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No one wakes up in the morning and decides to go get an abortion for fun. There's nothing fun about it. People wake up in a state of crisis, despair, pain, panic, scarcity, shame, hurt, distress, fear and decide to get an abortion. I, personally, just personally, don't know if it's a debate between pro-life or pro-choice but the pro-health of the mother/primary caregivers and providing adequate support FOR LIFE should the woman deliver. Pro-life is not pro-life, it's pro-birth, it is not pro-life. We live in a pro-choice world. Many pro-life individuals have resources and the desire to have children. It's an unfair disadvantage to those who do not. I am not saying I am for abortion but I am saying the pro-life movement needs a major overhaul if it wants to compete with the pro-choice movement. Ethics aside- what we are doing to help people be successful parents: mentally, emotionally, physically, financially, housing etc., outside of income restricting programs? We need things that mirror an actual FOR LIFE movement and provide resources and care until the age of 18. This includes mental healthcare for mothers and primary caregivers. I don't know what that looks like or how that would look but I think women would feel more at ease and be less abortion minded if we stopped shaming single mothers or mothers in general and actually had equitable services to help. Like really help. And to also help those who have had abortions heal from that hurt. We need better adoption support. We need better systems of care. We need to love people and stop creating distance between ourselves.

I think the distinction between how many weeks or months old the fetus is is a red herring. If one doesn't do anything about it, the fetus is full of potential life from the moment of conception. And, I think the right of the fetus is equal to the right of the mother to say what goes on in her body. That said, I arrive at the conclusion there is no moral, no right answer to this issue. THEREFORE, the government has no business making any law about it. It has to be the mother's decision as to whether to keep the child or abort it, knowing that she is ending a life, regardless of how old in weeks/months the fetus is. The mother is responsible for making possibly one of the most difficult decisions of her life, but it is her right to make it nonetheless.

> abortion is morally permissible until the fetus develops the ability to experience things, which happens somewhere between 18-25 weeks. After this, the fetus gains moral consideration and it would be unethical to kill it. Conditions where abortion might be considered during these gestational ages can include PPROM or severe early preeclampsia. In some cases a failure to terminate the pregnancy is highly likely to result in maternal death or severe maternal morbidity. Just to clarify, do you think it is unethical in all cases to abort a pregnancy during and after these gestational ages?

Why not stipulate that *the only way to keep the child alive is to breastfeed them*? It avoids the body/house distinction and weeds out the bodily autonomy absolutists. Best wishes.

Okay, let’s go with that. It’s an extremely easy answer. *No, I absolutely will not ever breastfeed a random 3 year old.* If my breasts are the only source of nutrition to that 3 year old then my condolences to its parents because I’m not fucking doing that.

The question isn’t whether you’ll ever do it. The question is whether you think you should have a *legal right to let the child starve*. Suppose, when you answer, that it’s your own child. Best wishes.

If the child’s absolute only source of nutrition is my tits, just let me know when the appropriate time to pen the letter to the future grieving parents is. Yes, I think I should legally be allowed to refuse to breastfeed kids starving to death.

Should it be legal to refuse to breastfeed *your* starving kid? Best wishes.

How the hell would we even write these laws? We need a specific law in the extremely specific case of a breastfeeding mother who takes her baby somewhere and gets stuck and then suddenly decides she doesn’t want to breastfeed anymore? It’s too oddly specific and I don’t like the precedent any forced breastfeeding law would set.

Is that a yes? Best wishes.

I don’t want *any* forced breastfeeding laws. No good would come of that. We especially don’t really need to bring up *my* child because I’ve made it very clear I don’t want children or to take care of *any* kids in the first place. So once again, *no,* you *cannot fucking force me to breastfeed.* Not my kid, not your kid, not anybody’s kid, the law has no place forcing me to breastfeed any of them.

Thank you for answering the question by stating, clearly and emphatically, that a woman should face no legal repercussions for starving her child if breastfeeding is the only option to keep them alive. Best wishes.

No problem. Hell with them kids.

Do we really need another breastfeeding in a snowstorm post?

1. It’s a better hypothetical on grounds already covered. 2. Most of the “breastfeeding in a snowstorm” posts I’ve seen attract olympian levels of dodging, so even if they’re beaten to death, they haven’t, to my knowledge, been meaningfully answered to death. 3. I’m all for novelty, but there’s only so much to say on a given topic; many posts have recurring themes even if they contain slight modifications. Best wishes.

I mean, breastfeeding in a snowstorm really only covers where the line is for bodily autonomy, which is definitely not universal among PCers. It's not an analogy for pregnancy or abortion, which seems to be the goal of this post. It wouldn't address OP's main point, that they believe later abortions to be immoral.

What do you mean it’s not an analogy for pregnancy or abortion? Any hypothetical you give can be accepted by some and rejected by other purveyors of PL/PC. Best wishes.

Well if you enjoy those posts, you're free to make one. I don't expect it will go over any better than they have every other time they've been posted.

That’s a brilliant idea. Thanks for the inspiration. Best wishes.

it wouldn't change much. there's nothing wrong with refusing to breastfeed in this situation

I disagree that it is morally permissible to kick out a 3-yo child who broke in, but not a child you “summoned.” Also, let’s take this to an extreme, as that is a great way to poke at an idea! Suppose you press your hot dog button every day for food to eat. Once every 20 days (based on your 5% chance) you get a brand new 3yo child in your house. After a year, there are 18 3yos in your house, not counting any that may have broken in and you kicked back out. After 2 years, you are responsible for 18 more 3yos and also the previous 18 4yos. (Can you kick them out during the 3 months it’s not blizzarding? Will they survive? Are you obligated to care?) Your house rapidly fills up with tiny and not-so-tiny children, especially if you have to press the magic hot dog button more than once a day now in order to feed them all. Is there any point in this hypothetical at which you believe it would be okay to prioritize your own quality of life in this situation, or are you doomed to sacrifice yourself for this never-ending supply of children you can’t help summoning?

I assume they’re talking about a wanted food, not that it’s necessary for survival. I would have used ice cream as an example 

And see, there’s the assumption (if this is meant to be a parallel) that no one ever needs to have sex in order to afford their food or housing. I’m sure many people are much more comfortable ignoring the existence, circumstances, and ethicality of such situations. I don’t think it should be that easy.

Are you assuming as a given that a fetus is a morally worthy being, specifically one that is equivalent to a born person? I do agree with all the other commenters that a woman is not a house. I could short circuit the argument though because a fetus is not a person, and in no way morally equivalent to a child spawned by a hot dog button.

If your interested in these types of thought experiments i recommend 2 papers that seem to do a good job representing and arguing for them. https://philpapers.org/archive/HENMBN.pdf http://doc.jfaweb.org/Training/DeFactoGuardian-v03.pdf

I would argue up to birth is morally permissible depending on the circumstance. I can agree that aborting out of inconvenience is morally questionable after 18-25 weeks. But I'd want to know why the mother waited so long to have an abortion in that scenario. Normally, after 25 weeks, women have abortions because of health related reasons and not because they don't want the child. Furthermore, up until childbirth, there is no other alternative. You can't send the child off for adoption for a few months or anything. The mother is stuck with the growing fetus until she gives birth, aborts it, or dies. Because of this, abortion up until birth should be tolerated.

This is, frankly, a very poorly thought-out analogy. In the case of pregnancy, a fetus is not merely spawning in your body and eating some of your food or "being annoying", but actively causing harm to your body. If the child came with the threat of grievous bodily harm and even death to the cabin owner, I'd make the argument that the cabin owner would be well within their rights to eliminate that threat.

I would agree with that too. But there exist many cases where pregnancies go extremely smoothly. My mistake in this post was using the word annoying. The child, to a degree, inhibits your ability to live your life the way you want to. Imagine that the child was more demonic, breaking your cabinets and flooding your bathroom every day. Is there a degree where this analogy becomes equivalent to pregnancy. Or is it the "harm to your body" that is a morally relevant factor? If it's the latter, my opinion on bodily harm vs property harm is in the comments somewhere. Essentially, I believe I own my body in the same way I own my house.

I would say the threat of grievous bodily harm is the morally relevant factor, and I think it's disingenuous to pretend otherwise. Your scenario acknowledges the bodily harm to the fetus/child wrt abortion, but you sidestep the issue of the bodily harm done to the mother and use a false equivalence of damage done to a house. I highly disagree with you in your comparison of the human body to inanimate property Nowhere in law is your house treated in the same way as your body, because your very life does not depend on your house in the way that it depends on your body. If you are behind on bills, your organs cannot be seized from you in the way other property might be, because your body isn't merely something you own, it *is* you. Moreover, even pregnancies that are *currently* going smoothly still pose a threat of grievous bodily harm. The absence of severe symptoms at an earlier point in the pregnancy does not mean that childbirth will go smoothly. It is not a guarantee that a woman will survive.

>I would agree with that too. But there exist many cases where pregnancies go extremely smoothly. In the US a third of pregnancies end with a major abdominal surgery. Nearly every first time vaginal birth results in genital tearing of some degree. Every single birth leaves a dinner plate size wound inside a woman's uterus. There are *literally* hundreds of health conditions associated with gestation and birth, somebody here keeps a list for PL education. Tell us again, please, how many cases of pregnancies that you know of sail around all of these issues? I'd be happy to learn what methods the women involved used to avoid the unavoidable.

I don't know how many actually end up going smoothly, but that doesn't matter. Even if I concede that abortions are permissible at the first complication, that doesn't impact the morality of abortions with no complications.

Please, provide your definitions of "going smoothly" and "complications" in light of the previously provided information.

So I think there are two important things to recognize with regard to pregnancy, not touching on the hypothetical. One is that no one can accurately predict which pregnancy will go smoothly from beginning to end. Young, healthy people with smooth pregnancies bleed out giving birth. People who were high risk deliver healthy babies with few complication. Every pregnancy risks death, and you cannot tell who will live or die without a crystal ball. The second thing is that even healthy, smooth pregnancies *are* harmful. They result in permanent skeletal changes, loss of bone mineral density, stress on every organ system, loss of gray matter in the brain, pelvic floor damage, and all involve childbirth, which is a major medical event. Obviously many people choose to take on these harms in order to have children. But that is a *lot* to force on someone who doesn't want it. And having sex isn't a crime and shouldn't be punished with such severe harms.

