The Sci-Fi Coolness Test

Dear Gene,

Don't correct me if I'm wrong, because you know I'm not... Does anyone --- can anyone possibly --- believe that, in a Star Trek future, anyone in The Federation would practise/use abortion?

I can hear McCoy --- or Dr. Hologram --- objecting "I'm a doctor, not a butcher."

Of course they wouldn't. There isn't an economy anymore (OK, there's a black market that hangs out at Quark's on DS9...) because it isn't necessary for universal prosperity; so there's no poverty, either. There's a marvelous array of non-addictive drugs that dull pain but won't interfere with motor-control or kinesthetic sense, so no-one's afraid of delivery. And the same super-fancified medical care available also means no-one worries about whether their kid is born missing an arm, or with trisomy-21, or... because they'll have what they need to care for and mittigate those difficulties. And let's not forget that babies are cool!. Not least cool are those klingon-romulan-human-bajoran-descended babies who give clear witness to the oft-ignored fact that all sapient life is made in the image and likeness of God, and that the salvation of all of them was purchased by God-made-flesh one Friday Afternoon some two thousand orbits since on a molten-rocky planet about a main-sequence star of 1/20 the mass of those stars bound for black-hole status.

OK, so perhaps ST hasn't always imagined a perfect universe of perfect people. That's OK, because people aren't perfect: they are fallen. Thoroughly Utopian visions are not science fiction, but userpers of Heaven. And, for sure, we don't see nearly enough of Riker's ill-gotten brood anywhere --- but, again, think of all the young'uns we do see!

You just know it's true.

With fond memories