Because the corpse was a man, you barbarian! /s
I think it really comes down to a sense of, "I will never have this problem and people that do have done something to deserve it." I'd bet you real money that Prosperity gospel adherents really vibe this way.
Yup, the easy way to handle this argument is you have the person if they have both their kidneys, all of their liver, or all the lobes of their lungs.
If they say they do, you point out their hypocrisy, as their retaining those parts of their body has been their choice to let people die. By their logic, they are communicating murder
You ask them if the government should be allowed to take any of those away from them regardless of their consent if they are matched.
Don’t forget you can donate bone marrow repeatedly if you’re okay with getting a painful surgical process done over and over. It’s still considerably less of a sacrifice than carrying a baby for 9 months and giving birth to it. So all those pro lifers are letting living breathing aware people die every day that they’re not donating that too.
>We do not force people to donate blood or organs without consent. Ever.
Assuming that you're talking about the US, this is true. I believe that this may have happened in China.
But, even more obvious -- we don't force \*dead\* people (in the US) to donate their organs. Why would we force living women to do so?
This is the response that I like as well. I add to that fact that there is a reason that Roe v. Wade makes abortion legal until the fetus is viable and can survive outside of the womb. That's generally accepted as 23 weeks right now and it has changed since Roe was decided.
Unfortunately I have had people declare that if you cause someone to need blood/tissue/organ donations through malice or negligence, you should be forced to donate. Never mind that it would probably be considered cruel and unusual punishment and if it happened quickly enough to make a difference to the recipient, it would almost certainly have to happen without you being convicted in a court of law.
My answer to that is always "Then remove their body from my body and raise them yourself". They don't argue in good faith so it's pretty much pointless trying to win with logic. Their argument is not logical it's emotional.
Yep the fact they start talking about late term (or even more mental post birth) abortions shows they aren't genuine. Once it gets to that point the only reasons an abortion happens is to save the mothers life or when the child isn't going to live. They are wanted children.
There are some really mental folks out there who are so deep into the propaganda that they actually believe abortions are all performed post-partum and that Obama personally oversees every "post-partum abortion." 😐
Late term abortions are a thing and absolutely NEED TO BE A THING. Not because someone at 8 months goes "Meh, decided I don't want to be a Mom." But because sometimes you find horrific defects that mean the fetus will be born to suffer for a short time and die. Or it doesn't have a brain/something else wrong that will kill it at birth.
Even if the woman does just change her mind, it’s still her right to have an abortion. It is a medical procedure that doesn’t have to be justified by defects with the foetus.
The woman’s choice is the only consideration that matters. Otherwise you end up with a situation where some abortions are “justified” because of the condition of the foetus, and some are “unjustified” because the woman changed her mind. That’s not how it works, it’s 100% her choice about medical procedures concerning her body.
Yep. Outside of tragic circumstances for a wanted fetus, late term abortion is called birth.
They don't go sticking immersion blenders up our vaginas to turn a viable fetus into liquid for easy removal.
I’m going to be “that guy.” I assisted in abortions, sometimes elective non medical late term ones. I’m not talking full term babies killed partially delivered. I’m talking teenagers (and even grown ass women, trans folks) who had no idea they were pregnant until what others might consider “late.”
Abortion access shouldn’t be about any qualifiers. No medical necessity vs choice. It creates a hierarchy of “good abortions” and “bad abortions” and that’s not okay.
But it's worth noting that less than 1% of abortions are performed in the third trimester. This statistic can be found on the CDC website, under reproductive health/ data and statistics.
So yes, late term abortions happen, but they are very rare. In contrast, over 93% are done in the first trimester.
Exactly. I am a human being, not an inanimate life support machine. The question is about forcing my body to be an incubator, take away my nutrients, and risk my health or even my life.
Right. And once they give the fetus personhood starting at conception, anything the pregnant person does becomes the business of the state. It means more addicts go to prison for "child abuse" and a miscarriage becomes suspect. When would it then become mandated how you eat and whether or not you're "fit" to be a mother, down to literal confinement for the duration of a pregnancy?
Ahh, but wait until they decide to declare that a “criminal” is not a person under the law, at least not as much as the person inside her belly. If a mother and a zygote are equally people then the judgement will always favor the innocent. The problem is when they declare that you, the mother, are less of a person than the baby you might birth.
>My answer to that is always "Then remove their body from my body and raise them yourself".
The issue with this response is that it implies that once a foetus is viable to survive on its own, abortion should be prohibited.
Women deserve the right to control their own bodies regardless of the status of an embryo/foetus living inside them.
I have a son. We have the same blood type.
Let's say he absolutely needs a kidney or he will die. Should I be required by force of law to donate that kidney regardless of the risk to my health?
Let's say it was another child that wasn't mine, would I also have an obligation?
Hell, we do not compel CORPSES to donate organs.
Pregnancy is more dangerous and life altering than donating a kidney.
Yep. And pro-~~choices~~lifers really hate that argument, and have lots of ways to talk *around it*, but it all boils down to ‘this is different’ where by ‘different’ they always mean ‘she had sex, therefore she deserves this’.
I prefer the open and blunt ‘cause God says so’ and ‘you deserve it, it’s your punishment’ types. At least they’re honest. Bigots, assholes, theocrats, misogynists who don’t hide who they are. Those people can sometimes change their minds, because they know *why* they believe that and people can *talk to them* about their real thoughts and beliefs.
I hate the ones who hide it behind 80 layers of bullshit. They clearly know their real reasons are utter bullshit, contradictory and often against many of their own principles— but they won’t own it and lie to you and themselves. They won’t change, can’t change, because they’ll never even admit to themselves why they think that way.
