What if human reproduction was always elective? A prominent bioethicist speculates about the possibilities--and the likely consequences. What would the world be like if all pregnancy was intended, not unintended as it is nearly half the time now? Considerably better, Margaret Pabst Battin suggests in
Sex and the Planet, a provocative thought experiment with far-reaching real-world implications. Many of the world's most vexing and seemingly intractable issues begin with sex--when sperm meets egg, as Battin puts it--abortion, adolescent pregnancy, high-risk pregnancy, sexual violence, population growth and decline. Rethinking reproductive rights and exposing our many mistaken assumptions about sex,
Sex and the Planet offers an optimistic picture of how we might solve these problems--by drastically curtailing unintended pregnancies using currently available methods.
How we see this picture--as recommendation, prediction, utopian fantasy, totalitarian plot, hypothetical conjecture, or realistic solution--depends to a great degree on which of thirteen problematic assumptions we maintain, assumptions Battin works to identify and challenge. Taking on sensitive topics like abortion and rape and religious issues around contraception, she shows how a fully informed, nonideological approach could defuse much of the friction such issues tend to generate. Also, in her attention to male contraception and the asymmetry of female and male reproductive control, she pulls in the 50 percent of the human race--those with Y chromosomes--largely left out of discussions of reproductive health.
Sex and the Planet, finally, takes a global view, inviting us to consider a possible--even plausible--reproductive future.
如果人類繁殖始終是選擇性的會怎樣？一位著名的生物倫理學家對可能性及其可能後果進行了推測。
如果所有的懷孕都是有意的，而不是像現在幾乎一半的情況下是無意的，世界會變成什麼樣子？瑪格麗特·帕布斯特·巴廷（Margaret Pabst Battin）在其作品《性與地球》（Sex and the Planet）中提出，這將會好得多，這是一個引人深思的思想實驗，具有深遠的現實意義。世界上許多最棘手且似乎無法解決的問題都始於性——正如巴廷所說，當精子遇到卵子時——包括墮胎、青少年懷孕、高風險懷孕、性暴力、人口增長和衰退。重新思考生育權，揭示我們對性許多錯誤的假設，《性與地球》提供了一幅樂觀的畫面，展示我們如何通過大幅減少無意懷孕來解決這些問題，這些方法目前已經可用。
我們如何看待這幅畫面——作為建議、預測、烏托邦幻想、極權陰謀、假設推測或現實解決方案——在很大程度上取決於我們堅持的十三個問題假設，巴廷努力識別並挑戰這些假設。她探討了墮胎、強姦以及與避孕相關的宗教問題等敏感話題，展示了如何通過全面知情的非意識形態方法來緩解這些問題所產生的摩擦。此外，在她對男性避孕和女性與男性生殖控制不對稱的關注中，她將人類的一半——擁有Y染色體的人——納入了生殖健康討論中，這部分人群在討論中往往被忽視。最後，《性與地球》採取全球視角，邀請我們考慮一個可能的——甚至是合理的——生殖未來。
