[extropy-chat] Famous author self destructs in public! Film ateleven.

[Samantha Atkins]

On Jun 4, 2005, at 12:33 PM, Charlie Stross wrote:
> It seems to me that the reason abortion is such a hot-button topic  
> -- at least in the USA -- is that it is almost invariably  
> introduced as a stalking-horse for other social agendas that are  
> never explicitly dragged kicking and screaming under the spotlight.
> It then becomes impossible to express an opinion on the subject of  
> abortion per se without a whole slew of additional philosophical  
> and social attitudes being attributed to one.
>

Yep.  I keep experiencing people attributing all sorts of things to  
me given my stand on the subject of abortion.  I am amazed and often  
blind-sided by this so you are doubtless right.

>
> Can we maybe agree, as extropians one and all, that in an ideal  
> world involuntary and/or unwanted conception wouldn't occur, and  
> that as extropians are dedicated to the improvement of the human  
> condition, figuring out how to make conception a process under  
> voluntary control -- preferably wired into our neurohormonal axis  
> by way of gene-line engineering -- would do more to alleviate human  
> suffering than any amount of on-going gaseous blathering over  
> whether humanity cuts in when the foetus reaches 10^5 cells or 10^8?


Sounds good to me.  Of course the rub is in the question of what is  
allowable to simulate or correct toward the ideal goal state in the  
meantime.    I think you can work backward from the goal of total  
control over when a pregnancy occurs to it being permissible to end  
an unwanted pregnancy that escaped one's currently imperfect  
control.  Others of course disagree.

- samantha