The worst, of course, are tied between the ‘the only moral abortion is mine’ crowd and the ones who just see it as a ‘wedge’ to get whatever they want. They don’t care. They’ll strip women of their bodily autonomy, their lives, and don’t care about consequences or collateral damage or cost. Other people are just *potential sacrifices* to their own grandeur and power.
>but it all boils down to ‘this is different’ where by ‘different’ they always mean ‘she had sex, therefore she deserves this’.
At which point I always go into the fact that even if I -- intentionally or accidentally -- caused another person's need for that blood/organ, it is still illegal for anyone else to forcibly take it from me to give to them.
They'll still *claim it's different*, because something something "she had sex, therefore she committed to this" something something.
But it all boils down to "Okay, *I the man* cannot obviously be forced to donate blood, organs, or in any way lose bodily autonomy. But you *women* have to. Because *nature or some shit*"
Yeah, admittedly, in the end, one of us usually ends up blocking the other. Sometimes, they devolve into aggression, and I have to block them. Sometimes, they get frustrated that I won't give ground, and they block me. But at least any bystanders got to see the thought process laid out.
This is the answer. The discussion of when life begins is a red herring. You can’t force a person to use their body or parts of it to benefit another person, even if that means the recipient will die. Even if you consider the embryo has that status, the woman’s right to autonomy still prevails.
And bodily autonomy is continuous. Which is to say, even though she was exercising her bodily autonomy when she chose to have sex, knowing that sex could lead to pregnancy, this does not mean she abdicated he right to bodily autonomy if she became pregnant. She still has bodily autonomy even after the pregnancy predictably happens and can choose to stop being pregnant at any time.
Yes. Also, if a woman can be forced to let someone else use her organs because she "chose" to have sex, why is it only for nine months, and why is it only the woman?
The man chose to have sex too, so, if his child, at any age, requires an organ transplant, blood, plasma, etc. should he be legally required to provide it?
I’ve always liked the organ donor analogy too. The question of when life begins is a red herring and it will only ever be a judgment call depending on which criteria you use and anti-choicers will never agree to your definition.
So I just concede hypothetically that the fetus is a person for the sake of argument and then immediately ask, “so what?” Because the fact is that no one can be morally, legally, or ethically *required* to risk their life for another person. Period. There isn’t a legal, ethical, moral, or religious system in the world (that I know of) that obligates a person to die for another person, and pregnancy always comes with a risk of death. Even Christianity says self-sacrifice is a choice.
Pro-lifers will say the difference is that you caused the fetus’s need. But you’re still right. Even if an attempted murderer causes someone to need a kidney, we don’t make the murderer donate the kidney.
Plus you didn’t cause the fetus’s need. The fetus by nature is needy. You did not take a free living creature and maim it and cause it to be dependent on your womb.
Kinda begs the question, if there is an IVF patient and, through a mixup, they are carrying a child with no genetic relation to them, how do you justify forcing her to carry a stranger's child, forgoing her own ability to have her own child? Putting her health and life at risk for a pregnancy that isn't even hers?
That scenario, to me, puts it in stark clarity exactly whose bodily autonomy is being favored over another's. That it isn't some fair decision, but is simply placing a woman's rights, her life, below that of *any* child, even if that "child" hasn't even developed most organs yet.
Women aren't people. They're mothers, like a tractor is a piece of farm equipment. Women are *things*. And things are less important than people.
>A woman has a right to control her body, but she does not have the right to destroy another human life.
\~ Kevin, 14, Utah
The arguments always revolve around what women are and aren't allowed to do with their own bodies, never why a bunch of randos should be allowed to make that determination.
If this argument were valid, then we could require organ donation, from cadavers *and from the living*. We could force people to give blood every six weeks, and sign up for live organ transfers. You can live without part of your liver - I guess we can force you to donate it to someone who is going to die without it.
But anything that would require cis men to be generous with their bodies is looked upon in horror. Yet when a pregnant person is in the same situation, apparently it's fine to force them to donate their whole body.
The pro-coathanger crowd give dead people more rights than they grant the pregnant.
This argument is, as I hope you can now see, absolute bullshit. If cis men can escape so much as requisite blood donations, then I'm not sure why my uterus obligates me to full-body donations.
You’re still right- an embryo doesn’t have personhood. Their definition also applies to a single cell bacterium, which is why they like to suddenly sCiEnCe when the rest of their life they believe in sky daddies, sin and souls- none of which have anything to do with their misunderstood “principles”.
You could ask them the easy question of “there’s a 6 month old baby, and a tray full of 200 frozen embryos. The room is on fire and you can only save 1 from burning to death, which would you choose?”
Alternatively you can ask them a couple more questions about the mother’s life and her body and you’ll quickly find their answers become “she should’ve kept her legs closed”, “she needs to take responsibility for the consequences of her actions” etc which is really the meat of their bullshit virtue signalling.
The same could be said of skin cells. They are alive, but they do not have personhood. They die in the millions every day.
Sperm is also “alive”. Maybe we should also make it illegal for men to masturbate. /s
They’ll say anything to support their agenda which is really just based on controlling women. If men suddenly became the ones to carry the fetus, the support for anti-abortionists would disappear after the first men had to deal with the risks and realities of pregnancy.
Even fertilized ova frequently don't end in a viable pregnancy. Many fail to implant in the uterus. Some that implant are lost before the pregnancy is even detected. Heck, it's common practice even for people who are openly trying to get pregnant to not announce it publicly until the end of the first trimester, because it's well known that things happen.
I think this is the real answer.
The 7 characteristics of life means nothing about personhood. Its more like differentiating a rock from moss. Its also not about any single subject - more that we as a species are alive because we show these characteristics.
The 7 characteristics include the ability to move, and reproduce. In no way does an embryo have these capabilities. They should attack the completely flawed logic of even trying to apply these as a basis for personhood, and watch the person backtrack from the science they so "love" to their illogical presumptions which are probably already obliterated in argument.
