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A while ago there was a thread about the book in the reading corner, but that was just discussing the book. Dunno if I should have posted on that thread, made a new one in the reading corner, or just posted here. I went with here. 

So, various questions that should lead to interesting and friendly debate. I'd prefer no blatant hating; provide reasonable reasons for your opinion, ask questions about someone else's opinion, that sort of stuff. Just don't go saying that someone's opinion is wrong. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, even if their opinion is not entitled to be believed/followed by others.

This book is basically a possible futuristic world based on the outcome of a pro-life/anti-abortion vs those who support abortion war. That result being a new law as a compromise; there is no more abortion, but instead, at ages of 13-18, kids are eligible to be 'unwound'. 99.44% of the kid is required to be alive...just not in one piece. An arm or a leg may go to an amputee, a section of the brain to replace a part in someone with a tumor, or damaged in an accident. A heart to someone who would have died from a heart-attack otherwise. The .66% not required to be used by someone else are things like the appendix - not in high demand, at all. 
This helps so many people's lives, let them continue to live normally, and/or set aside the grave for a few more years. The kid isn't technically dead, nor can s/he feel a thing, so it isn't like they're being murdered. Better for a kid destined to be troubled and crime-filled to be helpful to people rather then hurting people, right? The legal guardian is the one who has to fill out the form, and it is in no way required - it's purely their choice.
Sometimes parents have kids just for this reason, calling them Tithes and the kid knows all their life what'll happen, and they embrace the chance to be able to help others due to their upbringing. Others are just rebellious teens that supposedly do more harm then good. And some are in State Homes, and budget cuts won't allow for some living requirements to be met.
 

Just setting the scene. Some questions brought up that are thought-provoking aren't exactly as relevant to the scene as others.

Question 1; Would you rather be Unwound or just plain dead? Explain.

Question 2; At what point does a person have a soul? What's your reasoning?

Question 3; Do you support unwinding and saving the lives of several, or do you believe that what is being done is inhumane? Something in between? Why?

Question 3a; If you don't support unwinding, what would you suggest instead as a compromise?

Question 3b; If you do support unwinding, what would be the minimum reasoning for your choice to unwind someone under your legal care? 

Question 4; If it were life-and-death, or you would permanently lose a limb, or be paralyzed from the waist down or something, would you accept a part from someone who'd been unwound? If you were willing to accept a part from an unwound, where would you draw the line? Would you even draw a line at all for your injury replacements? 

After you've answered the questions above, highlight and read the text. Do not erase your answers. Simply write below them with how you would change them with this new piece on info if you even would change them at all. I want to be able to see the difference based off of this little tidbit of info, or even if there is a difference. Contains minor spoilers.

Being unwound takes a little over 3 hours, and it is required that you stay awake throughout the procedure, even if you cannot feel the pain and your brain is a little fuzzed from a certain drug created for this reason. The most you feel is a bit of uncomfortableness, or a bit of tickling, as they start at the feet and make their way up, taking apart the brain last, still conscious until that last moment, completely blind/deaf/mute, and still not quite understanding what is happening. 

1) Curiosity killed the cat and all that. I'd be rather curious about being unwound, and I'd be helping people in the process. Win-win I guess. I'd just prefer it to be willing.

2) I believe one has a soul when they are loved. If it's a fetus in the womb for a mere two months, but the mother knows about it and loves it, then it has a soul. Or if it is born, no one wanting it, no one caring, and always being rejected, it could take years to have a soul. An ability to move, go through the motions, an empty husk of the person they could be, it's not the same as really truly living. Hate comes from rejection. Both love and hate are spread like a disease, one being the cure for the other, but neither ever truly going away.

3) I'm in between; though I do think it's inhumane, I can't see a better compromise. Maybe make it so the parents have 6 months to change their mind before the kid is hauled away to be taken apart piece by piece.

