Precis deux, or how I stopped worrying and learned to love babies

Chris, leapfrogging back to the original post, a conversation I had today about Utopianism, cloning, and population decline made a reread of your comment interesting:

And once again I had to ask the question, Why do Liberals care so much about the rights of criminals who are going to be killed, but they do not seem to care about the rights of unborn children? That is a question that baffles me. Murder 5 children in their sleep and most Liberals will protest to make sure the State does not kill you for that crime. But kill a unborn child as a method of birth control and the left will protest to make sure the State does not take away that "right". No I will never understand that paradox.

Speaking of Rights, I find it funny but not ha ha funny that the left refuses to acknowledge rights like our Second Amendment rights which happen to be actually stated word for word in the Bill of Rights. But they cling to a right that the Supreme Court had to create when they invented the whole idea of a "Right to Privacy" and then made the leap that Privacy included killing/murdering unborn children. Once again the views of the left on these two issues baffle me.

How does that relate to my conversation about Utopianism, etc. and interest in the above highlighted remarks?

I'm not against cloning. It has many uses, but I don't find reproduction an acceptable one until the last sperm fails to show interest in the last ovum. So why does Utopianism in sci fi - even in our own social, academic and political discourse - continue to reprise these topics, along with the usual liberal wet dream of a beneficent nanny state? (Current target is one of Jack McDevitt's novels.) So I wondered aloud a link between support or protest of abortion, the death penalty and Second Amendment rights that go hand-in-hand with the myth-cum-ideal.


My fellow conversant mused that it all had to do with control - in McDevitt's world(s), people who want to work do, and those who don't can head to the beach (think of it as deselecting those jackasses that tend to get kicked upstairs, only to wreak more havoc as mid-level management). But you have to be able to afford it.


Likewise, having babies is messy, inconvenient, costly and pain-inducing. Governments have to account for lots more people, spend money to care for and educate them, and since the Plebes always mess it up anyway, creating lots more potential red-state planet-wreckers should be discouraged. Likewise gun-toting, which allows citizens to decide whether to defend themselves (or maybe off someone without Big Brother's okay). Very messy and time-consuming, what with investigations, trials, jail, etc.


Why not execute criminals, you ask? Because these people are already raised (no getting that money back), and we can reeducate rehabilitate them! Because we're compassionate! And if nothing else, we can keep 'em locked away from others, thus saving on contamination of the populace and the earth, our sovereign rulers tell themselves. And, you know, let 'em out to vote every now and then.


Precis:
First order of thought making this "logical" is the "don't do like they do" credo. It goes like this: We don't kill killers because that makes us killers. This ushers in a second order based on the first one: Such Utopians want to allow people to control their body in certain ways (abort other humans) and eliminate reproduction - politicals expect to exert "acceptable" control over constituencies, and a "fewer breeders" policy jibes with everything else Utopian many liberals want to accomplish - therefore, have at it, Planned Parenthood! And lie if any stupid laws manage to get in your way!
/precis


Okay, so I haven't hit the "learning to love babies" part. For one, I have some faith that women will learn what a sick bill they've been sold all these years - abortion is a real and lasting devastation to a woman that nothing else in life can undo. Put the "control" back in birth control, and we reduce most untimely pregnancies, not to mention STDs.


Also, people love babies. Even poor, oppressed Bristol Palin and 70s-style old-school feminist me - part maverick, part practiced folksy and a dash of high school bitchy; many of my dearest friends and family were once babies. Except maybe Steve. Even Jay was a baby once.

So stop the irresponsible hatin' and start the responsible lovin'. It's Friday!