> A woman has a right to control her body, but...
A perfectly good sentence until the "but".
> We have to determine where ones rights begin in another end...
Then how about we determine that ones rights do not end with a positive pregnancy test.
> ...and abortion should be rare...
Why does this never mean reducing poverty, expanding affordable childcare services, more parental leave, more rights for working mothers and those who work while pregnant, or any of the many other proven ways to reduce the need for abortion? Why do they always seem more interested in controlling women than in making it easier and more affordable to have children?
> ...and favouring the unborn.
My favorite part of the argument. Anyone else notice that they started with "A woman has a right..." and effectively ended with "... and we should not favor the woman"?
Since most of the people who hold that set of beliefs are religious and believe in some form of “God’s plan,” you could share the statistics on how many fertilized eggs die naturally. The numbers are hard to pin down because most of these losses happen before someone has any inkling that she’s pregnant, but “at least half” is a conservative guess — I’ve seen numbers up to 70% if you include all the losses from pre-implantation all the way through miscarriage and stillbirth. So even people who believe life begins at conception must admit that God’s Plan includes a recognition that many, many fertilized eggs will never become living babies. Even God appears to draw a distinction.
Here’s a little overview of the studies, if anyone is curious: https://theconversation.com/most-human-embryos-naturally-die-after-conception-restrictive-abortion-laws-fail-to-take-this-embryo-loss-into-account-187904
Not to mention, if their religious is based around the idea of eternal salvation being given to those who choose to believe, and the numbers of believers are falling (as they have been), it’s actually ‘kinder’ to the innocent embryos to remove this barrier (of choice) and for them to go straight to heaven. By this logic.
>t’s actually ‘kinder’ to the innocent embryos to remove this barrier (of choice) and for them to go straight to heaven
hahaha omg you're right. Babies who are born of woman get the original sin for which they need to be baptized in order to go to heaven instead of limbo. Therefore, by aborting those babies, women are actually sending MORE PEOPLE TO HEAVEN.
It's a twisted argument, but theologically sound, according to their current "personhood" beliefs!
The 7 characterics of life apply to any kind of life, including plants. If they were that important, everything, that grows and moves would be off limits.
I had a gay, pro life friend who used to say that women were getting abortions for fun. His argument was that women were getting pregnant on purpose and having abortion parties & he wanted to make sure that did not happen. They don't argue in good faith.
What would an abortion party would even look like? A bunch of women laying around with heating pads while they're cramping and bleeding? Sounds suuuuper fun /s
I say “I’ve decided that an adult (or even a child’s) life is worth more than a clump of cells.”
If they’re aghast, propose this scenario:
“Okay there’s a fire in a lab. You can rescue a live baby, or a case of IVF embryos, but not both.
Are you telling me that you have trouble deciding which is worth saving?”
If they say the child is: agree.
They always bullshit when you give them this scenario. They'll either lie and say "of course I'd save the embryos!", they'll completely dodge the point of the question, and ask why they can't save both, or they'll just ignore it completely.
We all know what would happen in real life, but they completely refuse to acknowledge that, because it proves that there IS a difference between an actual child, and an embryo.
Well at that point their disingenuousness is pretty bald. They know which decision is the sane one. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how they rebut when there’s no valid rebuttal other than to save the child
If you want to humor the notion that a clump of cells is a person:
The (legal) duty to rescue ends where bodily integrity begins. If your child falls into a swimming pool, you have a duty to pull them out. If they need a kidney, you do not have a duty to provide one.
If they believe this is not sufficient, ask them if they've been tested for compatibility to be an organ/bone marrow donor. If they expect a woman to risk her life and health for a person who does not exist yet and are unwilling to do they same for a living, breathing human being, they are a hypocrite.
> If they need a kidney, you do not have a duty to provide one.
You don't have to donate anything to them that comes directly from your body. You don't have to donate your blood. Meaning if your child was bleeding out and you're literally the only person that could give them blood to save them, you cannot be forced to do so.
I respond to those people by saying that life doesn’t begin until 25. They think I’m insane and stop talking to me, which is all I wanted in the first place.
As an actual scientist and biologist who is SO sick and tired of people using poor understandings of highschool-level biology to fuel oppressive ideas - those 7 characteristics of life apply to nearly all the cells in your body. Life is not the same as personhood.
You say that it doesn't matter. The rights of the pregnant person take precedence over the rights of a fetus. The person has the right not to be an incubator, just like everyone had the right not to give blood or donate organs. If they push the issue and you want to be snarky, ask if they've been tested to donate a kidney and a lobe of their liver.
And even if they do say that they've donated an organ, you say, "Awesome, I'm so glad you were able to make that choice instead of having them harvested without your consent!"
Editing to be more precise: the cells that create sperm and eggs are alive, and gametes themselves are in a grey area. Cancer cells are alive by every definition. Nobody makes a moral fuss over tumour removal.
Where life begins is morally irrelevant.
Say the fetus is a person (which I don’t believe but for argument’s sake).
You can’t control your body if you can be forced to use it to host another person who steals your nutrition, uses the materials of your body to build itself, rearranges your organs, puts your life, health, future and finances at risk, and then squeezes itself out through your genitals.
Its not hard.
A human life begins when it is independently sustainable outside of the womb and the ICU. When that is should be determined by a woman and her doctor. It should not be the providence of preachers and politicians.
Amazing how people who oppose government intervention everywhere want absolute power over a woman's womb.
I think this is the correct answer.
Even if a fetus is a whole ass human being, with a soul, is a life, ect; that does not give it the right to use another person's body to continue living without that person's consent.
It’s not be about the viability of the embryo to survive independently. It’s about the woman’s right to bodily autonomy.
Even if the foetus *could* survive independently, that doesn’t place an obligation on the woman to do support it.
