NationStates

Posted: **Tue Jun 11, 2019 6:13 am**

We've got a lot of issues about abortions in the game, but I thought it might be interesting to present a pair of moral dilemmas that happen as a consequence from picking a pro-abortion or anti-abortion in Issue 136.

This is the second of that pair, looking at nations who have endorsed a pro-life stance, and asking them what happens to the unwanted generation. Other one here: viewtopic.php?f=13&t=466224

For the purposes of declaring bias, I'm someone who believes that women should have the right to choose termination of pregnancy, but who also believes that the current law in most jurisdictions is too lax, and that there should be a more restrictive gestation threshold after which abortion becomes illegal, and more effort to discourage termination / support continued pregnancy. It's a middle ground stance that has the potential to upset both the pro-life and pro-choice camps, but is one that I've carefully reached over time and consideration. I present this information not for the purposes of having a debate here in GI (as said debate doesn't belong in this forum) but in order to make authorial bias clear from the outset, and to state an intent to present this and the other issue in such a way to avoid passing judgement on the dilemma, and instead leave the decision up to the player of the nation.

By necessity, some of the text here is on the dark side, and I've strived to balance sensitivity here with the need to make an issue entertain. As a result, it's a little less joke-heavy than most of my issues, but it still takes satirical swipes at everybody evenly. Comments on that are welcome.

TITLE:
Take Good Care of My Baby

VALIDITY:
as a consequence to 136.2 or 136.3

DESCRIPTION:
The nation has an affirmed strong pro-life stance, with abortions illegal and the sanctity of unborn life held to be inviolable. As a result, many unwanted pregnancies have been carried to term, with a not-insignificant number of new mothers immediately giving up their children for adoption.

OPTION 1
"I'm sorry that I can't be there for the baby, but look, I'm not even an adult myself, and I'm just not ready to be a mum," apologises @@randomfemalename@@, a fourteen-year-old girl who had refused to even hold her son on the day he was born. "I mean, I was thirteen when I got pregnant. You can't say that I made a proper consenting choice to have a baby! This is your law, forcing me to carry him for nine months, now you can carry him on. Just pay for more foster carers, or get more people to adopt, or whatever, I don't care. I don't need that baby in my life, so he's your problem now."

OUTCOME:
an unwanted generation of children is growing up inside government-run Care Villages

OPTION 2
"For sure, we need to look after abandoned babies, but what babies really need is their parents," lectures Welfare Officer @@randomname@@, thrusting a photo of the newborn at the mother in an accusing way. "We need to invest in antenatal and postnatal classes to teach that parenthood is a joy, and perhaps offering tax incentives to nuclear families that stay together, and maybe charge a mandatory upkeep fee to parents who abandon their children to social care. A child needs family structure, and we should be encouraging this as much as possible."

OUTCOME:
teen mums are advised that it would be selfish not to give up on school

OPTION 3
"Right, though I think allowing welfare to prop up failing families is part of the problem," adds childless conservative @@randomname@@. "The state should have no role in what happens to unwanted children. If there's no alternative but to raise a kid themselves, then new parents will step up to the plate and get it done. If they can't manage, their extended families will step in. It's tough love, but at the end of it, you've got kids raised by their families, the way that nature intended."

OUTCOME:
foundling babies often never make it off the doorsteps they are abandoned on

Posted: **Tue Jun 11, 2019 7:34 am**

I see you're designing these two issues as direct chain issues, which has the probably-unintended side effect that, since #136 is only available to nations that haven't already banned abortion, this version would come up a lot less often than the other one. Furthermore, the actual dilemmas seem like things that would continue to be debated so long as abortion remains legal/illegal, rather than only being relevant immediately after it's been banned (and would also logically still be an issue if you legalized/banned abortion with any other issue, like #452 3 and #1142 3). I get that this is probably a workaround #136 2 not being considered by the editors to actually ban abortion, but it seems like there should be a better way of handling it. Like, say, acknowledging that #136 2 bans abortion. Or introducing a new policy for practically-banned-abortion if you want to be stubborn.

Candlewhisper Archive wrote:a not insignificant number of new mothers

I suggest hyphenating "not-insignificant".

Candlewhisper Archive wrote:"A child needs their family"

Grr.