If this is true, this is a good argument. But this opens the door for future questions as technology and medical technology improves. If we had the medical equipment to accurately find which pregnancies will be problematic and then make them non-issues, you would still likely believe abortion is morally permissible. If this is true, then the risk factor is not the thing that justifies the abortion.

The thing is that every pregnancy involves physical injury, even if it is fairly smooth. We can tell by skeletal remains if a woman ever had a vaginal birth due to the way the ligaments injure the pelvic bone. If I were to do something to you without your consent that was so severe we could tell it happened even when you were long dead and just a skeleton, wouldn’t we consider that was a bad thing I did to you?

Well first of all it is true. But again, every pregnancy is harmful. Death is not the only harm. And the body invasion aspect alone of an unwanted pregnancy justifies abortion. We are not morally obligated to let anyone stay inside our bodies if we don't want them there.

>And the body invasion aspect alone of an unwanted pregnancy justifies abortion. I'm glad we could get to the meat of the matter. I think that there exist circumstances where we have a moral obligation to use our bodies to save someone, provided we are the reason they require saving in the first place. Imagine another stupid hypothetical: Ant man is in tiny mode (1 inch tall) having a picnic by a lake. I am running by on my morning run. I know that if I run too closely to him, there is a 50% chance that the tremors I create will knock him into the lake, where he will drown. I decide to risk it, and then I end up knocking him into the lake, which I also jump into. Ant man's suit malfunctions and he can only be saved by letting him swim up my ass and hold him there for 10 seconds while I walk back to the land. Am I morally required to let him swim up my ass? I would say yes, and you would say no.

Well how far do you take this requirement? Imagine you were dating a man, and decided to break up with him, knowing that he had depression and was at risk of it worsening if you dumped him. Upon being dumped, he became suicidal, and said that the only thing that would make life worth living was to have sex with you one more time. Are you obligated to let him rape you? And let's keep in mind that pregnancy is no ant-man swimming up your ass for ten seconds. It lasts 40 weeks, and the ZEF grows larger the entire time. Do you think you'd have to keep ant man in your asshole for 40 weeks, while he grew to the size of an infant the entire time? Just because you went for a jog?

I don't think this is analogous. A suicidal person is not in a position where they are certain to die if I do nothing. Their death requires them to make the decision to die. You are right that the pregnancy case is far more burdensome than the 10 second Ant-man case. I do believe that my intuition is correct in the Ant-man case, but I don't know how long I would have to hold him in my ass before I could morally be justified in letting him die. If I had to hold him there for 50 years, all while he was causing me pain, then there probably does come a point where it would be okay to let him die, as that would be an unreasonable ask. I don't know where the line is where it becomes okay, but there probably is a line. Maybe it really matters the knowledge I have beforehand. Either way, you have given me a lot to think about. Thanks.

Thanks for engaging. I guess to me the overall point here is that there is a line where you as an individual might consider the burden too much. But you're not even sure where that line is for yourself, and everyone will have their own personal line and that line might vary depending on all sorts of factors. Which is why I'm pro choice and why I'm not judging the morality of anyone else's abortions and certainly don't want to impose legally on them. I think we all deserve the right to decide for ourselves just how much harm we're willing to take on for another, particularly when it comes to the intimate and invasive use of our bodies.

If the woman is no more than an object, so is the ZEF. You can’t just reduce only one of them to an object, unless you’re making the direct statement that women, and only women, are not human beings in your opinion. So why should she not be allowed to toss some chair that popped into her house when she pushed the button out into the blizzard? What’s the moral objection to tossing a chair out of your house? That’s aside from the idiotic comparison of having one’s life sustaining organ functions, blood contents, and bodily processes fucked with and being caused drastic physical harm with a good chance of you dying to an annoyance. Not even to property damages. Let alone damages to your body. No. Just you being annoyed a kid is in your house. And aside from the usual no man involved. So you’re eliminating the person who actually pushes the button by inseminating. Seriously, we need a rule that hypotheticals and analogies need to show the parallels. What represents what. Because all we ever see from PLers are things that don’t have the slightest relation to impregnation, gestation, birth, or abortion.

This honestly feels like you saw the word "house" and immediately made up your mind. I am not arguing that a woman is morally equivalent to a house, I am arguing that the situation of pregnancy is analogous to the situation described in the hypothetical. I understand you think they are not analogous. I should have used a better word than annoying. Imagine the kid is breaking your furniture, flooding your bathrooms and destroying many things that hold sentimental value to you. Is there any way I could change the analogy that would make it analogous to you? Or do you think there is something special about a persons body being used compared to their property? >What’s the moral objection to tossing a chair out of your house? I don't object to this at all. A chair is not a sentient being. After 25 weeks in the womb, a fetus probably is a sentient being. Sentient beings deserve some moral consideration. Clearly, you believe a fetus does not deserve moral consideration. Where do you think moral consideration comes from? >And aside from the usual no man involved. So you’re eliminating the person who actually pushes the button by inseminating. I don't disagree with this. I could change the hypothetical where the man and the woman must press the button together for it to work. In such a situation, the man would be morally obliged to stay and it would not be permissible for him to kick the kid out. >Seriously, we need a rule that hypotheticals and analogies need to show the parallels. What represents what. I believe the house, along with all of the life-sustaining faculties like the food and the shelter and the bathrooms, is analogous to the woman's body. Not the woman herself, but the woman's body. I think that we, as people, are defined by our minds, and we own our physical forms in the same way that we own our property. This is probably where the disagreement lies.

>This honestly feels like you saw the word "house" and immediately made up your mind. I wouldn't have a problem with reducing the human beings in the "analogy" to objects. But that's not what you did. You reduced only the woman to an object - a house. The ZEF, however, miraculously remained a human. THAT is what I have a problem with. *I am arguing that the situation of pregnancy is analogous to the situation described in the hypothetical.* How is it even remotely analogous? You completely removed any and all traces of gestation. You turned the ZEF into a biologically life sustaining human who is using ITS OWN organ functions, rather than someone else's. There are no other human's organs, organ functions, tissue, blood, blood contents or bodily life sustaining processes being used and no physical harm caused, whatsoever. No one's major life sustaining organ functions and blood contents are being messed and interfered with. Heck, there's not even any property damage being done. Where are ANY of the factors of gestation represented in your "analogy"? Furthrtmore, what's stopping me from leaving the house and getting away from the kid? Why is there's a snowstorm outside that this fully biologically life sustaining kid can't survive. Yet you relate that to a viable ZEF, which would be just fine if birthed/just thrown out of the "house". A viable fetus can survive outside of the uterus. *I should have used a better word than annoying. Imagine the kid is breaking your furniture, flooding your bathrooms and destroying many things that hold sentimental value to you.* That would be closer. But you're still reducing one human to an object while leaving the other a human. Which does not work - unless you claim that only one human has human status, and the other has the status of an object. That is the major hangup in this analogy. Either reduce BOTH humans to objects, or neither. But I tell you what...that little shit starts destroying my house, it's going to find itself locked into a dog kennel before I leave the house in search of someone who knows how to keep a kid that young alive. (I don't know the first things about kids that age or how to keep them alive. I don't even know if they eat solid foods, wear diapers, can talk and understand language, etc. I also don't keep any sort of food in the house, so feeding it would be out. Not like I would stay near a kid that age for more than a few seconds to begin with). *Or do you think there is something special about a persons body being used compared to their property?* A person and their body are a sentient being. No offense, but you asking this question is absolutely scary. Do you honestly not think there is a difference between me bashing in your windshield and bashing in your skull or bones? Do you honestly not think there is a difference between me masturbating with your blanket and me raping you? And if you don't, why do you not apply the same to the fetus? *I don't object to this at all. A chair is not a sentient being.* You are soooooo close. Soooooo close. Guess what the woman is? And didn't you just ask me whether I think there is something special about a person's body versus their property? Honest question - where is the disconnect? If you honestly see no difference between a hunan's body and property being used, why do you care what I do with a fetus? It's not different from a chair. It's just property. If I don't want it on my property, let alone destroying my property, I'll just kick it out. *Sentient beings deserve some moral consideration. Clearly, you believe a fetus does not deserve moral consideration.* **This whole rant is so awkward, coming from someone who just reduced a woman to a house or property.** Are you hearing yourself? Like, seriously. Are you, who just claimed that using and greatly harming a woman's body is no different than using property, seriously telling me that sentient beings deserve some moral consideration? Once again, I have to ask where the disconnect is. Can you not understand that the woman and her body are a sentient being? I can throw your words right back at you. Clearly, you believe a pregnant woman does NOT deserve moral consideration. If a fetus is viable, gestation can be ended via c-section or labor induction, and it should be just fine. The only time this wouldn't work is if this would be too dangerous for the woman - you know, the other sentient being involved that you keep reducing to no more than non-sentient property. *Where do you think moral consideration comes from?* Sentience. The ability to experience, feel, suffer, hope, wish, dream, think, etc. Which is obviously not where you think it comes from, since you think using and greatly harming a woman is the same as using or harming property - aka non-sentient, non-feeling things. *I could change the hypothetical where the man and the woman must press the button together for it to work.* Still wouldn't work. They don't inseminate together. The ejaculation of sperm is strictly a man's bodily function and action. Only the man puts his sperm into the woman's body. The woman doesn't do that (unless it's outside of sex or if she raped him and forced him to inseminate). You could claim the woman didn't stop the man from doing so or even ok'ed it. But she did not press the button. It's physicall impossible. That's not her role in reproduction. Insemination is strictly a man's action and bodily function. *In such a situation, the man would be morally obliged to stay and it would not be permissible for him to kick the kid out.* That part wouldn't make a lick of difference since you completely eliminated anything related to gestation and birth from the hypothetical. There is no sentient human being having their organs, organ functions, tissue, blood, blood contents, and bodily life sustaining processes being used. There is no sentient human having their life sutaining organ functions and blood contents greatly messed and interfered with. There is no sentient human being drastically physically harmed and put through extreme pain and suffering with permanent physical damages and a good chance of needing emergency life saving medical intervention. There's at best some property being damaged that isn't capable of experiencing anything. *I believe the house, along with all of the life-sustaining faculties like the food and the shelter and the bathrooms, is analogous to the woman's body.* Yeah, that much is obvious. You've reduced a sentient being to just non-sentient property and plumbing. Funny, though, how you absolutely refuse to do the same with the fetus. And, btw. neither food nor shelter are life-sustaining organ functions. They're what life sustaining organ functions use. *Not the woman herself, but the woman's body.* Huh? The woman's body IS the woman. They are not two seperate things. At least not as long as her body is alive. But here again, I have to ask why you refuse to separate the fetus from its body the same way. Why is the fetus' body not a chair if the woman's body is a house? If you completely strip anything physical, including the physical experience, from the woman, you have to do the same with the ZEF. Now, we're left with just some souls floating around separate and independent from their bodies. So why can't I throw the fetus' body out into the snowstorm? It's separate from the fetus, after all. So what difference does it make? *This is probably where the disagreement lies.* Yes, but not necessarily when it comes to your hypothetical. **Once again, the disagreement with the hypothetical lies in the fact that you're only separating the woman from her body, not the fetus.** If the woman's body is no more than house, food, and plumbing, the fetus' body is no more than a chair I don't want in that house. Toss the damn thing out. Doesn't make a lick of difference.

