699. Is The Own Body A Merchandise?

699.   Is The Own Body A Merchandise?

"French MPs have approved a bill that will penalise anyone paying for sex.

The bill, which was adopted by a vote of 268 to 138, with 79 abstentions, establishes a fine of at least 1,500 euros ($2,030) for buying sexual acts."

"The 1,500-euro fine is for first offenders - subsequent offences could be more than double that."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25217185

There are some more articles concerning the controversial aspects.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/09/opinion/frances-new-approach-to-curbing-prostitution.html

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/05/france-s-new-prostitution-law-targets-johns-ignites-national-debate.html
 

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2013/12/across-europe-growing-sense-legalized-prostitution-isnt-working/7777/

Opposition to the new law comes not only from men, but also from misguided feminists, who are probably too desensitized to be aware of the fallacy of their thinking.  

Prostitution fills the asymmetrical gap between the magnitude of most men's biological urges and the lack of the same amount and urgency in the majority of women.   If women would enjoy copulation without emotional attachment and without commitment as much as men, enough women would want this and no men would have a reason to pay for it.
  
Prostitution is enabled by the combination of the asymmetrical male urges and men's onesided advantages of physical and/or economical power.

There are two fallacies in the demand for legalized prostitution:

Fallacy 1.

Prostitution is called sex work.   Whenever there is no direct coercion, it is alleged and claimed to be a more or less fair deal.  
It would only be a fair deal and a free choice in the case, when a woman has a real, not only a legal right and chance to get all the schooling and training she wants and a well paid agreeable job, and when in spite of this she nevertheless prefers to sell the self-abuse of her body.     
Defining a woman's last straw in a dire need for survival as a free choice and as a fair deal is a fallacy of desensitized people. 

Fallacy 2.

There is a claim, that women should be completely free to do with their own bodies, whatever they want, including selling it.  

If this is to be accepted, then this has to be applied fully and with no other restrictions.   Women then should be given the full freedom of choice, how to use their bodies as a source of an income and what kind of harm they are most willing to suffer.
  
Right now, except selling blood, in most countries other methods are not legally available.   If there are illegal practices, the owner of the bodies get themselves very little, while criminal agencies make profit.   

Comparing the non-financial costs and benefits, prostitution is undoubtedly the worst option for the abused women themselves:

1.  Prostitution 

When a prostitute sells her self-abuse, she serves as a toilet for a selfish man's body waste. 

The costs for the women are the disgust and agony during the recurrent abuse and the long-term psychological and physical damage, for example often substance abuse and the inability to ever emotionally bond with a man.
 

The only benefits are what the abusers perceive as pleasure.  

2.  Selling body parts

Would the women be allowed the choice to sell a kidney (or any other body part, which can be sold without disabling oneself) instead, this would not merely enable a man to acquire selfish abuse, but it would help someone to survive and it would also safe resources needed for the general health care.   Recurrent dialysis is extremely expensive and inconvenient.   A woman (or any person) could be paid the amount of money saved by preventing some years of dialysis.   

The costs for the women are the risk of an operation and the loss of one kidney.  
 

The benefits are for all persons getting off dialysis and having a normal life with a working kidney.

3.  Selling unwanted babies.

Even the uterus and its contents are a part of a woman's body.  If unwillingly pregnant women are allowed any choice at all, it is between abortion and donating the child for adoption.  While it is considered as suitable to impose the paid more general abuse upon women's reproductive area for the mere satisfaction of men's instincts, there is no logical reason, why they should not be allowed to sell the use of the filled uterus instead.    
Women should have the right to the alternative of selling unwanted children or of producing babies for other people as surrogate mothers.  This should be a fair option for the avoidance of the agony of prostitution.  

The costs for the women are the inconvenience, suffering and expenses of pregnancy and giving birth.   For those women, who do not want to breed, there are no emotional costs. 

The benefits are the fulfilling of the breeding urges of those people, who are unhappy without children.  They would be spared futile fertility treatment and more babies would be available to be adopted.  The benefits are also for the babies, who grow up as wanted.

 

Selling body parts and babies has to be restricted as a direct deal between the giver and the health insurance or the receiver, without any greedy third party making profit from it.

Of course I cannot know it, but I am convinced, that many prostitutes would prefer to sell a body part or a baby, if only they were allowed to do this to prevent the agony of being abused. 

Either the own body is a merchandise to be freely used by its owner, then all forms of use have to be legal.   If it is not a merchandise, then prostitution cannot be defined as an exception, only because those powerful men with the influence over legislation are too often themselves the abusers wishing to perpetuate their privileges.   

 

It is an outrage that even in rich countries, some women are deprived of any other means of survival except the use of their bodies.   But it is even more an outrage, that these women are not even allowed a fair choice, how to use their bodies to acquire survival with the least harm for themselves.   