Posted: **Tue Jun 11, 2019 7:46 am**

Good points, amended the first draft as small changes only.

Posted: **Tue Jun 11, 2019 7:50 am**

Candlewhisper Archive wrote:"A child needs their family"

Grr.

"A child needs its family"

Posted: **Tue Jun 11, 2019 7:54 am**

Pacomia wrote:
Candlewhisper Archive wrote:"A child needs their family"
Grr.

"A child needs its family"

It?

No, I've gone for:

A child needs family structure,

Posted: **Tue Jun 11, 2019 8:03 am**

Candlewhisper Archive wrote:
Pacomia wrote:
"A child needs its family"

It?

No, I've gone for:

A child needs family structure,

Definitely much better.
The "it" was sort of a "joke" (not sure if that's the right word but I'll go with it) saying that it's technically the alternative to "they" (singular 3rd person "it" vs plural 3rd person "they"), and since many people consider the term "it" to be dehumanising, "they" is still a better word choice, whether it's accurate or not.

Posted: **Tue Jun 11, 2019 12:10 pm**

If we're looking for dark and biased, then I have to point out the lack of a military option. If abortion does anything, it reduces the long-term recruit/cannon-fodder pool. Besides which, this option could expand on the "family," "structure," and "tough love" themes.

Posted: **Tue Jun 11, 2019 12:57 pm**

Feels like it's been done so many times already though, the send them into the army thing. Didn't want to retread the same ground.

Posted: **Tue Jun 11, 2019 1:00 pm**

Candlewhisper Archive wrote:Feels like it's been done so many times already though, the send them into the army thing. Didn't want to retread the same ground.

I suppose. My other suggestion was the "recycle fetal tissue back into vats" option, but then I realized that vat-growth implies a lack of abortion to begin with.

Posted: **Tue Jun 11, 2019 5:00 pm**

Isn't there an issue about people dumping their babies at military bases? I don't see how this is too different

Posted: **Wed Jun 12, 2019 12:52 am**

Australian rePublic wrote:Isn't there an issue about people dumping their babies at military bases? I don't see how this is too different

638 is about an excess of orphans. Somewhat different circumstance, as none of the children in this issue are orphans.

Posted: **Thu Jun 13, 2019 5:45 am**

Candlewhisper Archive wrote:
Australian rePublic wrote:Isn't there an issue about people dumping their babies at military bases? I don't see how this is too different

638 is about an excess of orphans. Somewhat different circumstance, as none of the children in this issue are orphans.

These kids are essentially orphans in all but definition. The only difference is that it is possible to return them to their parents. Other than that, they are essentially orphans. It then becomes a matter of- do we return them to their parents, vs. Issue 63

Posted: **Fri Jun 14, 2019 3:56 am**

I have to disagree there.

Orphans whose parents are by definition not orphans.

Posted: **Fri Jun 14, 2019 5:11 am**

Yes, technically, but in practice "children without parents who want them" tend to be treated about the same by society regardless of whether that's because their parents are dead or their parents are still alive but rejected them (while children with adoptive parents who do love them tend to stop being treated as orphans, even if their biological parents are still dead).

Though I'm not sure what it matters. The greater the similarity between the situations, the more valid your "didn't want to retread the same ground" objection to the suggestion was.

Posted: **Fri Jun 14, 2019 8:38 am**

Right. That.

Posted: **Mon Jun 17, 2019 12:22 pm**

Would be cool to see an option where some mad scientist wants permission to do experiments on them or the government just decides to dump all the kids in the middle of the woods and make them have to make a kid-society or something. The kid society thing could also lead to a pretty interesting follow up issue...all just random rambling on my part, however.

Posted: **Mon Jun 17, 2019 12:32 pm**

See, I like this issue because it lets me do exactly what I do IC. However, I fee the language used in option 1 does not reflect language that would be used in a pro-life nation.

For example, rather than saying "This is your law, forcing me to carry him for 9 months." say "This is your law, stopping me from killing him until he was born."

The way people who are pro-life, and by extension, the people of pro-life nations see abortion is fundamentally different than the way pro-abortion people see it.

