beautiful monsters

Does the baby look like the courier service driver???

-V.

I think people should be able to do this if they want, but I think I'd want to know they were absolutely about screening for infectious diseases... and the obvious genetic diseases too...

I feel compelled as a Queer grll to be supportive of alternative conception methods. And/But I think the needs of the child should be primary and part of this picture is knowing as much as possible about your genetic makeup.

Given the world's overpopulation problem, I'm personally not keen on anything that makes it easier to have kids...

Can't you just imagine some web developers sitting round saying, 'Well we have a website. Credit card capability. Now... what do we have we can sell?' Low production costs. Hee.

I have to side with the Church of Scotland on this one. Just because something can be done doesn't mean it should.

(And heck, part of me thinks there's too much of a fast-food mentality in the food industry as well! Hmm, "food industry" - gah.)

Hmmmm...

I wonder what some orphan rotting away in an abusive foster home might think of this sort of thing.

Ooops! Well, I'm suuuurrrre that such little brats would be happy to agree with their own "damaged goods" status, and, would agree about what a horrible imposition it would be for some poor, innocent little middle/upper-class couple (or snotty lesbian) to be offered said "damaged goods." Gosh! What an insult! We allllll (including the aforementioned orphans) that nice, middle/upper-class couples and lesbians are obviously ENTITLED to purchase a nice, clean, healthy, new, white, perfect, guaranteed Product, I mean child.

I'm suuuurrrrre that those orphans will understand.

...And, if they don't, well then... they and their views just *don't count* anyway...

The initial outlay for the semen is probably considerably lower than for importing a baby from elsewhere, and I thought there weren't enough kiddies up for adoption in NZ for nice, middle class, social welfare-approved, straight couples...

I know a nice, middle-class couple who were having real trouble finding one.

Sure, the outlay on the semen is lower, but what happens to the baby from elsewhere if it doesn't get "imported"? These are real babies we're talking about, not potential babies who don't exist if they're not adopted - should we really be making new babies when there are so many unwanted ones already? If you can't afford to import a baby, then you can't afford to raise one either.

But is the solution to child poverty elsewhere "importing"? To treat children as commodities and dislocate them from their culture and homeland? Maybe financial and medical/food aid is more appropriate.

Since conceiving a child is really a consumer financial transaction, there should be some quality-assurance and consumer protections, like a money-back guarantee.

What if the child turns out to be sick, disabled, deformed, or just plain ugly? Or what if the sample was accidentally mislabelled, and the child turns out to have the wrong skin colour?

I say that the customer, I mean mother, should be entitled to return the defective merchandise for a refund.

And regarding solutions to foreign poverty, perhaps this service should be made available in countries like Thailand, where the cost of the semen would be an investment, which will pay off in a few years when the mother sells the child to a brothel.

And in nice affluent countries, we could have government-subsidised semen for women who need a few extra kids to qualify for a bigger dole cheque.

And while the nice, middle/upper-class NZ customers are entitled to a healthy child, perhaps poor folks in third-world countries should be able to specifically order a sick/disabled child who looks really pathetic and thus can pull in more money by begging (saves the moral burden of having to inject a healthy kid with battery acid.)

Yes, there *is* a shortage of adoptable kids in this country, since, as we all know, *only* healthy, white babies are acceptable. The other types of kids are just surplus trash.

And the arguments against importing foreign products, I mean children are clear. I mean, some starving Afghani war-orphan, or some Thai child-prostitute, or some African girl getting ready to have her genitals mutilated, or some Sudanese slave, would find it *such* a terrible imposition to be removed from their nice native cultures/homelands.

And, anyway, we certainly don't want any more of those nasty immigrants coming here. (Especially non-white, non-European ones.)

And who cares about the customer's, I mean mother's ability to afford to support the child? Having a child is a *right*, which then obligates the taxpayers to work and pay to support that child. In fact, the taxpayers should be the ones paying for the semen. Because it's alllll about *entitlement* and feeding the egos of the customers, I mean parents.

Yes, aid would be more appropriate, but the amount of aid required to raise a child well is significant, and people are more likely to be willing to pay for it if the child becomes their own. I don't think ancestry should be of any relevance to culture - it's certainly an issue for relocating older children, but not for babies.

I'm having a bit of a reaction to some of the language/analysis in this discussion.

I agree that we're all players in the global system and it is indeed a good idea to examine
our desires/instincts in light of this.

The problem in Thailand and India and other "southern" countries is not too many children or the lack of nice middle class families in the west being willing to adopt them. We have more than enough resources in this world for everyone to be free of poverty. Yet we still support free trade,the IMF, and World Bank initiatives. Knowing that this system guarantees the transfer of wealth to a select few and away from the majority.

Every child has a Right, as agreed to by most nations (though not the US)to be safe,and develop in an environment free of poverty and war.

If we're to be serious about this problem then we should be focussing our energies on changing this system. Personally I don't think connecting it to issues of fertility is constructive.

I'm reminded of the allegory written by the 'unibomber' (a weird reference I know) of a sinking ship's crew fighting over whose responsibilty it was to save the boat all the while neglecting to address the fact that the boat was sinking

I particularly bristle at the image of women in A/NZ having babies to get a bigger dole payment.
I could rant about the history of that image, being based quite solidly in new-right propoganda for quite a while in fact. But I'll spare you that at least.

> Yet we still support free trade, the IMF,
> and World Bank initiatives

I don't!

And this discussion was based on the "problem" of western families wanting kids, not whatever problems may exist elsewhere.

No matter how much I personally don't support IMF etc, 'we' unfortunitely still do, just by paying taxes. Kinda sucks really.

*sigh* Until we can elect a sane government, anyway. Let's hope for a Greens/Alliance coalition in 2005 (yes, I'm aware the chances are... not good, but that's no reason to give up 8)

Everyone coming to the GE march on Sat?

Wish I could.
oh and yes and I did mean the IMF thing as a global/national comment in which we're all somehow implicated *sigh*
sorry if it seemed like I entered the lounge and started ranting.