there's a world outside

[the_siobhan]

Apparently Shoppers Drug Mart is now selling homeopathic remedies. I picked something new off the shelf and it wasn't until after the receipt was long gone that Axel read the fine print on the packaging. This is fucking annoying. I tend to assume that something I buy at a drug store has an actual active ingredient of some kind. Apparently not.

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I read this article yesterday about scientist who been successfully inclubating lambs in an artifical womb. It's being researched as a therapy for severely premature babies who usually have serious health defects as a result of not cooking long enough.

So that's pretty cool on it's own, but the comments were full of people talking about what will happen once the technology progresses to the point that an artifical womb can be used for the entire process. Some people had some interesting things to say. But the one thing that I totally disagreed with was the number of people who said this would embraced by the pro-life camp as an alternative to abortion. I'm convinced the exact opposite will happen. Because if a woman can put the unwanted pregnancy into an artifical womb and hand it off to somebody else then she's not being punished nearly enough for having had sex, and that's really what the organized pro-life movement is all about.

On the plus side it will probably get rid of the "she shouldn't be allowed it's my baby too" MRA types, because in the vast majority of those cases they don't actually want the kid either.

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I'm on my second week of working overtime and I'm logging into the systems right now and don't waaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

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Comments

[jeliza]

We got caught on the homeopathy fine print thing too, and then I had to attempt to dance around what that meant with O, because the placebo effect on the sleep aid in question had been working really well. *sigh*

[greylock]

Apparently Shoppers Drug Mart is now selling homeopathic remedies.
Wow.
That's kinda sucky.
I mean, at least with vitamins and supplements you know to look for them.

On the plus side it will probably get rid of the "she shouldn't be allowed it's my baby too" MRA types, because in the vast majority of those cases they don't actually want the kid either.

The implication for child support payments is... going to be interesting.
I'll guess as soon as the first father wants a kid and the mother doesn't, and it is wombed, there's going to be all sorts of salary demands on the other which, I guess, having thought about it for five minutes, will mean the mother will be required to pay a not inconsiderable share of the expenses for the baby she doesn't want (assuming laws in Canada are similar to here and would be upheld), or a lot of fathers are going to get off the hook for support payments for the kids they don't want that the mothers chose to bring to term.

Assuming non-custodial parents pay child support at all, which I gather many try to get out of it now.

So, it's kinda win-win for those people.

[ironed_orchid]

Have you read Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan saga? Because as well as a fun space opera, the series is also very much about how different societies react to the introduction of reproductive technology that allows babies to develop independently of a woman's body. And also fun stuff like the social implications of intentional mutations that were useful at one point in the history of space travel/colonization and are no longer needed as other technology renders environments more Earth-like.