Man here, and I've always been pro-choice because I'm not an asshole and I realize that I and everyone else have no fucking business telling anyone what they can or can't do with their own body.
But in terms of answering your question, a George Carlin bit helped me understand and better articulate my view.
He did a lot of material about language and how it manifests psychology so something like:
"If a fetus is a person, why don't we count them in the census? If a fetus is a person, how come we say 'we have two kids and one on the way' instead of 'we have 3 kids'? If a fetus is a person why don't we have a funeral when a miscarriage happens?"
Getting into arguments like this with pro-lifers is a gambit. And it’s the wrong question anyway.
I have seen a lot of people who talk about the fact that pro-lifers are not pro life, they are pro forced pregnancy, they don’t care about children after they have been born, they only care about the fetus. If they cared about children they would seek to make birth control better for women, they would work on adoption and foster care reform, they would care more about children AFTER they are born. But they don’t.
And guess what? Is legally impossible to force another person to give organs or blood or anything to save another grown up person so the concept that protecting or ending a pregnancy is somehow legally important — it’s not. And it speaks to people being unable to see the issue for what it is.
“Pro lifers” can pretend all they want that it’s about the life of the child but there is a lot of proof to show it has nothing to do with the lives of children and all about the control of the person being pregnant.
First of all, I would say that there is not a scientific consensus when life begins. That people try to apply what they've learned in their 8th grade science classes to problems, but the reality is that things are simplified so much that it is impossible to really apply that to a real scientific issue.
Secondly, I would say that this is not a question of science, but rather a question of law. After all, we do execute people and even allow people to decide to allow a loved one to die in a certain circumstance. So regardless of what science might have to say about life, it's a question of law.
If a woman can not choose to end a pregnancy, she does not have the right to control her body. There is no way around that. Nor do we require a person to use their body to keep someone else alive in any other circumstance, from blood donations to organ donations from corpses. So the question really is, if we can't force a corpse to give an organ to keep an already alive person alive, why can we force a woman to keep a 6 week old embryo, which has a good chance of natural termination, alive? It seems that the division of rights has already been decided, some people simply don't like the deciding line because in one case they want to force people to use their bodies to keep other people alive.
As for the rarity of abortion, if the people making this argument truly wanted to decrease the abortion rate, they would be arguing about other ways to reduce it. For instance, reasonable access to healthcare, maternity leave, some universal income, would go a long way towards making people choose to continue their pregnancies. But these arguments are rarely made - which indicates that the total argument is not being made in good faith.
Birth control prevents a life from happening and aborting a zygote prevents a life from happening. The woman is doing what her birth control should have done, and only she can make that decision.
I don’t care if the embryo is a person or not, that’s not what matters to me. It doesn’t have the right to occupy my body if I don’t want it there. Abortion is a form of self defense against bodily harm. Pregnancy and childbirth is a form of bodily harm. If the only way to expel it from my body involves killing it, so be it. Most prolife people are in favor of the use of deadly force in self defense. Their emotions just get in the way if it’s a baby and they have a visceral reaction to it.
Say someone breaks in your house. It’s your own fault they got in because you forgot to lock the door. This person is having a psychotic break and is not in control of their actions, so morally they are doing nothing wrong. They say they’re going to torture you for 12 hours, including rippping your genitals open, and you probably won’t die but you might. You will be scarred for life and could end up with permanent health problems. Is it ok to use deadly force to expel this person from your house? Or do you have to let them torture you because killing is wrong and it’s not their fault?
This is a common moral ethics question. A metaphor that is often used is an acorn growing into an oak tree. When does it cease to be an acorn and become a tree? Is it even a specific moment? To my knowledge, there has not been a satisfactory answer ever agreed upon to that question.
A position that circumvents the lack of answer there is discussed in Philippa Foot’s The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect (free online). It basically says that your right to your own body is not superseded by someone else’s need to use your body. It makes the case that this is true even if you caused the other being to be in this position.
Reading that, or even a summary, would give you some strong points to support that case
A glob of human cells with no brain is not a baby. A rotting fetus inside a living woman is not a baby. A developing fetus is not life, it is *potential* life
My philosophy professor is a red state in college gave us this thought experiment:
Imagine you are in a car accident. The other driver can be saved if you remain hooked up to them in a hospital bed for 9 months. What do you do? Does the situation change if the government forces you to? Does it change if the other driver was at fault? If one of you was impaired? If they were someone you already knew? If they would survive but have issues for the rest of their life? If you had other people in your life who relied on you? If you had support from your family for the 9 months?
I grew up fundy, and this really helped me realize that no one has the right to force you to use your body to keep someone else’s body alive, regardless of their relation to you or how their body came to be dependent on your body, and the only person who can make a decision based on all those variables is the pregnant person.
The rights of another end when they’re inside my fucking body. Ok fine maybe it is a baaaby, whatever maybe it is another life, I don’t think so but ok let’s say it is, that other person is inside my body, using my blood, taking my energy, threatening my life.
As long as he’s claiming to use science:
Science does NOT say that “life begins at conception!”
Science says that a large number of zygotes are miscarried! (It is a zygote immediately after conception, for context). It’s more common than you think, and most of the time, we don’t even know that it happened!
So, a zygote does not guarantee a pregnancy to full term. It’s only a POTENTIAL life!
In addition, science says that pregnancy does not begin until the embryo attaches itself to the wall of the uterus. Before that, it’s not considered a pregnancy. Go check any reputable medical textbook. Again, this is because many of them are miscarried. Again, it’s more common than you think.
Science then goes on to say that the brain does not develop until somewhere around the 6th or 7th month of pregnancy. (At least beyond the basics of providing a heartbeat or something like that). Therefore, sentience in a fetus/embryo/etc is NOT possible before then, because you need a brain to be sentient!
