Apr 11, 2023·edited Apr 11, 2023Liked by Ives Parr
Progressives will embrace IVG as a technology as it will allow single women and LGBT couples to have children without needing to involve men. IVG will be marketed as a "reproductive technology" that expands "women's rights" (though hopefully, once the cat is out of the bag, the eugenic benefits will follow soon after).
Single women (especially highly-educated, urbanized, professional single women) and LGBT couples are two major constituenties of the Democratic coalition. Coincidentally, both of these groups suffer massive fertility gaps: the discrepency between the number of the children they would have in an "ideal" world and the number of children they actually end up having.
The source of the fertility gaps between the two groups mostly differ. For highly-educated single women, the fertility gap is mostly caused by a combination of lifestyle choices and hypergamy. For LBGT couples, the source of the fertility gap is simply biology.
Currently, if single women or LBGT couples want to have children, they have to go to a sperm bank. However, here is where we throw in an extra wrinkle: there are racial differences in sperm bank donation. Being more specific, there is a shortage of black male sperm donors.
This is extremely problematic for black women as it compounds their already-dire dating market situation. As mentioned before, women are hypergamous and have a strong preference to marry men as educated (or more educated) than themselves. But there are *large* discrepencies in educational attainment between black men and black women.
"Among Black students in higher education, women are more likely than men to earn degrees: Black women get 64.1% of bachelor’s degrees, 71.5% of master’s degrees and 65.9% of doctoral, medical, and dental degrees."
So college-educated black women outnumber college-educated black men almost two-to-one. And it gets worse. Not only are black women competing for a very limited supply of "viable" black men, but black men are seen as more desirable than black women across the racial spectrum (https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/okcupid/raceandattraction20092014.html). So educated black men can (and do) marry out.
Will progressives really have the heart to tell black lesbian couples that they can't have children? I don't think so.
There really is no track record of religious people opposing IVF. Even with Dobbs gone IVF clinics in Texas will tell you it hasn't affected them.
The bigger change would be that if you have artificial wombs and artificial eggs...the inherent value of woman goes way way down. While this would free them from the trials of childbirth, it would also mean they weren't necessary for childbirth.
How does this shift the underlying cost effectiveness of PGP-P embryo selection?
For example, my understanding is that, with current technology, we could significantly reduce the risk of certain multigenomic (?) diseases and/or get 2-3 increased points of IQ using PGP-P embryo selection but the cost would be somewhere between $30k-$50k and it's somewhere between extremely inconvenient and painful for the mother. So, unsurprisingly, most people aren't really interested because that's, well, a lot of money for kinda marginal returns, unless you're at high risk for passing on a nasty genetic disorder
So, not in the theoretical, but for someone interested in the practical implications of this over a 5 year time frame, does this significantly increase the benefits, lower the cost, or make it easier on the mother?
Just spitballing, I think I remember Gwern's article on PGP-P selection indicating moderately declining marginal returns to order of magnitude increases in the number of embryos but I can't recall with clarity, so I'm not sure how much of a qualitative improvement this will be. It does sound a lot easier on the mother but it also sounds a lot more expensive.
Baby mice have been created from two male mice:
https://denovo.substack.com/p/of-mice-and-men-and-eggs
You might be interested in this: https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/in-vitro-derived-human-gametes-as-a-reproductive-technology-scientific-ethical-and-regulatory-implications
Progressives will embrace IVG as a technology as it will allow single women and LGBT couples to have children without needing to involve men. IVG will be marketed as a "reproductive technology" that expands "women's rights" (though hopefully, once the cat is out of the bag, the eugenic benefits will follow soon after).
Single women (especially highly-educated, urbanized, professional single women) and LGBT couples are two major constituenties of the Democratic coalition. Coincidentally, both of these groups suffer massive fertility gaps: the discrepency between the number of the children they would have in an "ideal" world and the number of children they actually end up having.
The source of the fertility gaps between the two groups mostly differ. For highly-educated single women, the fertility gap is mostly caused by a combination of lifestyle choices and hypergamy. For LBGT couples, the source of the fertility gap is simply biology.
Currently, if single women or LBGT couples want to have children, they have to go to a sperm bank. However, here is where we throw in an extra wrinkle: there are racial differences in sperm bank donation. Being more specific, there is a shortage of black male sperm donors.
https://www.phillytrib.com/news/health/america-has-a-black-sperm-donor-shortage-black-women-are-paying-the-price/article_8da455ef-fec8-56e5-be6e-167e8b0bbc6c.html
This is extremely problematic for black women as it compounds their already-dire dating market situation. As mentioned before, women are hypergamous and have a strong preference to marry men as educated (or more educated) than themselves. But there are *large* discrepencies in educational attainment between black men and black women.
https://www.aauw.org/resources/article/fast-facts-woc-higher-ed/
"Among Black students in higher education, women are more likely than men to earn degrees: Black women get 64.1% of bachelor’s degrees, 71.5% of master’s degrees and 65.9% of doctoral, medical, and dental degrees."
So college-educated black women outnumber college-educated black men almost two-to-one. And it gets worse. Not only are black women competing for a very limited supply of "viable" black men, but black men are seen as more desirable than black women across the racial spectrum (https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/okcupid/raceandattraction20092014.html). So educated black men can (and do) marry out.
Will progressives really have the heart to tell black lesbian couples that they can't have children? I don't think so.
There really is no track record of religious people opposing IVF. Even with Dobbs gone IVF clinics in Texas will tell you it hasn't affected them.
The bigger change would be that if you have artificial wombs and artificial eggs...the inherent value of woman goes way way down. While this would free them from the trials of childbirth, it would also mean they weren't necessary for childbirth.
How does this shift the underlying cost effectiveness of PGP-P embryo selection?
For example, my understanding is that, with current technology, we could significantly reduce the risk of certain multigenomic (?) diseases and/or get 2-3 increased points of IQ using PGP-P embryo selection but the cost would be somewhere between $30k-$50k and it's somewhere between extremely inconvenient and painful for the mother. So, unsurprisingly, most people aren't really interested because that's, well, a lot of money for kinda marginal returns, unless you're at high risk for passing on a nasty genetic disorder
So, not in the theoretical, but for someone interested in the practical implications of this over a 5 year time frame, does this significantly increase the benefits, lower the cost, or make it easier on the mother?
Just spitballing, I think I remember Gwern's article on PGP-P selection indicating moderately declining marginal returns to order of magnitude increases in the number of embryos but I can't recall with clarity, so I'm not sure how much of a qualitative improvement this will be. It does sound a lot easier on the mother but it also sounds a lot more expensive.