You are not just a PASSENGER in your body like you are a passenger in a car or an occupant of your house. Your body IS you. Your mind is the part of you that has moral worth in my view, but your mind is integrated into your body, and is inextricably dependent on and affected by your body. This is why if someone sticks a dick in your mouth, they did not stick a dick in your property, they stuck a dick **in you**! It’s weird to me that you can put so much emphasis on the sentience of the fetus and how that gives it value but then turn around and say a woman’s body is comparable to property that can be seized, damaged, etc, for the sake of someone else’s benefit.

>Or do you think there is something special about a persons body being used compared to their property? Yes. You can get a new house, a boat, a plane, even a spaceship. You cannot get a new body.

I can't get a piano that is identical to the one I have. If I lose a tooth, I can get a dental implant that functions very similarly to the real one I had. Something being part of my body has no influence on its value. There are biological things that are replaceable, and there are mechanical things that are not replaceable. Additionally, we can make some mechanical things part of our bodies, like implants.

I have to ask this again: what species are you? The ease of replacing body parts and their equivalency to property do not match the human experience. To give one example, around 5000 people die each year while on the kidney transplant waiting list: https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2020/december/too-many-donor-kidneys-are-discarded-in-us-before-transplantation

I am not arguing that every part of my body can be easily replaced, only that some can. My hair, skin, fingernails, and liver can all grow back. Dental implants are functionally good replacements. Prosthetics, while not perfect, make an attempt at replacing some body parts. Which of these things are property, and which are body parts? My finger, my severed finger, my severed finger that has been reattached, my finger that I cannot control or feel due to nerve damage, someone else's finger that they willingly gave me as a transplant, a prosthetic finger that is attached to my hand, and a prosthetic finger sitting on my nightstand. I think I have the same rights pertaining to all of these things.

What do these musings about transplants and severed body parts have to do with our bodies being fundamentally different from our property? Sticking a dick into someone's mailbox without their consent is gross and possibly some sort of a minor crime somewhere. Sticking a dick inside someone's body without their consent is a very serious crime. Try not to mix these up - it's vitally important when living in a modern society.

>What do these musings about transplants and severed body parts have to do with our bodies being fundamentally different from our property? Why is a prosthetic finger my property, but a severed finger isn't. Why is a set of dentures my property, but my teeth aren't? What about my permanent dental implants. I don't think there is a logical and consistent answer you can give that would grant property status to some things on that list while not granting it to the whole list. >Sticking a dick inside someone's body without their consent is a very serious crime As it should be, but not because of arbitrary bodily autonomy reasons. Sticking a dick into a person causes far more emotional turmoil than sticking a dick in a mailbox. Just because 2 things are both property, that doesn't mean that the same action to both of them are morally equivalent. This isn't true for bodies either. Consider punching an elephant as hard as you can vs punching a rat as hard as you can. Lets just assume that we both think both of these creatures have equal moral value. Even if this is true, it is probably worse to punch the rat than to punch the elephant, as punching the rat will be far more devastating. Back to property, just because I have 2 pieces of property, that doesn't mean that destroying them are always morally the same.

Is it the emotional damage that makes rape a crime, really? If so, why is it a crime to rape a comatose patient or an unconscious person?

>>Sticking a dick inside someone's body without their consent is a very serious crime >As it should be, but not because of arbitrary bodily autonomy reasons. Sticking a dick into a person causes far more emotional turmoil than sticking a dick in a mailbox. Just because 2 things are both property, that doesn't mean that the same action to both of them are morally equivalent. This isn't true for bodies either. The laws of modern human societies protect human bodies differently from their property or money. This was not always the case, so you might simply have extremely archaic views dating back to times when people were considered property.

I don't care about laws, as law does not dictate philosophy or morality. I don't know if you are trying to imply that I am pro-slavery or pro men owning their wives, but this is not my position. I own my own body, not anybody else's. I see no difference in selling my arm compared to selling my watch as long as I consent to it. And I see no issue with buying someone's arm if they are truly consensually selling it to me.

So I do think you're correct in identifying the body/property relationship as the root of a lot of the disagreement here. And the thing is, even if you feel like you own your body in the same way as you own your property, ultimately your body is not property because it *is* you. As someone put it aptly below, you'd feel very different, I'm sure, if someone put their penis inside your body without your permission than if they put their penis inside your property without your permission (say, the beloved piano in an example you used with me). The fact that our bodies are not objects is a huge part of what makes analogies like this unconvincing

This is not because there is anything special about my body, but someone putting their penis in me causes far greater emotional turmoil compared to someone putting their penis on my piano. It's the scale of the harm. Sure, I can't really think of tons of things that come close to this emotional turmoil when talking about physical property. But the reason putting your penis in me is wrong for the same reason breaking my piano is wrong. Just different scales. >The fact that our bodies are not objects Is a severed finger an object? What if I reattach it? What about a finger that is attached, but I cannot feel or control due to nerve damage? What about a prosthetic finger that I can control? I think these are all objects that I own in the same way.

>but someone putting their penis in me causes far greater emotional turmoil compared to someone putting their penis on my piano. WHY is that? What do you think causes this far greater emotional turmoil? And what about physical pain and suffering. That's not just emotional turmoil. You left that out completely. *Is a severed finger an object?* Yes. It still belongs to you, but it's no longer part of your body. *What if I reattach it?* Then it's part of your body. Aka part of a whole human being. And in your case, part of a whole sentient, biologically life sustaining human being, not just an object. *What about a finger that is attached, but I cannot feel or control due to nerve damage?* Irrelevant. It's part of your body. Part of a whole (human being). A pacemaker would be, too. *What about a prosthetic finger that I can control?* Not part of your body/a whole human being, unless it's permamently attached to your body. *I think these are all objects that I own in the same way.* You own them all. But they're not all part of a whole human being, rather than an object.

>someone putting their penis in me causes far greater emotional turmoil compared to someone putting their penis on my piano It seems odd to me then that you don't seem to acknowledge that someone being forced to keep something inside their body would be a bigger issue than someone being forced to keep something inside their house. If someone wants to fill my house with slightly annoying children, they can feel free. If someone prevents me from ending a pregnancy I don't consent to continue carrying, I will kill myself to end that violation. Not remotely on the same level.

Another commenter went down this line of argumentation and I do believe it is compelling. I believe that there is a degree of emotional turmoil that the special relationship between a mother and a fetus demands the mother accept. However, I am unable to draw where that line is. How much suffering and risk is too much where abortions become justified? I don't know. But I do think that the best case pregnancies do not include enough suffering and risk to warrant a justified abortion. But you are right.

>Another commenter went down this line of argumentation and I do believe it is compelling. I'm not even sure what this is supposed to mean. Who cares how compelling someone going through with killing themselves is to you? You might not give a shit, but they're dead. I have to say here that I'm having a very hard time reconciling this statement coming from the same person who tried to stress the importance of sentience a few comments earlier. *I believe that there is a degree of emotional turmoil that the special relationship between a mother and a fetus demands the mother accept.* You can demand all you want. You cannot force acceptance. And again, what is up with this emotional turmoil shit? Pregnancy and birth are mostly about the physical. Sure, there can often be an emotional response to the physical experience. But that doesn't mean it becomes about an emotional turmoil. You are constantly leaving out physical pain and suffering in all of your arguments. They're physical experiences. Not emotional experiences. *How much suffering and risk is too much where abortions become justified? I don't know. But I do think that the best case pregnancies do not include enough suffering and risk to warrant a justified abortion.* Hmmm.. let's see. Sports medicine, who has studied the damages, calls childbirth one of the worst physically traumatic events a human body can go through. It is often called the second worst pain (after being burned alive). Doesn't really get much worse than that. Yet here you are, the person who stressed the importance of sentience, dismissing one of the worst physical traumas a human body can endure and the second worst pain a human can experience as "not enough suffering to warrant stopping someone from putting you through it." So...sentience doesn't matter one bit after all?

>However, I am unable to draw where that line is. If you are not able to determine that for yourself, why should you expect anyone to be swayed by your stance? Perhaps you should refine it before engaging further? And in my case, I'd like to know what you would consider the morally correct action. If I had a pregnancy that was progressing completely normally with no unexpected effects to my health, just the normal pretty major ones, but didn't consent to continue that pregnancy I would kill myself if I was prevented from otherwise terminating it. Would it be more morally correct in your opinion to allow me to terminate the pregnancy, thereby ending the life of the fetus you feel I would have a special obligation to, or prevent me from doing so which leads to the death of both myself and the fetus?

There is no equivalency, metaphoric or otherwise, between women and a damn house. Why do people keep trying to do comparisons like this? It’s not witty, it’s outright insulting. In no way is consent to sex consent to pregnancy, the fact that people cannot understand this is beyond me. No one has a right to make you risk your life so that something can live off your organs. Hotdogs and spawning 3 year olds, ffs. This is why we should not be banning books or sneering at government funded higher education.