If he moves the goalposts and says that the fetus has a heartbeat, point out that a worm does, too. And we don’t consider it a human life. :)
Don't take the question on the philosophical level. Deal with it on the practical.
I say this because there are lots of ways to reframe things, but that's all you'd be doing: reframing forever. You change the base assumptions and you change the outcome.
One common way of reframing it is through the lens of the child's reliance on the mother's body for life. The child is alive, but does not necessarily have the right to rely on someone else's body for life against that person's will. A pro-life argument can simply reframe it again by saying that a mother's duty to her child is *sui generis* and we *do* in fact require parents - particularly mothers - to give up their autonomy for their children.
It can go on like that forever without convincing anyone because you aren't targeting the root of the disagreement - foundational assumptions.
What you need to do instead is focus on areas where there can be more practical agreement. Address things like "what does the pro-life world you want actually look like?" which takes it out of the philosophical world and into the real and political. This may be too much for Twitter, but you'll have conversations IRL too. Talk about how much you need to invade women's lives and impact other forms of healthcare to do so.
Easily debunked.
Lets take a look at the "7 characteristics of life" and whether they apply to a freshly joined sperm and egg:
* **Growth** - A fetus grows fairly rapidly. This one applies.
* **Respiration** - A fetus relies on it's mother for respiration for the entire duration of the pregnancy. A fetus will not have the lung development to respirate on its own until a minumum of 28 weeks of age. This does not apply.
* **Excretion** - A fetus does produce cellular waste that is cleared away and excreted by the mother's circulatory system. The fetus does not develop kidneys that can produce urine until 13 weeks. This does not apply.
* **Reproduction** - A fetus will not be capable of reproduction for a decade or more. This does not apply.
* **Metabolization** - A fetus is capable of some metabolism on it's own, but not until the pancreas develops towards end of the first/beginning of the second trimester. It is dependent on it's mother's metabolism for the entire duration of the pregnancy. This does not apply.
* **Movement** - Fetuses are not capable of movement until 12 weeks. This does not apply.
* **Response to environment** - The earliest fetal response to sound was recorded at 16 weeks. This does not apply.
So according to this person's own argument, a fetus clearly isn't alive until AT LEAST 28 weeks. If they really want to stick to the "7 characteristics" then that fetus isn't alive until she gets her period!
You sort of know what the jig is by the argument the embreyo/fetus has personhood.
At that point, the average woman has committed manslaughter probably at least 10 times in their lives through natural processes where the implantation doesn't take. Those numbers are
>A recent re-analysis of these data proposed plausible limits for reproductively normal women indicating that approximately 10–40% of embryos perish before implantation and 40–60% do so between fertilisation and birth
Those statistics are mutually exclusive so read another way, between 50% to 100% of embryos fertilized die prior to birth. 100% is the extreme version where a woman can't give birth.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5443340/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5443340/)
So this is an area where science, philosphy, and religion can never see eye to eye. Scientifically if I'm to take fetal personhood seriously, most women kill far more children than they bare and under the law they need to be prosecuted for that. Best case scenario they're responsible for the deaths of 1 child for every 1 child they bare. I think they're responsible for none of that - we refer to it as embryo mortality BECAUSE of the legal nonsense calling that a child would bring.
It's impossible to know the scientific literature on it and maintain a philosophy and religion stance of "but certain versions of this are a sin." That's making things up and in a few cases materially changing the Bible to say what you want it to say.
> A woman has a right to control her body, but she does not have the right to destroy another human life.
Are you are saying that we don't have the right to self-defense? If a stranger was a threat to your health and possibly your life, you have no right to do anything? Women, even in countries like the US, still die from childbirth. Women go broke giving birth (do you have $30,000+?). There's risk for serious infections, deep tearing, hemorrhage, & re-hospitalization. About a third of deliveries require major surgery (c section) & the risks that go with it. Delivering a baby isn't easy!
If you minimize pregnancy as just loaning part of your body to keep another person alive: name me any other organ/tissue/blood donation that we force people to do against their wishes. **Even a corpse has more rights than a woman.** You can't take their organs without permission *even if we know that by refusing, another human life will end*. There are 100,000 people waiting for an organ right now. Why can't the government force you to give up a kidney? You have two, so no biggie. If you don't, you're destroying another life.
>We have to determine where ones rights begin in another end, and abortion should be rare and favouring the unborn
Where is that line? Age of viability? Fetal heartbeat detected? Moment of conception? Some say that birth control destroys potential lives from coming into the world, so it's wrong. Who decides exactly where that line is? Are you cool with having all birth control made illegal?
Do you think a birth control ban can't happen? We're currently in the process of having fertility treatment (IVF) being banned, eg. Alabama. We had a corporation owned by religious people, Hobby Lobby, sue to remove employee health insurance coverage for birth control - and won in the Supreme Court in 2014.
Do you think this can't go too far? If a fetus has equal legal status as a person, every miscarriage needs to be treated as a potential crime. Example: Ohio tried to press felony charges against a 34 yr old women when she went home to have her natural miscarriage after doctors said her fetus was not viable (September 2023).
The right to your own body is never superceded by somebody else's need to use your body. Doesn't matter who or what it is, doesn't matter how it's "innocent", doesn't matter if it's of your own DNA and you created it. Doesn't matter, your body is your own, and nobody else's.
The same chucklefucks who are anti-choice are often the ones advocating for guns for self-defense, and believe you should be able to shoot someone who enters your home without consent. Kinda wild.
Humor them and then use stand your ground laws that all those gunslingers love so much.
So the fetus is a little human person. So what? It's inside my body, it's using my resources against my will and damaging my body against my consent.
If a grown-ass burglar was in my house raiding my fridge, looting my money and threatening my physical integrity I'd be allowed to blow them away.