The view would be that is about preventing killing rather than forcing someone to carry. It isn't about force - it is about protection. If this girl was raised in a society, a nation that supports a full ban, I would say it is more than likely she would use phraseology used the same way.

Posted: **Mon Jun 17, 2019 1:20 pm**

Nagatar Karumuttu Chettiar wrote:However, I fee the language used in option 1 does not reflect language that would be used in a pro-life nation.

That's probably because option 1 doesn't (or, at least, doesn't seem to) take an anti-abortion stance. The speaker is describing what the government has done ("forc[ed] me to carry him"), and then insists on a foster program because that would get her closest to her preference (she isn't saddled with an unwanted child) even in the absence of legal abortion. It's very heavily implied (in my reading, anyway) that the speaker would prefer legal abortion, but, barring that option, she proposes what she thinks is the next best thing.

Ergo, having the option 1 speaker adopt anti-abortion language would be pretty strange, given that the policy option she proposes is based on her desire to get as close to a pro-abortion state of things as possible given the current state of @@NATION@@'s law.

(or, to put it another way, proposing foster care in itself is not necessarily an anti-abortion stance. It can also be proposed as a sort of stop-gap, pending movement back to the pro-abortion side which the option 1 speaker pretty clearly seems to prefer.)

Posted: **Mon Jun 17, 2019 1:35 pm**

Nagatar Karumuttu Chettiar wrote:For example, rather than saying "This is your law, forcing me to carry him for 9 months." say "This is your law, stopping me from killing him until he was born."

The way people who are pro-life, and by extension, the people of pro-life nations see abortion is fundamentally different than the way pro-abortion people see it.

The implication is that this particular speaker is pro-abortion and unhappy with the law, even if your nation at large is anti-abortion.

Posted: **Tue Jun 18, 2019 4:26 am**

Krogon wrote:Would be cool to see an option where some mad scientist wants permission to do experiments on them or the government just decides to dump all the kids in the middle of the woods and make them have to make a kid-society or something. The kid society thing could also lead to a pretty interesting follow up issue...all just random rambling on my part, however.

There's actually a policy for children being abandoned in the wild, but it's for all children rather than a segment of the population. It might fit here, but it feels too much of stretch to me.

Posted: **Tue Jun 18, 2019 4:28 am**

Trotterdam wrote:
Nagatar Karumuttu Chettiar wrote:For example, rather than saying "This is your law, forcing me to carry him for 9 months." say "This is your law, stopping me from killing him until he was born."

The way people who are pro-life, and by extension, the people of pro-life nations see abortion is fundamentally different than the way pro-abortion people see it.
The implication is that this particular speaker is pro-abortion and unhappy with the law, even if your nation at large is anti-abortion.

Autonomous Cleaner Bot Cleaners wrote:
Nagatar Karumuttu Chettiar wrote:However, I fee the language used in option 1 does not reflect language that would be used in a pro-life nation.

That's probably because option 1 doesn't (or, at least, doesn't seem to) take an anti-abortion stance. The speaker is describing what the government has done ("forc[ed] me to carry him"), and then insists on a foster program because that would get her closest to her preference (she isn't saddled with an unwanted child) even in the absence of legal abortion. It's very heavily implied (in my reading, anyway) that the speaker would prefer legal abortion, but, barring that option, she proposes what she thinks is the next best thing.

Ergo, having the option 1 speaker adopt anti-abortion language would be pretty strange, given that the policy option she proposes is based on her desire to get as close to a pro-abortion state of things as possible given the current state of @@NATION@@'s law.

(or, to put it another way, proposing foster care in itself is not necessarily an anti-abortion stance. It can also be proposed as a sort of stop-gap, pending movement back to the pro-abortion side which the option 1 speaker pretty clearly seems to prefer.)

Again, I say "Right. That."

What ACBR and Trot say is correct - I was trying to communicate that this is someone who would have had an abortion if it were legal.

IRL, most nations allow abortion, and within those nation pro-life elements tend to phrase things around their own pro-life beliefs rather than those of pro-choice society.
In a pro-life nation, those that a pro-choice would tend to phrase things around their own pro-choice beliefs, rather than those of pro-life society.

NationStates

[DRAFT] Take Good Care of My Baby

[DRAFT] Take Good Care of My Baby