As long as it is considered as morally wrong to sell body parts or a baby, prostitution cannot, neither logically nor ethically, be justified by the right of women to do with their body, what they want.  
As long as it is legally impossible to sell a body part or a baby, men taking advantage of women selling self-abuse as this being their only legal option are abusers, who deserve to be punished.  

651. Modern Human Sacrifices

651.  Modern Human Sacrifices

I grew up here in Germany taking it for granted, that nature and forests are safe places.   As a child I had known of wolves and bears only from fairy tales as of a historical peril to humans in times long gone by.  I also took the general consent for granted that having eliminated all dangerous animals from densely populated Germany centuries ago was beneficial beyond doubt.  
I took this so much for granted, that I was not even grateful for the safety of German forests.  Today I am grateful to live, where there are no dangerous animals except those safely in cages in the zoo.  (It is bad enough, that some men are not better than dangerous animals.)  

But I do not take this for granted anymore.   I just watched a documentary about how humans are ruthlessly exposed to dangers by irresponsible people.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/predators-in-your-backyard/

"The cougar is also commonly known as a puma, mountain lion, mountain cat, catamount, or panther. The sub-population in Florida, which is the only population east of the Mississippi River, is known as the Florida panther.
At least 20 people in North America were killed by cougars between 1890 and 2011"

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_cougar_attacks_in_North_America

Preserving the wild life is certainly important, but it is immoral to force risks upon people, who suffer without a choice, and who have no option to protect themselves.   There should be barriers like fences separating humans from predators.   Those who enable panthers or bears to enter peoples' gardens are irresponsible and cruel.   When such beasts invade a backyard, the people are helpless victims of a situation forced upon them.     

Adding the dangers of wolves to the already existing danger of bears in Yellowstone Park is a different situation, because people have a choice to keep away from such dangerous areas.   But to make this a real option of safety, such parks need to be fenced in to guaranty the safety outside.  

When capitalists' interests are protected, the money to build a fence is raised, as shows the fence along the border between the USA and Mexico.   But to protect humans from being killed by bears or panthers brings no commercial benefits, thus people are not protected by fences.

 

I am very glad for the restricted legal access to firearms here in Germany.    But I have full understanding for anybody, who needs a weapon as a means for self-defense against panthers and bears.      

I consider the safety of the home from invading dangerous animals as a basic human right. It seems absurd, that shooting a panther leads sometimes to less tolerance and condoning than shooting a burglar.   

It is criminal to endanger people by forcing the access of dangerous beasts upon them.   It is a form of murder by proxy, if someone gets killed by predators like bears and panthers released near human homes.  

It is even a variety of human sacrifices.   In many cultures through history, humans were sacrificed to deities, who were considered as more significant and more valuable than the lives of the sacrificed victims.  
Bringing or allowing panthers and bears enter human habitats is a variety of sacrificing humans.   The deity is substituted by some more vague entity as is nature, the planet, wildlife,.   This entity too is considered as having more value and more significance than the risked life of individual humans.   

There is just one difference.   The sacrificing priests were themselves consciously killing the victims and feeling justified to do so.   Those sacrificing human life by imposing predators upon victims do not feel responsible, because the do not do the killing themselves and consider it only as collateral damage.
(I am wondering, how many of those, who welcome and protect the panthers in Florida, at the same time define abortion as murder.   For them, a woman is required to have any unwanted child, but if the panther would kill the child, they accept this as collateral damage.)

605. Existing Or Not Existing

605.   Existing Or Not Existing

Breeders and anti-abortion people often ask persons like me the question, what if their parents had refused to breed or had aborted them.
  
There is a simple answer to this.   A non-existing person cannot miss herself or himself and can also not be missed by anybody.   

Therefore logically the non-existence cannot be compared with existing.      

Every time an unfertilized egg is discarded from a woman's body, the consequence is one additional non-existence of one of countless potential combinations of genes, which could have become anything between a moron and a genius, between a monster and a benefactor.   Reasonably nobody bothers.  

The complementary question is as valid.   What justifies parents to force children into existence, who cannot be asked for consent?   To do so is a huge responsibility for parents, as long as too many people are so much driven by animal instincts, that at any opportunity they do not hesitate to harm others very easily.    Every child has the potential to become either a victim, who suffers, or a transgressor, who harms others, or both.   

Indirectly the breeding parents are responsible for all the harm due to the existence of their offspring.   

Therefore, the decision between breeding and not breeding can rationally only be based upon considerations concerning the impact of breeding upon the parents themselves.   No breeders are able to make a correct prognosis about the amount of harm to be suffered and caused by their offspring.      

221. Non-Breeders Statistically and Historically - 3

Non-Breeders Statistically and Historically - 3

In entries 209 and 210 I used quotes from Wyman's lectures to point the prevalence of different methods to accomplish the refusal to raise children. The ubiquitous motherliness of all or most women is just a myth. Today people can declare openly on the web to be childfree, but there are more non-breeders around and have always been, than cultural tradition under the influence of religion want women to be aware of.