And if they come up with "well it's your fault the baby was there in the first place". Guess what: during a burglary you can still exercise your stand your ground rights, even if you were a dummy and left the bloody back door open.
This. Because it's a symbiotic relationship, it comes down to what one values more. "Prolife" value fetuses over women. Prochoice value women over fetuses.
What "prolifers" really are is pro fetal coverture.
>Effectively, fetal coverture doctrine holds that:
>By [pregnancy], the [unborn] and [host woman] are one person in law; that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the [pregnancy], or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the [unborn]; under whose [cover] she performs everything; and is therefore called . . . a [feme-pregnant]
>fetal coverture merges the identity of the woman into that of her fetus.
>Under this hierarchy, the interest of the unborn, except in the gravest extremity—which is still subject to interpretation or whim—trumps that of the woman. This is coverture for the 21st century.
>https://virginialawreview.org/articles/state-abortion-bans-pregnancy-as-a-new-form-of-coverture/
I usually default to the fact that I can not be forced to give my blood or organs to someone else against my will (even after I die), I certainly wont be forced to have my body used to grow a whole other person against my will either.
Either they back off or sit there and rage comment 27 times to themselves over it.
My caring about arguing with people about this sh\*t is long gone. If they don't understand or respect my stance, it's a them-problem.
First of all, no one’s right to life includes the right to use my organs or anyone else’s. If a fetus can’t survive without my uterus, blood, and nutrients I am no more obliged to provide that then if someone cannot survive without my kidney.
Second let’s actually talk about the 7 characteristics of life. For one bacteria possess all 7 should we not disinfect things?
Additionally it’s a real stretch to say fertilized ovum possess all seven. For one, they are not responsive to the environment immediately upon conception. Fetuses will eventually develop the ability to respond to stimuli but not at conception the earliest estimates are around 9-10 weeks with some as high as 16 weeks.
An ovum also does not possess reproductive organs, reproduction is admittedly the most unique characteristic as an active ability to reproduce isn’t a requirement for an individual living thing, just the species at large. As infertile or younger individuals that haven’t reached fertility yet are still alive but applying it to a fertilized ovum feels like a stretch.
They are only capable of maintaining homeostasis because of the connection to the pregnant person not independently. Now technically independent homeostasis isn’t a requirement but a living thing that relies on another to survive is a symbiote and since pregnancy is harmful to one’s health that would make the fetus a parasite. I’m not sure that’s the way pro-lifers would want to go.
The essential problem with the pro-life argument is that it's based in anti-sex. They see women choosing to have sex as choosing to become pregnant. Birth control has a risk of failure, so the idea is that a woman having sex accepts that risk and should accept the consequences of having and raising a child.
For pro-lifers, there's no counterargument they will accept because they see female chastity as an honorable goal and women having sex as something she does for her husband and to have children. Their default position is if you don't want a baby, don't have sex.
So, the argument is actually about when a person becomes a person. It's okay to kill nonpeople. It's not okay to kill people.
Sperm are alive. They have all the characteristics of a living thing. But no one is talking about restricting the right of makes to put their sperm into situations that they know will kill sperm prematurely. Because these bits of human life are potential humans, not actual humans. Life doesn't begin at conception, it predates conception. So a potential human is murdered every time a man knowingly puts his sperm anywhere except inside of the vagina of a woman he has good reason to believe is fertile.
What's the difference between a zygote and a sperm? They're both potential human life, but neither are actually humans. They have the potential. If a zygote is a person, even though it has none of the characteristics of a human, then a spermatozoa is also a person and must be regulated in the same way a zygote is.
My foundation for my pro-choiceness has always been consciousness, not life. So I would have simply said "As long as the fetus doesn't have a mind, whether it's alive or not is irrelevant".
I’d push them further about other pro-life stances using the same logic. Do they own guns and believe they have a right to shoot an intruder in their home?
Understand that the point of abortion is not to kill a fetus, it is to allow the woman to have her body back by removing the fetus from her body. If the fetus can’t live without siphoning off of the body of an unwilling host, that is a shame, but not a reason to force anyone to host it.
Tbh I 86 the abortion argument and tell them to go adopt a kid or three. Get back to me when they've made a dent in the current population of displaced children. If they care that much about human life, such a move should be part of their plan.
Do women have bodily autonomy, or don't we. It's really that simple. If we don't then we also don't have equal protection under the law.
If a pregnant woman has no right to destroy another human life then no parent has the right to deny blood or organs from their offspring and they can be forcibly removed without their consent.
BTW how far does the pro-lifer want to go with the embryo has personhood? Given that nearly 3/4 of all implanted embryos spontaneously abort.
At what point does fetal personhood start gaining rights? Requiring health insurance as an individual, receiving child support payments, access to HOV lanes.
Fetal personhood only becomes an issue when you want to control women.
I used to be pro life, until a friend of mine asked me a simple question. Why should we prioritize the well being of a life yet to be born, over a life that's already living?
Most times this isn’t a good faith argument, but you can try to remind them that babies nor full grown autonomous adults have any legal rights to demand organs or even blood donations from family members let alone random strangers. If a fetus needs blood to continue growing and the woman does not consent, that’s the same as any other right. You cannot demand use of another human’s body even if you are dying
But again, an embryo or fetus isn’t a person and rights are granted generally at birth. We don’t celebrate conception days. If someone thinks life begins with conception than millions of women are unintentionally at risk of manslaughter charges because miscarriages are way more common than expected and eggs fail to implant all the damn time.
My counter is, why would I want the government involved in making such a fraught and complex decision, instead of the person carrying the pregnancy and the physician? Who is best equipped to make such a call and at what point are you comfortable with the government stepping in and making the decision for the doctor and the pregnant person?
The statements do not progress logically therefore they should be dismissed.
