The current thinking from the conservative mindset is that we need to get women to be more responsible with the choices they make as far as who and how often to have sex. They're picking on the wrong gender! Let's say we enter my magic wand world for a second and there was a program where, at a certain age, every male was given a sperm storage unit (or a voucher for a unit) with a national sperm bank network. One deposit would contain enough heads for close to over ten thousand artificial insemination's which would securely preserve their DNA, then males would get their vasectomy. Whenever there was a point at which couples decide they were ready to raise children, they make their visit to the local sperm bank and get their artificial insemination. I don't believe this kind of program would need to be a legislated, top down mandatory sort of thing either. It could be an opt-in program where men were given the choice and still have massive compliance, especially since (at least according to my anecdotal experiences) most young men do not have the desire to father children until some time in their 30's and 40's when they've built their nest egg and have financial security, though this could vary based on culture and so there could be incentives implemented without having to use coercion. Individuals could have multiple vouchers in order to maintain redundancy so as to protect their freedom of choice later on in life, as well as the private sector having opportunities for nonprofit watchdog groups with ethics boards to evaluate when and why a request was rejected and what would constitute a case of naive or irresponsible people intending to procreate. There would probably be variations between state borders as far as the laws concerning this type of thing so having private groups involved that could operate in all jurisdictions would probably be the best way to go.
The problem (which is actually 'unwanted pregnancies', not abortion) would drop off a cliff, but of course, could raise several new problems such as sperm banks having unlimited power over the flow and shape of society, perhaps making judgments about individual couples not being ready to conceive and withholding a persons DNA unjustifiably... This would be a problem that might not always be the horrible dystopian future I can see people imagining it to be, people can easily be confused about whether or not they have the knowledge and the resources that it would take to raise a healthy, happy baby and so would benefit from a consultation and perhaps a few college courses before jumping into something that they aren't ready for, reminding them its not just their life, its also the child's life.
My Devil's Advocate pops up right now saying that there could easily be situations where perfectly eligible couples have their rights and property abused by these authorities, what would be the correct move to safeguard against this?
Redundancy and privatization. The amazing thing about being able to father thousands of kids in one shot (with the help of science) is that making deposits at multiple banks, both public banks and private ones, with the government and private religious/ secular organizations financing to satisfy that both the religious concerns for respecting life as well as ensuring the psycho-social-developmental health and security of society makes this much more practical. If you prevent conception, you don't have a life that needs to be terminated in the first place so focusing on the morning after pill is the wrong approach/ wrong gender, focusing your activism on males instead of females makes much more sense given the religious/scientific factors involved.
Redundancy and privatization. The amazing thing about being able to father thousands of kids in one shot (with the help of science) is that making deposits at multiple banks, both public banks and private ones, with the government and private religious/ secular organizations financing to satisfy that both the religious concerns for respecting life as well as ensuring the psycho-social-developmental health and security of society makes this much more practical. If you prevent conception, you don't have a life that needs to be terminated in the first place so focusing on the morning after pill is the wrong approach/ wrong gender, focusing your activism on males instead of females makes much more sense given the religious/scientific factors involved.
My Devil's Advocate pops up again and says perhaps the religious motivations are secondary to other motivations such as personal responsibility.
Hoping for a revolution in personal willpower and responsibility is an understandable aspiration, however when the consequences of a failure of this revolution involves the lives of innocent children, I would say perhaps trying to shift the focus of your activism to another domain would be best given the obvious solution to the current problem.
The only other rebuttal I might be given to why this idea would be unattractive would be the economic argument. There is a current dogma in economics right now that says the more people you have, the more economic demand/growth your society will have overall... In 2005, according to the UN, over half of the world's population lived on less than 2 dollars a day while 30,000 children died each day due to hunger related causes... let's start talking about demand being reduced given less pregnancies once we have hit the true capacity of our current population (Note: I was unable to find a link to the current UN estimates but I found a few independent sources that said the current number is 16,000 children under the age of 5 die each day due to hunger related causes... I will be updating this post at a later date once I find the current UN numbers). If a country has saturated its populations capacity for demand, accepting new immigrants from less flourishing countries is always on the table in order to continue economic growth. The argument that the current population is 'too far gone' intellectually and spiritually that it would be unrealistic to expect any sort of sustained growth given their lack of education/judgments... I would say that the current tools at our disposal, as far as being able to spur markets, and other sociological factors that are relevant to economics are being massively under utilized and that you would have to have an incomplete understanding of what is possible, and what is being done in selective pockets of the world, as well as having a truly unapologetic 'elitist view' that is out of touch with basic socio-cultural-economic developmental factors that are currently at work.
Feedback is encouraged as always, thank you for your time.
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