Wyman talks in his lecture about infanticide and abandonment in the past. But also in present times, once in a while the newspaper reports cases of neonaticide or infanticide, when dead bodies are found in places like garbage cans.  In one recent case, the bodies of three newborns were found in a woman's freezer. In another case, the bones of nine newborns were found in flower pots on a balcony.

There are also the cases, when living newborns are deposited in front of a hospital or house for the purpose to be found and cared for.

Statistical quotes:

"The researchers reviewed the case records of 26 courts in three regions of France, involving the death of a child within the first day of life between 1996 and 2000, "

"The official statistics put the figure of the unlawful killing of newborns at 0.39 per 100,000 births for the same regions over the same period."

"But the court data point to 2.1 per 100,000,"

http://www.news-medical.net/news/20101214/Neonaticide-is-more-common-than-previously-thought.aspx

"An estimated 150 to 300 cases of neonaticide occur in the United States each year."

http://www.nursingcenter.com/library/JournalArticle.asp?Article_ID=425439

Killing another human is never an acceptable solution to any problem. No woman, who lives in a society, where contraception and abortion is available, is forced to give birth, if she does not wish to do so.

According to Wyman, in lecture 23 there is no scientific reason to declare the fertilisation to be the beginning of life, it is a completely arbitrary decision. In fact, there is not one criteria scientifically valid to define any specific moment as the beginning of life.

http://www.cosmolearning.com/video-lectures/biology-and-history-of-abortion-6767/

In my personal opinion, based upon the two premises above, the child has no life of its own until it can be kept alive outside the womb.   From then on, neonaticide is no solution to be tolerated.  Until then there is not justification to deny a woman the right to decide, what to do about parts of her body.

The ubiquitous motherliness of women is a myth. Therefore it cannot be justified to consider childbearing and raising as any woman's obligation nor as the purpose of her existence.

209. Non-Breeders Statistically and Historically - 1

Non-Breeders Statistically and Historically - 1
In entry 205 I was wondering, if being childfree could be a mutation resulting in a recessive gene.    I was simplifying.   
The procreation instinct can be absent or become virulent at three different levels:

• For men and women, before or without ever having been afflicted by an own or the partner's pregnancy
• For women by the hormonal changes at the begin of a pregnancy
• For women by the hormonal effects of giving birth

Childfree means in this entry not to want children and to never have given birth.  Non-breeders include the childfree and people, who get rid of a child after birth, because the do not want to raise children.     

I have just finished watching all 24 lectures of the Yale course: 
Global Problems of Population Growth by Robert Wyman
http://www.cosmolearning.com/courses/global-problems-of-population-growth-287/

Some of the data, that Wyman presents, make me wonder and aware, how much I myself have been brainwashed by the western culture, based upon religion, to believe the myth of a natural urge for maternity in any woman, who would be defined as normal and in the opinion of breeders even as healthy.     

The data from the lecture are clear evidence, that neither the beginning of a pregnancy nor giving birth automatically do trigger a breeding instinct in all women.  

The general attitude of either being childfree or having a strong wish to breed can be attributed to culture and social norms, external circumstances and requirements, that could be stronger then the personal instinctive inclinations or absence thereof, as long as there has not been the own experience of being pregnant.  
 
When I was younger, I considered myself as being very different from all those people around me, who declared breeding as the natural wish and need of every woman.   Maybe this was enhanced by my growing up in the aftermath of the German culture still too much influenced by the glorification of fertility by the Nazis.       

My first readings about evolution and psychobiology reinforced my impression, that everybody would want to breed, and that I alone were some kind of a mutation.  That was years ago, before there was the Internet to find out about like minded people.   When I got in contact on the web with other childfree people I started to wonder, if maybe there were a minority of people with a recessive non-breeding gene as I speculated about in entry 205.   

Since Wyman's lecture I now wonder, how many people in the western society are potentially non-breeders, who would get aware of their inclination in the situation of needing to make a conscious decision.    But the availability of contraception and the many good reasons to postpone procreation without a conscious choice for remaining childfree may just cover the absence of the mythological maternity urge in many women.


According to the myth, having an abortion would cause a woman guilt, remorse, even psychological trauma.   I always thought, that those women, who experience and perceive an abortion as an operation comparable to the removal of a parasite or a cancer, were a minority.    

After watching lecture 21 of Wyman's course on Global Demography of Abortion
http://www.cosmolearning.com/video-lectures/global-demography-of-abortion-6765/
I have to reconsider the myth.    Not only about how many or how few women ever do feel guilty, but also about the reason, why.   
They could feel guilty not because of acting in defiance to their breeding instinct, but because they have been brainwashed by the myth of women's natural urge for maternity.   
The absence of guilt could indicate the absence of the procreation instinct being triggered by hormonal changes at the beginning of pregnancy either in them or in all or most women.  