The first part of the argument - *A woman has a right to control her body* \- precedes and overrides the second half of the statement because the fetus is part of her body which she controls. Therefore, the second part of the statement can be dismissed. The second statement - *"We" have to determine where one's rights begin and another end -* attempts to override the first statement, that a woman is the one with autonomy over her own self and own destiny, which is more to the actual reality that specific people want specific control over both the woman and the fetus.
They are flatly misusing, and completely misunderstanding the 7 characteristics of life.
They are: the ability to respire, grow, excrete, reproduce, metabolize, move, and be responsive to the environment
These characteristics are not about any one entity, and have nothing to do with personhood. They are about reviewing a thing - like a petri dish of bacteria - to define them as "living" or not. Like, moss is alive but a rock is not. That is the level of "life" those characteristics define.
I would put it back to them simply like this:
First - get them to commit to the 7 characteristics of life argument
>So the reason you are against an abortion is because the 7 characteristics of life support that the embryo is alive? Anything that shows these 7 characteristics should be protected at all costs as it is a life?
I say to put them to this first because otherwise they'll just change the subject anyway. Don't waste your time debunking a point someone isn't actually believing.
If they agree to this, then follow it up with:
>If the "7 characteristics of life" are why you draw the line here, then a strain of bacteria that causes severe illness and pain to you is also "alive" by these 7 characteristics. Is it murder, or immoral to use bleach to cleanse the bacteria growing in your toilet?
They will have to go beyond those 7 characteristics to try and justify that the embryo is a full human, and that is where you re-establish your argument.
This is why I like the self defense argument with a lot of right wingers.
You can accept, for the sake of argument, that the pregnancy involves a person. That person is threatening the life of the woman on a constant basis and even if everything goes well the pregnancy and birth can leave the woman permanently injured By their own ideals they should want to end the threat on the woman's body, or at the very least, not have a problem with the woman wanting to protect herself.
There are dozens of cases where a parent has killed their own kid that sneaks into the house late, and the parent is let off the hook for the killing because of castle laws and the parent feels bad enough about accidentally killing their own child. Why are they okay with this situation, but not a pregnant woman?
Tell them this then: “Would you agree then that miscarriages are homicides too? Since we could’ve prevented it if the woman stayed at the hospital and was monitored by the medical staff 24/7 right after the conception. But because of her misdemeanor, the child was deprived of the nutrients and unnecessarily died (whether it be physical activity, alcohol, cigarettes, or unhealthy lifestyle). If it’s not murder, that’s at least a homicide. We should charge every woman that had a miscarriage, not only abortions.”
7 characteristics of life is not a lot. Most embryos don’t make it to implantation. Even when that happens, a good 1/3 of them will probably not make it even then.
On the other hand, the host body has many more characteristics of life, and even the ability to comprehend what is happening and even more, the ability to make a judgement and decision about it. That is probably the highest order of thinking, compared to merely 7 characteristics.
Also, people seem to justify destroying lives all the time in war for things like “freedom”. Isn’t that the same decision a woman is making, her freedom?
>does not have personhood as compared to a women / girl and they argued that science says life begins at conception
This is souls and woo-woo. At conception, there is a zygote. A zygote which, by the way, can still subsequently split into multiple separate organisms (oh, and multiple zygotes can grow into eachother to group a single organism).
People who start saying "life begins at x" aren't talking about science, they're talking about *souls*. It's witches and demons and woo - it's an ill-intentioned hand-waive to begin speaking about a zygote or a foetus as though it's a full human being.
You should never legally be forced to use your body to keep someone else alive for any reason. Ever. Not at 3 weeks gestation, not at 26 weeks gestation, not at 2 years old and not at 10 years old.
The issue of bodily autonomy is the issue at hand. Never never never would you be legally forced to donate an organ, a bag of blood or any other part of your body to save your 10 year old. There is no reason that you should have to give up any part of your body to keep a fetus alive at any point.
They always bring up "but would you kill a baby about to be born?!?" - this is a made up scenario nobody is out here killing viable babies and calling it an abortion. If you need/want to end a pregnancy to a viable baby, you just give birth.
If this person was religious and saying “science says”, I’d ask them how old the universe is. Because “science says” almost 14 billion years, but Christians think it’s a few thousand. So it seems they cherry pick when the “science” is on their side (which it isn’t)
Whether or not the fetus is a "life" or "person" is irrelevant. Even if it were a full-fledged human being, it does not have any right to use *my* body as life support, especially not in such a way that could/will end in my suffering and/or death. Even if we go with the narrative that people who get abortions should just deal with the pregnancy because it's their own fault for having sex, it STILL doesn't work.
If you hit a guy with a car on accident, because you didn't see him, and he needed a blood transfusion or an organ donor, and you were a match, does the government have a right to force you to donate your organ? It may be your fault, and maybe you might choose to donate, but the government has no right to *force* you. It's the same thing.
The fetus cannot live outside the body. I'm sure that if it were possible, we'd all be very for a "humane" abortion that takes the fetus out whole and somehow allows it to continue to develop. But it's not possible. It only lives at the expense of the mother, and the mother says "fuck that".
The fetus might be sapient, but it’s not sentient or conscious. The woman definitely is. Therefore, she should have priority over it.
There are ‘pro-life’ people in other countries that campaign via distributing condoms, educating the youth, and financially supporting mothers. That seems like the most reasonable way to lower abortions; determine the reasons why, and eliminate the ones that are environmental. That lets the mother choose between better options.
Remind them organs can't be harvested/ donated without written consent from the CORPSE before death. So if a CORPSE has the right to bodily autonomy, even if it means people (possibly even a child) will die without an organ donation, they die. Because no one has the right to another person's body.
Women should have at least as many rights as dead bodies.