4) I honestly don't know. I can't stand the thought of not being able to draw, to be unable to play on the trumpet or the piano ever again, or to even hold a book properly to read. And that would only be from losing a hand. I can't even imagine being unable to see both the wonders and the horrors of the world, having not the satisfaction of seeing my own hands playing the beautiful music, or the inability to see something and see what I'm drawing, and I could never read a book again. I'd rather be dead then lose just my hands, my eyes, or my ears. But I cannot decide whether I'd rather be dead or accept a piece of someone else. Leaning towards rather being dead though.

I answered first, & read second... but I like your answer for #2, very much. I disagree, of course, but it's well thought & well put.

1: If I was going to be unwound, I would literally commit suicide, or murder the person who requested it if possible. I will not give that rat bastard the satisfaction of having my organs, not even if they're my mom.

2: When we do has no real bearing on the argument, imo. "BUT SOULS!" is never a logical argument for anything. Souls or not, we're all a bunch of chemical reactions, and our brain only has three settings that determine whether we'd say someone has a soul: People we like, people we don't like, and people we don't know. You'll often hear people say, that because an Embryo has no life functions, they have no soul, or because someone is horribly depraved, they have no soul. Whether someone has a soul or not is practically a matter of opinion used sheerly for the purposes of people wanting to make sentimental arguments. Then again, Unwind itself is a biased argument against abortion, so sentimental arguments are the only kind we're going to run into.

3: I believe that, if you really want organs that bad, then you should keep the unwindee in question asleep their whole lives. You can't just take life away from something that's experienced it, that's wrong and unfair.

3 and a half: Minimum reasoning: "I'm old and need organs." "This thing is young and has organs." "Alright, cool, give me its organs."

4: I'd accept it if the requirement in 3 were met. Since it's Unwind and it wouldn't be, I would just live with my disability like a sane person.

1. Dead

2. Doesn’t matter. Don’t care.

3. Whether it’s inhumane or not isn’t the main issue since this whole thing is most likely corrupt as far as the class system goes. If it’s the case that poor folks are also benefiting from harvested organs along with the rich folks, then it’s at least balanced.

3a. Unwanted kids go into a super soldier program instead of being aborted or unwound.

3b. If unwinding exists. Limit it to only juvenile delinquents and obvious criminals in training. In fact why don’t we just extend harvesting organs to all repeat violent criminals/sex offenders instead?

4. Chop up as many unwanted kids as you got, because I need all the spare organs I can get.

...true neutral? Or are you officially on the dark side? ;)

I think being on the side of harvesting children's organs to save your own life is always going to be considered the Darkside under normal circumstances, but I was taking into consideration that I was already living in this dystopian society so I probably came off as more neutral than most might. Such as suggesting harvesting criminals for their organs rather than children and giving the unwanted children a chance to be productive members of this dystopia by turning them into killing machines for the state instead.

Ah, yes. I'll agree that light and dark are always relative... even if grey is no longer my color. ;)

1. Dead. If you can't even preserve organs to the point you have to be alive during the unwinding, then you've got priority problems with researching the right tech.  And of course, no one's been unwound and lived to tell the tale, so malpractice can be a norm.

2. Right at the beginning.  You're making a cradle (aka the brain) for someone else's consciousness as soon as you conceive something.

3.  Not for kids, because you're shipping underdeveloped body parts to people who'll only be compatible for a few years before rejection or disease take over.  It's capital punishment equivalent to the death sentence on an age group notorious for impulsive decisions, though the pretense for unwinding is wrong altogether to be handled without devolving into a corrupt organ-harvesting industry that transforms poorer people more prone to violence into cattle and resources to be farmed.

3.  Unwind insane criminals.  Better than letting them rot for decades, and they don't rehab anyway.

4. I'd rather have stem cell implants than an unwound body part I have to take pills for, so even something like the common cold could kill me.  At least we're closer to curing cancer than fixing the autoimmune spiral some drugs take people down into.