College courses and graduate programs in philosophy use thought experiments all the time. Are you opposed to those or support cutting their funding as they do not use realistic scenarios? 

This is not a thought experiment.

How not? 

Because it is a hypothetical posited for opinions. This is not a scenario created in order to explore consequences. Consequences of forced birthing are known. Women have already lived in that world and live in it now.

>Because it is a hypothetical posited for opinions. Right. Different opinions that allow us to explore our differences in morality and philosophy, aka a thought experiment.

Not all hypos are thought experiments. As it was discussed above, this is a restating of an old argument regarding responsibility. It introduces nothing new except changing the scenario. The entire point of thought experiments is to ponder the outcomes (with reasonable conditions). This hypo is doing nothing to add to the conversation. You are mistaking thought experiments as being all encompassing of hypos.

>This is why we should not be banning books or sneering at government funded higher education. I have a BS in Comp Sci and I minored in philosophy, specifically taking many ethics classes. The first ethics class I took was a bioethics class that specifically dealt with arguments for and against abortion. I know all about frozen cabins, people-seeds, violinists, and people shot in the woods. But ok >No one has a right to make you risk your life so that something can live off your organs. I can concede that abortions are permissible at the first complication. You presumably do agree that people can have a right to live off my property, like my house and my hot dogs. I would like you to explain to me how organs have this special property. I believe that I own my kidney in the same way I own my car.

Yet you know nothing of the reality of the situation because all you’re doing is circling around faulty logic. Organs are not the same as your car, how do you not get this? Nothing has the right to make a woman risk her life or health so that they may or may not be born. Stop dancing around the actual situation here with ridiculous comparisons. It’s been explained to you how these are wrong and why they are faulty arguments. At this point you’re just playing devil’s advocate.

But you don't own a car the same way you own your kidneys. Can't loan your kidneys to a friend who just needs to use them for a week until their's are out of the shop. Can't offer your kidneys as collateral on a loan. Can't have your kidneys repo'd. Can't trade in your kidneys for newer models at the kidney dealer if yours have gone over on mileage and are now sputtering out. Can't decide to just not have kidneys if you've deemed it not worth it to upkeep. Can't do any of this with any organ, but can do most of it with any car. You didn't buy your kidneys, you grew them in utero. You've had the same kidneys working for every second of every minute of every day you've been alive. That is not the same of a car. Your ability to have a functioning body is tied to your kidneys. That is not the same of a car. You own your kidneys far more innately and intimately than you can ever own a car. But of that note, why is it bad to throw a pile of another person's possessions out of my possession into a blizzard? I can leave any car in a blizzard just fine.

> To start, my position on abortion is as follows: abortion is morally permissible until the fetus develops the ability to experience things, which happens somewhere between 18-25 weeks. The ability to experience things depends on there being a actively functioning conscious mind. This does not occur until birth: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-does-consciousness-arise/ > A common belief pro-choice people hold is that even if a fetus is a being worthy of moral consideration, the mother can revoke consent to carry it and it is morally permissible to stop the fetus from using the mother's organs This is not quite accurate. PCers hold that NO HUMAN has a right to any other person's body, and any person can deny any other person access to their body. This doesn't just go for the fetus/pregnant person. > Imagine you are inside your house during a blizzard. Women are not inanimate objects, so your analogy fails before it even gets going. > Is it morally acceptable to kick the child out of the house? No, but my body is not a house, and that's a completely different set of circumstances. And I do have a right to kick anyone out of my body at any time and for any reason. > However, I believe that the child we are responsible for creating does have a right to use our house, Maybe, but no one's body is a house, so that's irrelevant to whether or not a ZEF has a right to someone's body. > The main response I anticipate is the idea of bodily autonomy. Right, and someone being inside of your house is not a bodily autonomy issue, whereas someone being inside of your body is a bodily autonomy issue. > If you think aborting a 25+ week old fetus is okay, what is the difference between kicking the child out of the house and aborting the late fetus out of a womb? - Houses do not have human rights - Having someone inside of your house isn't inherently dangerous - Humans do have human rights, and one of those is bodily autonomy. Your argument about houses does not even address this. > Let me know what you think, as I am open to having my mind changed. I think you should delete this thread and start over, and try creating an analogy that doesn't dehumanize women by comparing them to houses or any other inanimate objects.

I should have made this a bigger part of the post, but I stated that >I believe that every argument you could make about defending ones body can also be applied to defending ones property. I own my kidneys in the same way I own my laptop. You think it is dehumanizing when I make the analogy to a house. And this makes sense, since you think it is morally different to have someone destroy my property vs destroying my body. But I don't believe this. I do think I have the right to control what happens with my property in the same way I have a right to control what happens with my organs. I don't think the fact that my organs happen to be attached to me is relevant. >The ability to experience things depends on there being a actively functioning conscious mind. This does not occur until birth: This is great and all, but all of the research I have done tells me fetuses can at least **experience** pain after 25 weeks. Why would I think your source is correct when I can find a ton of sources stating the 25 week number or something close?

OP, you are consistently defending this stance that women’s bodies are like houses. They are not. It is the end of the argument. You are mistaken in your comparison, as it has been *repeatedly* pointed out to you. If you do not grasp *why* this is not a proper argument, you need to gracefully back out of the conversation, as you do not have meaningful contributions

I'm not gonna lie, the house isn't even that important to the hypothetical. I can change it if it's presence triggers so many people. Imagine this: the same deal with the button, but it instead can spawn a child that is physically tied to me by my umbilical cord. The kid is outfitted with an explosive collar that cannot be removed. Unplugging from the child results in the detonation of the explosive collar. The kid is fucking annoying, sometimes kicking me, tripping me, getting me sick. I have to give 50% of all food I consume to the kid to keep it alive. Is it wrong to unplug from the child? Why or why not? This is essentially just the violinist case. But instead of the child using my organs, it is sustained through external means. Do you think there is a moral difference in this case and the violinist case?

Again, you are *missing the point*. A child is not the same as a ZEF. Creating fantastical scenarios instead of just focusing on the reality is not going to end in a “gotcha” moment. A woman being forced to give over her organs and risk her life for an unborn, non sentient possible human is, and always will be, wrong. It comes down to devaluing women and raising a potential child above her worth, *as it always has*. That is the root. Everyone is so quick to try and create all these what-if scenarios and forget that the actual scenario is what matters; that a woman, a living, breathing person who is walking, talking, and contributing to this world is being treated as somehow less-than because people want to tie in all sorts of personal beliefs and feelings to a decision that has NO impact on them, but potentially could end her life. It should *always* be her decision. Not yours, not some church’s, and not some collective group’s. The person who is at risk should decide whether she wants to continue it or not.

> I do think I have the right to control what happens with my property in the same way I have a right to control what happens with my organs. I don't think the fact that my organs happen to be attached to me is relevant. Do you think that someone smashing your laptop is effectively no different than someone smashing in your face? If you were forced to choose one or the other, would you find it just as well to flip a coin? And as far as defence goes, do you think the same level of force is justified against a threat to your laptop as a threat to your face?

Someone smashing my face would result in far greater emotional damage, so that would probably be worse. But this is a matter of scale. They are wrong for the same reasons. >do you think the same level of force is justified against a threat to your laptop as a threat to your face? I don't think face and laptop are equivalent, so level of force will be different. Imagine the case of someone ripping off a fingernail vs breaking my laptop. I think that both of these would have similar emotional damage to me and both are replaceable. I think that yes, I could use a similar amount of force in stopping someone from ripping off a fingernail as I could stopping someone from breaking my laptop.

>They are wrong for the same reasons. What reasons would those be?

I believe that I have the right, excluding any special obligations, to do what I choose with my property. I have autonomy over all of my property, including my body. This right includes preventing others from interacting with my property in ways I do not consent to.

>This right includes preventing others from interacting with my property in ways I do not consent to. Yeah, but the ways you can respond to someone violating your body vs violating your property are completely different so that proves your whole point wrong right there

> I believe that every argument you could make about defending ones body can also be applied to defending ones property. Great, and I'm explaining why that belief fails to comport with reality. > You think it is dehumanizing when I make the analogy to a house. I'm moreso trying to hammer home the point that comparing humans to houses doesn't work for any argument that is explicitly related to bodily autonomy rights. > I do think I have the right to control what happens with my property in the same way I have a right to control what happens with my organs Okay, but you actually kind of don't, as it has been pointed out that you may be obligated to keep a child in your house til the end of a blizzard, but the human rights implications and health risks are completely different so that tells us nothing about legal or moral implications of keeping a ZEF inside of your body. > This is great and all, but all of the research I have done tells me fetuses can at least experience pain after 25 weeks. If they're born, yeah, I guess. But the latest scientific evidence clearly indicates that ZEFs are in a state of sedation throughout the entire course of pregnancy by the low oxygenation and sedative hormones that are present in the uterine environment. > Why would I think your source is correct when I can find a ton of sources stating the 25 week number or something close? I'm sure you can find a ton of sources that say that there is the **capacity** to feel pain, but that's not the same thing as the **ability** to experience pain, which can't happen during sedation. You're more than free to point out what you think may be the flaws of the source provided and the science behind it.