According to the lecture, abortions are very widespread and very often considered as a normal form of contraception by women having several abortions during their lifetime.    This would not be possible, if the majority of them would have to override an instinct to continue the pregnancy and to overcome guilt.  
The prevalence of abortions is too widespread to be consistent with the myth, that women only have an abortion, if they are forced to do so by external circumstances, their husband or their family.    


Some quotes:

"There's one abortion for every 3.2 live births [.....] Each year about 3% of women in childbearing ages have an abortion, and if you consider a 30 year reproductive lifespan with each woman having a 3% chance each year that's 90% [.....] Basically, for every woman in the world, there's one abortion in her reproductive lifetime."

"when there's an unplanned pregnancy about a quarter of them end in abortion."

"The most interesting case might be Cuba which has one of the highest abortion rates in the world, 78 per 1,000 women per year".
"'so when they get pregnant the go to get an abortion. They talk about it like it's nothing; it's like drinking a glass of water. Some people have problems when they get an abortion but most people don't. Almost always the procedure goes fine.' That's a 17 year old girl after her first abortion."

"Abortion makes a huge difference in the global rate of population growth. As I told you, there's ballpark 75 million increase in the world now. If the abortion rate is about somewhere between 40 and 50 million, that means the rate of world population increase goes up by 75% or something. "

The lecture is worth watching or reading.  

This topic will be continued in another entry.   

28. How To Keep the Prisons Empty

How To Keep the Prisons Empty

Life starts, when it can exist independently outside the womb.   Until then, an embryo is just a bunch of biological matter, and if not wanted, there is no rational difference between an embryo and a tumor as something to be removed.   

Having something unwantedly growing in the womb is not a justification to require, demand or coerce a person to raise it.

Given the availability of contraception, the availability of unlimited abortion during the first three months and the availability of a legal way of depositing unwanted children anonymously for adoption, it is justified to protect children from the moment of their birth on.    But these are the rational requirements to allow a woman to prevent the situation to have the raising of an unwanted child forced upon her.  

The deity delusion includes the fatal claim, that every life is very precious, because it is a gift of the deity.   If the life is unhappy or if it becomes a hazard to others is of no importance to the deity.    Rationally seen, considering a newborn as having the same value as an adult is a depreciation of the sacrifices of the caregivers.   

Statistics have clearly shown, that unwanted children are a high risk to become criminals, the population of jails consists in a high proportion of unwanted children.    They are at risk, if they are raised by unwilling caregivers, but also when they grow up in orphanages.   

Therefore, there should not be unwanted children.   Every unwanted child is one too many. The decision for or against an abortion is unfortunately distorted many times by the delusion of depriving the deity of her gift.   But rationally seen, an abortion does not make a change, it merely reinstates the baseline, which is the empty womb, just as it was before the pregnancy.   To get pregnant again, if a child is wanted later, is usually easier than to even get an abortion.    Without the deity delusion, an abortion could therefore be the standard procedure, not only, when the pregnancy is not wanted, but even, when there is any doubt.   Dealing with an unwanted child is so much more problematic then getting pregnant again.

Since there is the abortion pill, it is a simple way to do it, if the pill would be sold freely.    It is scandalous, that this pill is controlled under the financial and political power of those, whose own judgment is disabled by the deity delusion.

Thus, abortion is the first step in the prevention of crime.   

A newborn baby is only a form of raw material.    What converts it into an healthy, independent, decent citizen is the investment of time and money by the caregivers.   

There is no way to prevent people from producing more raw material than is good.  

But the focus of society should be on the quality of the children and not on the quantity, and that is the second step of prevention.

It is obvious that good education from early on in kindergarten and school is important, but this is not sufficient.   The focus should be on the parents.    There is a training and a licence required for nearly everything, driving is an example.    Driving lessons are to protect others from being injured by an unable driver.  

People, who want to raise children, should get some training too, instead of being allowed to raise children to become a hazard to others. 

The first step could be obligatory courses at high school, not only in how to handle babies, but also in communication and other aspects of education.    During pregnancy, there could be a course offered, which ends with a licence of basic parental training, which could then be accompanied by regular additional courses in accordance with the age of the child.  

Since nobody can stop people from breeding like rabbits, the only way to make them undergo parenting training, are some substantial incentives.    The incentive could be a monthly payments from the government and a reward, when the child reaches a given age, maybe 21, and has not become a criminal and a burden to society.  

That reward could be a sum for the child towards further education, starting a business, buying a house, and an additional sum to the retirement pay of the parents.    

The money saved on institutions for unwanted children, juvenile delinquents, jails and the damage done by the criminals would be sufficient to pay the parental training and incentives.