Everything is only stronger with the evidence.  You make promises to a dead man, but in the end, you're going to have workers jaded enough to not care anymore and OD the unwounded person.  You compromise quality control and essentially just do an intensive transplanting procedure instead.  If pushed enough by the wealthy class, the procedure will be too perfect to let go in favor of potentially safer practices like stem-cell transplants or biochips.  Hell, even prosthetics could be more cost-efficient.

3) ...there but for the grace of Humanity go I.

Also, have you SEEN the stuff people are doing with prosthetics? They're five years from cyborg-level awesomeness, max. XD

Question 1; Would you rather be Unwound or just plain dead?

Unwound. I don't see much to explain here. Of course I would prefer that my life not be wasted.

Question 2; At what point does a person have a soul? What's your reasoning?

Everything has a soul. Person-souls are just more complicated than animal-souls. I have a more complicated soul now than I had at my birth, which was also more complicated than at my conception.

Question 3; Do you support unwinding and saving the lives of several, or do you believe that what is being done is inhumane? Something in between? Why?

It's a fictional construct. I find it overly simplistic. In the real world, we have consent forms for organ donation. Hopefully mine is current, since it's been a while. But if someone is afraid of what might happen to them when they're not-quite-dead-yet, or even if they just think it's too weird or otherwise squicky, I respect that. It should never be mandatory... nor do I believe it will ever NEED to be mandatory.

Question 3a; If you don't support unwinding, what would you suggest instead as a compromise?

See above. Also: Pick a book that posits a better future.

Question 3b; If you do support unwinding, what would be the minimum reasoning for your choice to unwind someone under your legal care? 

...okay, apparently I'm stuck in this book. Um. I would unwind someone who personally consented to being unwound. Full stop.

Question 4; If it were life-and-death, or you would permanently lose a limb, or be paralyzed from the waist down or something, would you accept a part from someone who'd been unwound? If you were willing to accept a part from an unwound, where would you draw the line? Would you even draw a line at all for your injury replacements? 

Yes, if the Unwinding was done with consent.

Fun fact: Among my delusions at the hospital, I thought I was consenting to A) top surgery (that's what trans men get to remove their breasts), and/or B) losing one of my limbs. I mean, I didn't think B) was going to happen via surgery, to be clear. Just that if I went down a certain 'path,' in my personal game of life, I might actually lose a limb, Furiosa-style.

And, well... they had my consent. Also, I was insane and arguably incapable of giving consent. But we do our best to work with what we've got, right? They got my signature on various pieces of paperwork, and then they provided the very best care that they could, balancing all the needs of everyone on the ward as best they could, along with dealing with insurance and everything else our cobbled-together health system manages to provide.

Your last paragraph is some excellent body-horror. I'm not susceptible to body-horror myself, but yeah, that's the sort of shit that legitimately freaks people out just to READ about it. This is why some of us like content warnings. ;P

For extra credit: Bujold handled this theme beautifully in the Vorkosigan saga. You can buy anything on Jackson's Hole. But of course, in reality, we're going to grow organs piecemeal. Clones will have all legal rights, Betan-style.

1. Unwind is just another word for killing others for their spare part while they watch their body parts get chopped off pieces by piece until their eyes are taken out...then they get a few more minutes to wonder about their life before that too is gone. So, do I want to be unwound? Uh, shouldn't that be obvious? No.

2. Don't know. Not going to speculate.

3. Haha. You can't say you support something unless you're willing to participate in whatever it is that you're supporting. You support unwinding? Oh, but when you're the one being unwound, suddenly you're not supporting it anymore? Oh, you don't support unwinding? But when you're the one needing a heart, and you have a week left, suddenly you're supporting unwinding? So, the answer is, no response.

4. I'll accept all spare parts. Why not?

question #4 has so many great choices but i'd say to hell with my limbs ALL MY LIMBS MUST GO

1) Are we accepting book-logic that I get to possess the people who take my organs? 

2) I don't think most people have souls. 

3) This whole line of questioning is locking us into the book's logic.  The entire world of the book is constructed so that unwinding is clearly a bad thing. 

Another book I'd suggest reading is "Never Let Me Go."  (thanks IAP for link to pdf)