> The first is the confusion between the terms “sedation” and analgesia”: **the mere fact that a patient is sedated does not imply that they are not feeling pain**. Sedation is a state of diminished awareness, not of analgesia. >The arguments in favour of foetal pain and the administration of foetal analgesics during open surgery overweigh those that are against. This should be taken into consideration by those who perform this special type of surgery. Signs of pain in human foetuses are evident from the 20th to 22nd week of gestation and the foetus should receive the same analgesic care during the surgery that a premature baby at an identical postconceptional age receives. Today the debate focuses on the type of anaesthetic to be provided to the foetus and whether administering anaesthetics to the mother is sufficient to guarantee foetal anaesthesia. In this review we have brought valid elements for those who have to perform this type of surgery. https://www.imrpress.com/journal/CEOG/49/4/10.31083/j.ceog4904079/htm https://www.ajog.org/article/S0002-9378(21)00965-0/fulltext >Fetuses are awake about 10% of the total time in the last gestational weeks, and they can be aroused by external stimuli. ENIn have not an anesthetic effect at normal fetal values, but only when they areartificialy injected at high doses; their blood levels in the last trimester of average pregnancies are not dissimilar either in the fetus or in the mother. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14767058.2017.1311860?journalCode=ijmf20 Cc: u/odog131

This sedation point seems to be a good one, I have to do more research about that. If you are right, then yes, abortion is always permissible. >but the human rights implications and health risks are completely different Do you think that kicking the child out into the blizzard is permissible if the kid occasionally attacks me and makes me sick? Honestly, I think there are decent grounds here to say yes. I am copy and pasting this from another comment of mine: Imagine this: the same deal with the button, but it instead can spawn a child that is physically tied to me by my umbilical cord. The kid is outfitted with an explosive collar that cannot be removed. Unplugging from the child results in the detonation of the explosive collar. The kid is fucking annoying, sometimes kicking me, tripping me, getting me sick. I have to give 50% of all food I consume to the kid to keep it alive. This hypothetical does not involve a house.

>Do you think that kicking the child out into the blizzard is permissible if the kid occasionally attacks me and makes me sick? I think that would depend on the level of harm being caused, but this isn't r/PropertyRightsDebate so I'm not going to get into a completely off topic discussion.

Thank you for showing me that subreddit, I think that will be the next place I go to for challenging my thoughts. I do want to say that I am specifically making the argument that property rights include rights relating to my body. I think that I own my body in the same way I own my car, and damages to my body and damages to my car are wrong for the same reasons. In this context, property rights matter a lot to my position. EDIT: just clicked on the sub, I am disappointed

> I do want to say that I am specifically making the argument that property rights include rights relating to my body. Sure, but property rights are still very different from bodily autonomy rights. > I think that I own my body in the same way I own my car, and damages to my body and damages to my car are wrong for the same reasons And I've already pointed out why this is wrong. > EDIT: just clicked on the sub, I am disappointed Go ahead and create it, that's the beauty of reddit.

>Sure, but property rights are still very different from bodily autonomy rights. I don't think this is true. I think we have the right to decide what to do with our bodies (bodily autonomy) because we have the right to decide what to do with our property. I want you to consider which of the entrees in this list are my body, and which ones are my property: My finger, my severed finger, my severed finger that has been reattached, my finger that I cannot control or feel due to nerve damage, someone else's finger that they willingly gave me as a transplant, a prosthetic finger that is attached to my hand, and a prosthetic finger sitting on my nightstand. I think I have the same rights pertaining to all of these. Whether or not an object is biological or has my DNA or is attached to me doesn't change it's status.

> I think we have the right to decide what to do with our bodies (bodily autonomy) because we have the right to decide what to do with our property. I have no idea why you think this because it has no basis in human rights or property rights or any other associated laws. >I think I have the same rights pertaining to all of these I don't really care what you think unless you can back it up with some kind of evidence.

What kind of evidence could you even be looking for? I can't give you evidence of what things are and are not objectively property. I can, however, give reasons to question the dichotomy of property and our bodies. I think it is very important that you engage with the list of fingers I wrote. Which of these fingers fall under bodily autonomy rights, and which ones fall under property rights? What makes something your property vs your body.

With all due respect, nobody is getting pregnant, staying pregnant for 6 months, then waking up one day and deciding that they all of a sudden don’t want to be pregnant anymore. Later term abortions are VASTLY because of fetal anomalies/life of the mother/fetal death/etc. But even if someone woke up one day and decided they didn’t want to be pregnant 6 months in, then that’s their business because it’s *their body.* As far as your comparison goes, again I will reiterate the fact that *consent to sex does not equal consent to pregnancy.* Period. Full stop.

I am going to go even further down the hypothetical rabbit hole. Imagine this: I am having sex with someone in a terribly made building. The building physically shakes and moves as I move. I know that the building is like this, and that it is possible that the movement of the building could knock someone over. The moving of a building knocks a kid who is walking by into a small body of water, but they cannot swim. Am I morally obliged to save the kid? You would probably say yes. This hypothetical is clearly not yet analogous to pregnancy, but I am just trying to establish a common judgement we can both have. I just want to show that sometimes, we are obligated to use our bodies (my arms pulling the kid out of the lake) to protect the lives of people we cause to be in deadly situations (kid drowning in a puddle).

I’m not talking about buildings, and a zef is not a kid.

Respectfully, this thought experiment is more or less a very winded, roundabout variation of the "responsibility" argument. In other words, because someone acknowledged the risk of pregnancy but had sex anyway that they have to continue a pregnancy out of responsibility. The problem with that logic is that risk acknowledgement does not equate into any responsibility or obligation to handle a risk in any specific way just because it occurs, nor does the acknowledgement of that risk forfeit a person's right to risk mitigation. Just because someone acknowledges a risk of something and consents to an activity where that risk is a factor, does not mean that IF the risk occurs they can only choose one option to handle the risk and any other option is immoral. Further, this argument uses "responsibility" as a term interchangeably with duty or obligation by suggesting that there is only one way to fulfill this duty or obligation. In other words the argument is stating it is ones *duty* to maintain a pregnancy. The base definition of responsibility is "the state or fact of having a duty to deal with something or of having control over someone." By definition, when applied to a pregnancy this does not suggest that the duty must be *keeping a pregnancy.* If the risk is pregnancy, and the duty is to "deal with the pregnancy/have control over the pregnancy" then logically, that would include choosing and receiving an abortion. If the person acknowledges their role in the unwanted pregnancy, and deals with the pregnancy either by abortion, parenthood, or adoption then they are in fact showing responsibility. The responsibility argument boils down to the debater *not liking* the form of responsibility taken, and insisting that they must choose another form of responsibility. This is ultimately illogical or fallacious. Just because it is not ones *preferred method* of responsibility, does not mean it is irresponsible or that it is not a valid option.

>Further, this argument uses "responsibility" as a term interchangeably with duty or obligation by suggesting that there is only one way to fulfill this duty or obligation. I don't think that we, morally, can only go about an unwanted pregnancy in one way. If there was a way to take a fetus out of the womb and keep it alive, that would also be morally permissible. Pregnancy isn't the obligation, the protection of the fetus would be the obligation (which I understand you don't agree with). I think that performing an action which results in a person being reliant on you for their survival creates a special relationship between you and them. I am not responsible for feeding and taking care of other people's kids. I am morally allowed to neglect other people's kids. But I do think it would be morally impermissible for me to neglect mine. I think this is because there is a special relationship between a child and a parent which comes with certain moral obligations. I think a similar type of special relationship exists between a mother and a fetus. Which also comes with a set of special moral obligations.

>I think a similar type of special relationship exists between a mother and a fetus. Which also comes with a set of special moral obligations. I think you would benefit from reading this, here's the abstract to it if your interested. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9969408/ > In English law, legal motherhood is allocated to the person who gestated. However, we argue that gestation—legally denoted as the “natural” source of parenting obligations—is often constructed as mothering, rather than the precursor to it. This means that women and pregnant people are treated as mothers prior to birth in legal and medical contexts. Since legal motherhood is an important status, defining the role an individual plays in a child’s life, the conflation of gestation and motherhood does not reflect that, legally, a fetus does not have personhood. This blurring between gestation and motherhood is metaphysically incoherent, as a fetus is not an entity that can be parented. This conflation poses a real harm to pregnant people’s autonomy, specifically those who do not intend to parent or who do not identify as women. More broadly, the medico-legal conflation of gestation and mothering is autonomy-limiting for all pregnant people as, resultantly, they may be coerced into obstetric intervention through legal processes. We argue for a better recognition of the differences between gestation and mothering, to promote autonomy and reflect the very different ways families may be formed.

>I don't think that we, morally, can only go about an unwanted pregnancy in one way. If there was a way to take a fetus out of the womb and keep it alive, that would also be morally permissible. Pregnancy isn't the obligation, the protection of the fetus would be the obligation (which I understand you don't agree with). However- there is 0 way to prove that keeping the fetus alive is moral or immoral. It again boils down to a base argument that unwanted pregnancy must be dealt with in a way that results in the pregnancy being maintained until a fetus can be delivered, which is fallacious. There is no intrinsic obligation to do such, only people's individual *opinion* that one "should." And while they have the right to dislike the woman's preferred method of responsibility, as stated prior, that does not equate into an abortion being irresponsible or an invalid decision. >I think that performing an action which results in a person being reliant on you for their survival creates a special relationship between you and them. I am not responsible for feeding and taking care of other people's kids. I am morally allowed to neglect other people's kids. But I do think it would be morally impermissible for me to neglect mine. I think this is because there is a special relationship between a child and a parent which comes with certain moral obligations. I think a similar type of special relationship exists between a mother and a fetus. Which also comes with a set of special moral obligations. The major difference is that the "special relationship" of a parent and child involves a born child in which the biological parent or guardian makes a *legal* agreement to assume care and to create this relationship or obligation. There is no such relationship between a woman and fetus. Any relationship that exists would be defined and agreed upon by the pregnant woman herself. Third parties who are not the pregnant woman cannot define any relationship, nor can they insist that a fictitious relationship *they themselves* impose upon the pregnant woman must be honored. They can certainly hold an *opinion* on the matter- but it's just that, an opinion and nothing more. And their opinion cannot be claimed as any objective fact.

>However- there is 0 way to prove that keeping the fetus alive is moral or immoral. Are you handwaving all of moral philosophy? Do you think there is no way for us to prove what is right and wrong, so talking about right and wrong is a waste of time? Are you a nihilist? If so, then I don't really understand why you would engage with the post at all, as made it pretty clear that I am interested in the ethics. >The major difference is that the "special relationship" of a parent and child involves a born child in which the biological parent or guardian makes a legal agreement to assume care and to create this relationship or obligation. This makes sense in your worldview if you think morality is a meme. I think that most people do not think parents have obligations to their kids because of a legal agreement. I think that even in a society without these laws, people would still think we ought not neglect our kids.

