

> You're still free to have children if you want, but you're only supported by the state if you got a license

This will only mean the most vulnerable (who need the most support) will be unsupported. You're creating an underclass.

adrianN10y ago

If only certain people are encouraged to have children, you automatically have an underclass, no matter how it's implemented. I think that providing free (or more incentivized) birth control would lead to very few cases of unwanted children. IUDs and vasectomies are simple and effective.

1 more reply

ksenzee10y ago

"You're still free to have children if you want, but you're only supported by the state if you got a license."

The traditional "license" to have children used to be marriage, and children born without such a license were called illegitimate - i.e. outside the law. It was an unjust system that hurt a lot of innocent children, and we've moved away from it for a reason.

humanrebar10y ago

> It was an unjust system that hurt a lot of innocent children

If the current system (where marriage and procreation are notionally separate) were found to hurt a lot of innocent children, would we call our system unjust and abandon it?

I suspect not. The current culture around marriage and parenting didn't evolve from pragmatism as much as (various takes on) ethics, morality, and self-determinism.

mahyarm10y ago

I would just let teenage children get free RISUG / hormonal implants and let them remove them or keep renewing them for free.

That alone will prevent many unplanned and unwanted babies in a population without any force, political, eugenics or racist overtones.

I don't know the long term effects of these implants so it's a tentative idea.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse