re: #457 Naso Tang

there’s no education in abstinence sex ed beyond saying sex=pregnancy.

The education part is how to avoid pregnancy when and if you have sex.

The education part should include both “how to avoid pregnancy if/when you have sex” and “you really can’t 100% avoid it if/when you have sex”.

In an ideal world, sex ed would also include elements of human psychology — understanding what it means to different people, the sort of emotional traumas you might subject yourself to and how to avoid them, etc.

Kids shouldn’t come out of sex ed thinking “as long as I use a condom I’m 100% safe”. They should be given a reasonable understanding of the risks (pregnancy, disease, emotional distress, etc.) and ways to minimize those risks or mitigate their effects. Abstinence, of course, minimizes those risks quite nicely.

re: #460 SanFranciscoZionist

A bit, but as has been pointed out, there are real limits on this kind of thing. Can you be made to donate bone marrow, say, to your children, against your will?

I don’t know.

I do know that if I quit taking care of the 7-week-old firmly attached to my lap, I can be charged with some pretty severe crimes. Even if I decided “caring for him” was against my will. (The big difference being, he could be firmly attached to someone else’s lap without much difficulty.)

re: #471 jamesfirecat

What gives them the right to make use of your organs if you don’t want them to?

What if you gave them permission to attach to your body in the first place, and only once they were dependent on you for life did you decide you wanted your kidney back? What if you performed the attachment yourself? Would it matter if you were drunk at the time and could claim you hadn’t really consented?

There are no easy answers here. There is no “checkmate” solution that forces the other side to admit defeat. There’s just a complicated and bizarre scenario that shares just enough attributes with abortion to be interesting without sharing enough attributes to be prescriptive.