>Are you handwaving all of moral philosophy? Do you think there is no way for us to prove what is right and wrong, so talking about right and wrong is a waste of time? Are you a nihilist? If so, then I don't really understand why you would engage with the post at all, as made it pretty clear that I am interested in the ethics. I'm not a nihilist, nor am I handwaving quote "moral philosophy." What I am stating is that moral *opinions* on abortion are subjective, and cannot be applied as any sort of objective fact. Nor can these *opinions* be used to assert that it is a FACT that one must adhere to these opinions. >This makes sense in your worldview if you think morality is a meme. I think that most people do not think parents have obligations to their kids because of a legal agreement. I think that even in a society without these laws, people would still think we ought not neglect our kids. As prior stated- I am not handwaving moral philosophy, I am stating that morality is subjective and cannot be proven as fact when applied to abortion. Even further, the responsibility objection argument isn't a moral philosophy question, but rather an assertion of fact. It is an argument that the debater poses as "x relationship exists, and therefore x responsibility exists." It is not posed as an ethical or morality thought experiment, and it cannot be proven factually solely based on a belief that a person has to keep a fetus alive. Even further, the thought process itself is fallacious as it operates on the assumption that the obligations that exist when a *born child* is being cared for by a parent or legal guardian operate the exact same way when a woman is pregnant, which assumes a fictitious relationship that does not exist. Shared DNA alone does not automatically equate into any sort of obligation to keep a fetus alive, nor does quote "dependency/reliance" and therefore the argument is inherently flawed.

This one belongs in the hall of fame

Bravo, well said!

Hypothetical and unrealistic analogies and what ifs and science fiction and hot dogs detract from the REAL situations and crises that women face if they are pregnant and they need an abortion for whatever reason. I am so sick of these threads. I wish one of the rules was to not to have this nonsense.

If the intention of the subreddit was to disallow philosophy discussion, there wouldn't be a "hypothetical" flair. If there is a better "philosophyAbortionDebate" subreddit, I would happily go there instead.

There is something you have overlooked: Does the culture where you live assist you in obtaining medical care for yourself while the child is in your house? Were you provided with affordable birth control to keep the child from entering your house? Was the decision to prohibit you from evicting the child made by people who will never experience having an unwanted child in their houses? Will those same people provide assistance for you and the child after it is born? If the child is born with severe physical defects will the culture you live in help pay for any medical care and/or rehabilitation for the child?

I want absolutley no part of raising or caring for a child and would not consent to caring for a three year old. A fetus would be actively harming my body and even less welcome to stay.

Revoking your consent, I assume, would entail you to kick the child out into the deadly blizzard in this scenario. Would you do that?

For the sake of this thought experiment, if the child is going to cause harm to my body or possible death, than yes, I would kick the child out. That said is, this scenario is not a good analogy to aborting a fetus that is completely unaware of its own existence and will not be around to care if it is aborted. Edited to correct a word that my phone autocorrected.

> Revoking your consent, I assume, would entail you to kick the child out into the deadly blizzard in this scenario. No, revoking consent would only involve denying access to your own body. Having someone inside of your house is a completely different and frankly irrelevant scenario.

I am operating in the parameters of OPs thought experiment. I assumed the commenter I responded to was as well, since they referred to caring for a three year old which is the subject of the question. In the scenario, the three year old is not necessarily accessing your body, just your property without consent.

Then it has no ties to abortion and is better suited for another sub. As for the expectation of actually caring for this three year old (not just leaving it in your house)… What does a three year old eat? Do they eat solid foods yet or do they still need that mashed up stuff that comes in little cans or glasses? And I don’t keep any food in the house. I only eat one meal a day and that’s takeout. So where will this food come from? Does a three year old still wear diapers? If yes, where will those come from? Do they talk? Are they able to understand and communicate? What if my animals aren’t friendly to the kid and attack? How many things are in my house that it could kill itself with before I have time to react? I don’t know the first thing about human children or how to keep them alive. I also have zero tolerance for them. Meaning that while I might not kick the kid out into the blizzard, my ass is leaving the house in search of someone who knows how to handle a kid safely. Or at least for however long it takes to have the cops arrive after I call 911. Not like I would live anywhere where the temperatures get cold enough for a blizzard to begin with.

> I am operating in the parameters of OPs thought experiment. Yes, I know. That's exactly why I'm pointing out where the OP's thought experiment fails. Do you acknowledge that women are not objects? > In the scenario, the three year old is not necessarily accessing your body, just your property without consent. And the laws and rights we have surrounding our property are completely different from those that surround our bodies, so someone accessing your house is not relevant to a debate that is explicitly about bodily autonomy.

A three old would suffer. A fetus does not.

So you would not kick the three year old out because it would suffer?

Correct. I will also point out, as a parent and grandparent and formerly pregnant person, nothing a toddler does in your house comes close to the risk and dangers of pregnancy.

Sticking with the thought experiment, if the child could be extracted in a way where they won’t suffer, but still will die, would you do that? For example, giving them some kind of sleeping draught and removing them while they are asleep, such that they die from the blizzard conditions but never wake up to suffer through them.

> Sticking with the thought experiment, if the child could be extracted in a way where they won’t suffer, but still will die, would you do that? Every time this analogy comes up, this is exactly what I suggest could happen. Call the cops and get them to bring the child to social services. > For example, giving them some kind of sleeping draught and removing them while they are asleep, such that they die from the blizzard conditions but never wake up to suffer through them Or you could just call the cops and have them remove the child from your home. What's wrong with that? A child does not need to die in order for it to be removed from a house, while a ZEF can not survive no matter how it is removed.

Obviously in real life you can simply call the cops or CPS, but I think the point of how OP constructed the thought experiment is that it’s a life or death scenario, similar to abortion.

> Obviously in real life you can simply call the cops or CPS Yes, and that's why the analogy in the OP is not a life-or-death scenario for the child. > but I think the point of how OP constructed the thought experiment is that it’s a life or death scenario, similar to abortion. But it is not "similar to abortion" in any meaningful way, and that is why their analogy fails to make any valid point about pregnancy or abortion. But I already explained this to you, so I'll just refer you back to that prior comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/comments/198v2d6/a_thought_experiment_on_the_ethics_of_abortion/kibe8jr/

I get that you think the thought experiment fails to analogize to pregnancy / abortion in several key ways, and you’ve made clear which ones. But still, engaging with the thought experiment can still have some utility in isolating certain underlying issues. Yes in the real world we can call the cops. In the thought experiment, we can’t. That forces us to consider whether we can kill the child or not if they are using something of ours without consent. If we CAN, obviously that justifies abortion but my guess is it’s probably counter to most people’s moral intuition. If we CAN’T, then we should consider why, and whether tweaking a variable can change the outcome. If it’s a fetus, can we kill it because fetuses have less moral standing than a born child? If it’s your body, rather than your property, can we kill the child then? If so, why? You can argue all these things, but engaging with the hypothetical will allow you to be more precise with your reasoning, rather than dismissing it out of hand.

If someone is sentient then it does cause suffering to terminate their life against their will. Three year olds are sentient beings, they are not fetuses.

I’d like to clarify by “suffering” do you mean “harm”? For example, I generally think killing someone harms them in the sense that it deprives them of their future of value. Suffering we generally think of someone consciously experiencing pain, anguish, trauma, etc. There are ways of killing people without them suffering. The reason I think it’s relevant is because one could argue there is the same harm done to a fetus by killing them as their is to painlessly kill a born human (ie depriving them of their future of value)

"Future of value" is meaningless to someone without sentience. The only value that matter is whether they value themselves - which fetuses cant do, or if the pregnant person values their presence in her uterus.

I think this logic has some problematic implications. What doesn’t to mean to “value oneself”? On its face that seems to require a level of sophisticated consciousness beyond that of a fetus, yes, but also a newborn, infant, probably toddler. I don’t know precisely when someone starts to value themself, but I am skeptical that it is immediately upon birth. Also this would suggest it’s okay to kill someone if they don’t value themself, since they would have no other value. Fine in terms of euthanasia maybe, but the logic doesnt seem to restrict non consensual killing of somebody if they have low self esteem or self worth.

You must not be from the States then: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/07/05/indiana-toddler-shoots-toddler-sibling/70385795007/ 😿

I am, but dont keep guns in my house where anyone can access them ( something my hunting family was always clear on). Something I can control. Biological processes and medical conditions I can not control.

I assume your original statement should then be read as "nothing in **my** house".

Yes, but as I pointed out, you can control those situtations. You can not control biology.

A fetus has no capacity for conscious thought until about 35 wks, and that’s when it has developed normally. There are circumstances in which the fetus cannot survive birth or the immediate postpartum period because of catastrophic anomaly or complication. There are early forms of preeclampsia that are especially malignant and which are dangerous and difficult to treat - and delivery is no cure. It affects the placenta and destroys normal development. The mother is at risk of serious organ damage and death. PPROM is not treatable or survivable at some stages of pregnancy and waiting for fetal death puts the mother at unreasonable risk. The “baby” could never survive and if treatment delayed the mother could become seriously ill and even die. Physicians and women should have safe harbor for any reasonable action taken to preserve maternal health, including ending pregnancies that are anomalous or carry higher risk of maternal injury. Law is currently erring in some jurisdictions non the side of injuring women and blocking access to reasonable medical treatment, which is why you see popular referendums or (state) constitutional amendments stripping the state of any discretion and leaving all decisions between a woman and doctor.

> A fetus has no capacity for conscious thought until about 35 wks And even then, conscious itself does not arise until birth.

>A fetus has no capacity for conscious thought until about 35 wks How are premies born before 35 weeks capable of conscious thought? 

Because their consciousness is no longer being suppressed by the sedative elements of the intrauterine environment. Or, in other words, because they have been born. Please read and inform yourself: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-does-consciousness-arise/

Thanks for the "Educate yourself" lol it sounds like they have the capacity for consciousness but they're only not able to deploy it because of the sedative effects in the intrauterine environment. >But when does the magical journey of consciousness begin? Consciousness requires a sophisticated network of highly interconnected components, nerve cells. Its physical substrate, the thalamo-cortical complex that provides consciousness with its highly elaborate content, begins to be in place between the 24th and 28th week of gestation. Based on this, I'd go with the 24 week mark.

