Just when you think people can be any more stupid....

[Joker]

Mind you, that's a hell of a setting for an SF story... The back street clinics who provide illegal unsteralising operations. The fertility police who monitor unlicensed couples for signs of pregnancy, and who swoop in with compulsory abortions when necessary. The judges who rule on applications for parenting licenses, and the boards who determine what the criteria they should use are (i.e. whether people of a certain religion should be disqualified from child-rearing).

You could do a story that was hugely dark and gritty, but had a soppy romance core at its heart.

Well if I do it, you heard it here first!

Idea stolen.


Huh, what? What was that?

 

[Scotley]

This is clearly a tragedy. My wife is an RN at regional pediatric intensive care unit. The kinds of stories she brings home are truly heartbreaking. If you read the full story you'll see that they gave the child a mixture of water, vodka and sugar. The water is almost as dangerous as the vodka to an infant. Too much water throws off the electrolyte balance and causes the brain to swell leading to damage and death. Many poor parents mix powdered baby formula much weaker than the directions suggest and then feed extra volume because the child is still hungry. Soon the kids end up at the hospital or the morgue. Most people don't know about this danger and it happens with disturbing frequency to good intentioned and even intelligent parents who simply don't have enough money. The parents that really upset me are the ones whose children come in with 'non-accidental trauma'. Crystal Methamphetamine is a big problem in this part of the country and the number of kids coming in from houses with meth labs inside is really frightening. The level of neglect and abuse by parents using meth is horrible.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Meth is bad here, too. I used to manage a video store in a small town here in central Arkansas, and parents would come in all tweaked out, dragging their dirty, crying, and hungry kids along behind them.

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

Personally?

If it was done out of ignorance...

Smack thier parents, both sets, and then use them as poster-boys for bringing back Home Economics.

Of course, since ignorance is seen as edgy and cool, maybe that needs to be turned around too.

If it was done out of malice or just plain laziness...

Hey, look, eight feet of rope and a tree branch! What a co-inky-dink!