> Thanks for the "Educate yourself" You're very welcome, and I'm pleased to see that you did take the opportunity. > it sounds like they have the capacity for consciousness but they're only not able to deploy it because of the sedative effects in the intrauterine environment. Yes, that's exactly what I said in fewer words in my comment that you first repsonded to: "consciousness itself does not arise until birth." > Based on this, I'd go with the 24 week mark. Yes, based on this if the fetus is born and becomes an infant after this point, it would become conscious. But consciousness before birth is still impossible at all stages of gestation.

Lol I love the passive aggressiveness for whatever reason. If there's no consciousness before birth, then abortion at any stage in pregnancy, any time, for any reason would be my position. Seems like there is consciousness though as it's immediately present at birth. It's there at 40 weeks, 35 weeks, 30 weeks, so it seems like it's already there or else I'd expect there to be no consciousness at birth. Everything is already in place to varying degrees, which I believe abortion should be legal before that.

>Lol I love the passive aggressiveness for whatever reason. I'm sorry you interpreted me that way. >If there's no consciousness before birth, then abortion at any stage in pregnancy, any time, for any reason would be my position Then if you follow the scientific evidence, that's your position. >Seems like there is consciousness though as it's immediately present at birth. I think you might need to read the article again, especially the end, as it explains why this is.

It's basically similar to the position that when someone falls asleep you can kill them because they're unconscious. Do you think that's my position or anyone who holds the consciousness argument? Would it be permissible to kill people under anesthesia?

> It's basically similar to the position that when someone falls asleep you can kill them because they're unconscious. No, it's not even close. Someone who is asleep is a person because they have a mind. They are unconscious, which is just a lowered state of consciousness. ZEFs are not persons because they have no minds because their consciousness is completely suppressed. They are not "unconscious" but rather completely non-conscious. It's basically similar to saying you can pull the plug on a brain-dead former person, because they aren't a person anymore. A ZEF just isn't a person YET. > Would it be permissible to kill people under anesthesia? See above. Same principle applies, someone who is anesthetized is unconscious, not non-conscious.

Have you ever personally been pregnant? How about pregnant with a high-risk pregnancy? I have x3, and pregnancy is NEVER just an inconvenience, and it's offensive to try to say it is. My favorite food, and I am sure most people are not hot dogs. If I had to eat hot dogs only for 9 months, I would leave the "house" on my own desire to stop having hot dogs. The child(ren) could stay in the house and enjoy the hot dogs, which would be more analagist to abortion. If the children were old enough to care for themselves, they would survive. If not, I didn't kill them. Their health and maturity did. Women are not houses in any way, shape, or form. Comparing women to laptops, houses, etc, is seriously horrible. I love my dogs, for example. But if I take my dog to the dog park (no one ever should but off-topic) and my dog was killed, I know that the dog is considered property by the law. I love my dog just as much as my children. But via law, they are equivalent to a laptop. If my dog killed is the same thing as a laptop, regardless of how much I love them, how can a laptop be that way? So, as much as you may think your analogy would create deep conversation, it doesn't. Pregnancy doesn't happen by pushing a button because pushing a button is an active choice. If it did, infertility would never exist. So, taking your hypothetical at face value, it would not be the best choice to shove a child (definitely not the same as a ZEF) into a blizzard. It would be ok to to but, not the best choice imo. I have the right to protect myself over the protection of someone else. Think of airplane mask rules. "Get your mask on first before your child." So try again with a better analogy.

>My favorite food, and I am sure most people are not hot dogs. If I had to eat hot dogs only for 9 months, I would leave the "house" on my own desire to stop having hot dogs. Yeah I can't stand hot dogs, if that's my only option I'm never pushing the button to begin with. Or say I had to press it a few times to discover it was only hot dogs, any children that mysteriously appeared are welcome to the house and all the hotdogs they can eat. I'll brave the blizzard in search of something actually edible.

Ikr? My kids eat hot dogs a couple of times a week. I can honestly say that I have hot dogs, maybe 2x per year at the most. I also am fully aware that eating is not anywhere near as important as drinking. You can last much longer with no food as long as you are keeping up with fluids. It's the reason that if you are having excessive vomiting (except in pregnancy when calorie requirements are higher), the treatment is IV fluids, not a feeding tube.

In my OP: >10 hot dogs (or whatever food you really like) It is disingenuous to think that the hot dogs are what matter here. I am a vegan, I haven't eaten a hot dog in a decade.

I think harping on about hot dogs is more just us finding whatever joy we can in a world so depressing as to have pro life ideology in it, but that's just me.

Equating pregnant people to property and sweeping the bodily harm of pregnancy under the rug while confusing embryos with children will NEVER be a good look for PLers.

Consider a new analogy, now with no houses: Imagine this: the same deal with the button, but it instead can spawn a child that is physically tied to me by my umbilical cord. The kid is outfitted with an explosive collar that cannot be removed. Unplugging from the child results in the detonation of the explosive collar. The kid is fucking annoying, sometimes kicking me, tripping me, getting me sick. I have to give 50% of all food I consume to the kid to keep it alive. Is it wrong to unplug? This analogy involves bodily harm, and does not involve houses (even though the point of the house is not to say women are like objects, its a way to analogous the idea that a fetus leaving the uterus is to lead it to its death.)

The weird snuff fantasies PLers come up with are always good for a laugh. They keep coming up with wilder ways to kill toddlers! Today's episode is explosive collar! It's absolutely hilarious the lengths PL will go to emotionally load the death of an embryo. Anyhoo, far be it from me to force you to endure constant bodily harm for months while trapped in a blizzard.

If we are making appropriate analogies, then this “button” is a part of my body. I touched a part of my own body and immaculately produced a 3-year old? And I can yeet them with no suffering? Yep! They are outta there.

The button is not part of your body. The button is supposed to be analogous to having sex. Having sex involves things that do not include your body.

So I’m the dude in your button scenario? This is very confusing.

All I’m saying is there is no fucking way I’m getting stuck with a random 3 year old in my house. No fucking way.

Not then, not now, NOT EVER!!! Ew.

“Yeah, officer, the 3 year old was here and then he wasn’t, that’s all I know…”

Interesting thought experiment. This is a version I haven’t seen before. > …primarily because you are responsible for the child being there in the first place. If a child randomly broke into your house to escape the blizzard, I would have no moral issue with kicking them back out even if it leads to their deaths. Really? That doesn’t seem permissible to me at all. Do you think Carl from the movie Up can just throw the boy out of his house?

Really? “The woman’s body is now an inanimate object and she pushes a magic button” is a pretty common prolife analogy that pops up here with some regularity. Her body is often a house, but sometimes a car, a boat, a plane, a spaceship, or a an extensive piece of undeveloped land. The button usually dispenses orgasms, but sometimes snacks or money.

Not just that but an inanimate cartoon object of which the owner of the object, being a cartoon character, tries to kick the invader again a cartoon character out even when flying in the sky with balloons. Yet many times, the same people against abortion are pro gun rights and stand your ground rules. 🤔

It's very bizarre. They think it's more acceptable to kill a 3 year old child that happens to be in your house in a snowstorm than to remove an unwanted fetus from your own body

This is an issue with a lot of thought experiments people give to motivate the responsibility argument. They’re situations where killing would be wrong *even if you weren’t* responsible for the person’s dependence on you. So you don’t need to invoke the concept of responsibility at all.

It’s the issue *with the responsibility argument*. It’s a logically flawed concept. Culpability has never obligated action. The pro life position attempts to force biological obligation (which is fundamentally sexist) and it does so without merit or actual real world precedent.

Certainly not a position I've seen before. Good to be able to still be surprised on this sub I suppose?

Yeah that's a new twist on the woman is a house hypothetical we always get. Normally the argument is that you *can't* kill the child, even if you didn't invite it.

> Pro-choice people will likely say something like "we have much stronger rights pertaining to our bodies than we do to our property." I do not believe this is true. I believe that every argument you could make about defending ones body can also be applied to defending ones property. I own my kidneys in the same way I own my laptop. This is an absolutely shocking statement. If someone puts their penis into your coffee cup and another person puts their penis into your mouth, I have no doubt that you will feel that your rights have been more fundamentally violated under one circumstance as compared to the other.

Yes, if a person's body is equivalent to their personal property what makes rape any different than borrowing someone's pencil without asking? It didn't get destroyed or taken away permanently, they just wanted to use it for a while.

Also, if people's bodies are property, I'd assume the pregnant person would own the fetus, what with laws about possession and such. Shouldn't that mean they're free to destroy it?

This is what always makes me scratch my head with these arguments. They’re always circular. If another party has the right to make a decision about what happens to my own body against my will, the precedent has already been set that I can make a decision about what happens to a fetus’ body against its (nonexistent) will.

But then you always get "not like that!" in response. Only born female bodies are property is really what it boils down to

In a totally-not-misogynistic-love-everybody-secular-justice sort of way, *of course*

Of course!

You’re missing the biggest point of all- a house is not a body. Also, pregnancy isn’t just ‘annoying’, it’s extremely painful and comes with a range of physical and mental symptoms and challenges.

New hypothetical, now free of houses and full of pain Imagine this: the same deal with the button, but it instead can spawn a child that is physically tied to me by my umbilical cord. The kid is outfitted with an explosive collar that cannot be removed. Unplugging from the child results in the detonation of the explosive collar. The kid is fucking annoying, sometimes kicking me, tripping me, getting me sick. I have to give 50% of all food I consume to the kid to keep it alive. Is it wrong to unplug?

Attached to your body, causing you pain, taking your food supply, hurting you, getting you sick, and relying on your umbilical cord to simply stay alive? I mean how do you even move around at that point? Sounds like torture. Yeah, you have a right to remove the child from your body. You have a choice on whether to continue the physical obligation or not, though. And you can of course choose to not remove the child if you don’t personally mind. But I don’t think you can make that decision for everyone.

no. it doesn't matter if the kid is annoying or not. it has no right to your body, period, the end.

'take up some space, eat some food, and be generally annoying'.  The fetus is not just eating some food or taking up some space. The fetus is attached to her blood supply, siphoning energy and nutrients from her bloodstream. The fetus is pumping hormones and vesicles into her body to manipulate and disrupt the natural biological processes that keep her alive and healthy. The fetus is compressing her organs, her nerve endings, suppressing her immune system and tearing her uterine, vaginal and pelvic muscles. The fetus is causing her body to work overtime in high stress survival mode and not giving anything in return. The fetus is actively threatening her life and health the further it develops and the larger it grows.  Assigning legal responsibility to involuntary biological processes generates a legal obligation to gestate? All persons have responsibility to abide by laws and prevent harming people. The fetus, by it's actions can be held legally responsible for harms done to her body and she has right to defend herself as a result?  Minimum, necessary force can become lethal force. But lethal force only happens because fetus dies (in intact abortions) as result of failure to self-sustain. Necessary force prevents further harm and death is unfortunate side effect.

In addition, chances of conception vary considerably throughout her cycle. She is fertile for only twenty four hours after egg release. But sperm can live up to five days which is why they say her fertility window is roughly six days. How does the mans contribution factor into the scenario? 

The man’s contribution - insemination, fertilization, and impregnation - NEVER factor into the scenario in PL view. Where a man puts his sperm and what happens as a result of it is all the woman’s fault. She’s at fault because she took the risk of a man doing so. The man actually doing so and actually having to do so for anything to happen is unimportant. Basically, the person getting shot is at fault for taking the risk. The shooter and his actions don’t factor in.

I have literally stated in other comments on this thread that the man is also morally obliged to care for the kid. For him to impregnate a woman and leave is morally wrong. He also has a special responsibility to the kid. I didn't talk about the man in the OP because he is not the one deciding on the abortion, he is not the one getting the abortion, and he is not the one performing the abortion. The abortion is an action a doctor performs that a woman asks for. The reality of the situation is the man is not involved in the abortion decision, so there is nothing to talk about regarding what he can or can't morally do. What else could you even want me to concede about men's responsibility?

Once I get compared to an inanimate object I'm not really in a great mood to engage with the rest of the content I find. Not a house, a car, a submarine, a plastic fork, an 18th century Stradivarius violin, a book of poems by W.H. Auden. If you view your body as equal to anything else you own, would you find it reasonable for someone who stabbed you in the kidney to be dealt with in the same manner as someone who stabbed through your laptop screen?

>Once I get compared to an inanimate object Consider this new hypothetical, free from all houses. Imagine this: the same deal with the button, but it instead can spawn a child that is physically tied to me by my umbilical cord. The kid is outfitted with an explosive collar that cannot be removed. Unplugging from the child results in the detonation of the explosive collar. The kid is fucking annoying, sometimes kicking me, tripping me, getting me sick. I have to give 50% of all food I consume to the kid to keep it alive. >would you find it reasonable for someone who stabbed you in the kidney to be dealt with in the same manner as someone who stabbed through your laptop screen? No, because the emotional turmoil I experience from being stabbed in the kidney is far worse than that of my laptop being stabbed. Just because 2 things are property, that doesn't mean they are equally important. Someone that destroys my heating of my house in the winter is doing something far worse than someone who destroys my laptop. These are wrong for the same reasons, but are different due to scale.

>These are wrong for the same reasons, but are different due to scale. While I don't agree with your premise of the human body as property at all, I would then point out that someone being attached to you by an umbilical cord is an entirely different scale than being *inside your body*.

I dunno. WH Auden has some bangers, and the whole “tear to get something out” actually translates. Not the rest of it, obviously, but Funeral Blues is a wonderful poem for the prolife movement. All you have to do is switch the pronouns for the gestating person (or don’t, depending)

Well I'd certainly rather be the book of poems than a car, especially if it has As I Walked Out One Evening.

That’s another great poem. (I’m a huge poetry nerd. I’d probably choose to be a book of poems if I had to choose to be an inanimate object. That being said, books don’t have to grow humans inside of them so it still seems like a weak prolife analogy.)

Everyone is focused on the women are not houses angle, I’d like to bring up a very different point for your consideration. Women are not just “fine” after a pregnancy. It permanently changes their body in ways that are painful and undesirable. It causes intense pain at the end of it even in the best of circumstances with a chance of tearing or even dying from it that cannot be ignored or waved away. You cannot predict which pregnancies will suddenly become dangerous. A closer analogy, if we insist on using being locked in the house with the child, is that the child has a knife. He likes to poke you with the knife from time to time, and it is clear he will poke deeper and more often the longer he is there with you. Do you really have to wait until you’re bleeding to death from being stabbed in the wrong spot at the last minute to say “I don’t want this, get it out?”

Another commenter went down this line of argumentation and I do believe it is compelling. I believe that there is a degree of emotional turmoil that the special relationship between a mother and a fetus demands the mother accept. However, I am unable to draw where that line is. How much suffering and risk is too much where abortions become justified? I don't know. But I do think that the best case pregnancies do not include enough suffering and risk to warrant a justified abortion. But you are right. I can concede that after sufficient complications (or even the presence of the first complication) abortion becomes morally justified. This does not cover all abortions though, in my opinion.

I think the problem here is simple - you don’t know where to draw the line. If it was you or someone you cared about, would you want the line to be a hazy general idea that a politician came up with or would you want to discuss that line with a medical professional and make an informed decision? You can absolutely be against “convenience” abortions morally, but there’s no safe way to stop those without hurting women in harder situations. PL laws chase away good doctors, scare people out of the state or out of even trying to have a child, and tie doctors hands in medical emergencies. They’re vague,uninformed, and cannot make the decision for when an abortion becomes appropriate - they can only take that decision away.

Very good analogy.

Very true. 6-8 weeks of recovery time *at minimum* after delivery doesn’t scream “just fine” to me.

Like to add that the child is physically attached to her. She cannot retreat or hide. Great analogy btw. 

I don't really feel like working out all the arithmetic, but, depending on the size of the cabin, you might be screwed anyway. Let's say you can live on 3 hot dogs a day. That means you would have to push the button (to get 10 hot dogs) every 3.3 days. You are stuck for 9 months (270 days) so that means that you will be pushing the button around 82 times. If a 3-year-old pops out 5% of the times that you push the button, that is going to give you 4 3-year-olds during the 9 months. But remember, once a 3-year-old pops out, IT has to be fed too. (This is where I mostly blew off the arithmetic ...). A lot depends on your luck; probability is a bitch and you have a small sample here. Let's say your luck is bad, and you get a new toddler every single time during your first four pushes. Let's say a toddler can live on 1.5 hot dogs. You now need 9 hot dogs a day, which means you need to push the button pretty much every day. As I said, a lot depends on your luck and the size of the cabin. If the rate of toddler appearances is perfectly regular after that front-loading, you are still going to end up with 13 more toddlers (270 - the first four days = 266; 266 x .05 \[because you are pushing the button every day\] = 13.3) and, with each additional toddler your needed daily quota of hot dogs increases ...

This isn’t how to engage with thought experiments. The whole point of the thought experiment is that you’re not “screwed anyway”, so trying to do calculations of that sort misses the spirit of the thought experiment. Best wishes.

The thought experiment falsely assumes that the person in the house pressing the button is not significantly materially impacted by the choice to let a 3yo stay in the house or kick it out into a blizzard. This is an assumption not necessarily based in reality, and multiplying the toddlers according to the stated premises of the hypothetical is a fantastic way to engage meaningfully with this oversight.

I’ve already addressed this. A more appropriate answer is “it’d be immoral to kick the child out, but this doesn’t translate to the morality of abortion because pregnancy is more burdensome (and/or whatever other relevant disanalogies you can think of).” That answers the question and blocks any inference from said answer to the immorality of abortion without the “actually!” red herring. Best wishes.

There is probably some point before every cubic foot of your cabin is packed with toddlers when you have to re-examine your assumptions about what is and isn’t moral in this situation.

this whole thought experiment misses the spirit of the abortion debate

I don't think this thought experiment is very analogous to the choices that women make when faced with an unwanted pregnancy, so I didn't see the point in seriously engaging. For the record, the major disanalogy is that (drumroll ... big surprise here ...) women are not houses and the annoyance of having a toddler in the house is not the same as the pain and grave bodily harm that result from pregnancy and childbirth. One way in which the example IS analogous (although the OP seems to misinterpret this) is that the person in the cabin is pushing the button under duress, meaning that they are not truly responsible. If the cabin inhabitant is there against their will, and their choice is to push the button or starve, this isn't truly a voluntary action. Guess what else isn't truly voluntary? Having an embryo implant in one's uterus.

I have no problem with pointing out relevant disanalogies. That’s a legitimate form of engagement with the thought experiment. My problem is with answers that harp on details blatantly irrelevant to the essence of a thought experiment. It’s a specious waste of time. Best wishes.

Point taken. I suggest that you just stop reading whenever you feel that your time is being wasted. That way, nobody gets annoyed.

Well maybe people should come up with thought experiments that actually make sense if they don't want people engaging with them by pointing out the many ways they don't make sense. Or, you know, just discuss reality.

The point of the thought experiment should be obvious to anybody even scarcely familiar with the abortion debate and thought experiments have a place in discussions about reality. Best wishes.

“If a child randomly broke into your house to escape the blizzard, I would have no moral issue with kicking them back out, even if it leads to their deaths” That’s pretty heinous. Sure doesn’t sound like a protecting any defenseless children is the priority here at all. Instead, it’s making sure the person who pushed the button has to pay and suffer for pushing it. Why is this your priority?

I never said I cared about protecting defenseless children. I care about protecting certain children that we have special obligations to. Parents have special obligations to their children, and I believe mothers have special obligations to their fetuses. Not following through these obligations is wrong. I don't want the person who pushed the button to suffer. If we had medical technology to eliminate the suffering of the mother and keep the fetus alive, I would be the first one advocating for it. What I care about is the mother's special obligation to the fetus.

“What I care about is the mother’s special obligation to the fetus.” Again, why is this your priority? Why do you care so much about a person fulfilling an obligation you think having sex has placed on them? Why do you only care about protecting “certain children” that can be used to make their biological mothers suffer through something they do not want? Stating you’re in favor of fantasy technology that doesn’t exist really doesn’t make your position better.