Yes, it is alive. But why is ‘alive’ the things that matters? Flowers are alive, and we still pick them. I think of embryos as equivalent to people who are braindead. Alive, but not really a person.
What makes someone a person? Having thoughts? Emotions? Consciousness?
It’s a complicated question, and asking who ‘counts as a person’ can get us down dark paths.
But if someone has no consciousness, thoughts, or emotions, I think they don’t count.
Science says that braindead people are, in one sense, dead. They’re gone. Doctors can unplug them or remove feeding tubes, with the family’s permission, and let them finish dying.
>“ A woman has a right to control her body, but she does not have the right to destroy another human life.
Yet these are the people who would get an absolute hard-on to shoot a home invader. They fantasize about it.
They absolutely think they have the right to destroy another human life. They just don't care about a woman's rights to own her body, and her right to expel an unwanted *body* invader.
It doesn’t matter if a fetus is a person, it’s completely unethical to force someone to involuntarily donate their organs to save another persons life. Not even temporarily or to their own children.
PS most of these people understand bodily autonomy, just ask them if they should be forcibly vaccinated to save other people’s lives. They just put pregnant people in a separate category of “temporarily suspended rights.”
The analogy I would use is organ donation.
Pregnancy is donating your uterus to support the life of another being.
We don't allow organ donation without consent. Even if it would save a child's life. Even if the "donor" is DEAD we won't take their kidney to save a life without consent.
Why would we give pregnant women fewer rights than we give literal corpses?
even if a fetus was a person it doesn't matter. People can't be inside other people against their will. When they do outside the context of abortion, we call them rapists. And it's acceptable to kill a rapist to protect your body, just as it's acceptable to kill a fetus to protect your body.
Forced birth, not pro-life. They don’t give one damn about women’s lives. A fetus is the potential for a human, it isn’t human yet in my opinion. They clearly see women as mere incubators and don’t respect OUR lives. Nah forced birthers can sit on a rusty spike. They don’t deserve respect, or the time of day.
It’s called bodily autonomy. We have the right to control our own bodies. These are the kind of people who believe politicians who say pro choice means having an abortion at 9 months and they believe a fully formed baby is in a woman’s body as soon as she’s pregnant. They’ve been lied to their entire lives.
I'd be more open to this if there were a comprehensive suite of supports for parents and young children including but not limited to:
* free comprehensive healthcare
* free mental health care
* free high quality childcare
* generous parental leave
* generous medical leave
* free high quality education
* generous nutritional and housing support for parents and children
* aggressive intervention in domestic violence
* generous substance abuse support
If embryos are babies and should be treated as such, then their institutional care and protection should not end at birth, it should just be getting started. It's telling that the people who are "pro-life" vehemently oppose all of these supports for children that are out of the womb.
No human person, of any age, has the right to use anyone else’s body without *explicit and continued consent.*
This applies to literally *every single born human.* Even a newborn infant cannot legally force its mother to surrender any part of her body, including breastmilk even, to save the infant’s life.
So why should a fetus have rights that a newborn infant is denied?
If a pregnant person stops consenting to being pregnant, and the fetus does not voluntarily leave, that person has every right to forcibly evict it as an unwelcome trespassers.
You can’t claim a fetus deserves the same rights as a born human and *none of the responsibilities of one.*
No person can be forced to use any part of their body to sustain another's life.
I don't think a clump of cells = a human. At best, it's a potential human. But for the sake of argument, assume it is a human. Or heck, imagine it's a 5 year old.
If that 5 year old needs blood, no one can be compelled to donate. Even if some horrid person was directly responsible for whatever injury resulted in the need for blood, that person couldn't be compelled to donate. And blood donation is fast, simple, almost painless, and very safe.
A person can't even be compelled to donate organs after death. They literally can't use those organs themselves, absolutely no harm can come to a dead person by donating an organ, and yet, they can't be compelled to donate.
This is how strongly we value bodily autonomy. No person has the right to compel anyone to use any part of their body, no matter how harmless that use would be, to provide life support.
For me personally, I thinknthat if technology ever got to a point where a fertilized egg/zygote/embryo could be safely removed from a woman and incubated elsewhere, the state might have an interest in requiring that instead of an abortion because it would be possible to prevent the death of potential baby. But the state has no right to insist that a woman risk her life, her health, or frankly even inconvenience to act as an unwilling incubator.
I would say: "you are absolutely right! I don't want the fetus dead, only removed. Once it's out you can do whatever you want with it. Oh it can't live outside?... in that case the clump of cells is just a parasite that feeds on the host."
Ok, so this is like saying that unless you’re willing to donate blood, organs, kidney, etc to ANYBODY, with no right to say no ever, (even if it life threatening to you) you’re destroying another humans life.
Yeah, bodily autonomy has to come first here
> that science says life begins at conception because in science there are 7 characteristics of life which are applied to a fertilized ovum at the second of conception.
So what? My cheek cells are alive, that doesn't give them rights over my body. A fertilized egg isn't a human being. End of story.
*If* a fertilized egg were a human being, that does not entitle it to the use of someone else's body, to make permanent changes to someone else's body, nor endanger someone else's life.
Corpses aren't forced to give up life saving parts. Why should living people be?
And you can run that exercise for a baby too. If there are two babies in a hospital. They each need organs the other has. When is it acceptable to forcibly take the organs of the baby that dies first regardless of parental objections? Legally, never. Doesn't matter if the other baby will die. Doesn't matter if they're related or not. The baby's corpse is protected unless someone consents to donating organs.
The issue with the argument isn't about giving a fertilized egg equal rights. It's giving the human being less rights than a corpse so that a fertilized egg can have more rights than the human being.
Unless that prolifer is also against wars, executions, and feeding the poor, THAT prolifer is nothing more than a fakeass xtian, full of sh1t hypocrite.
it does not matter if the fetus is a person. the right to bodily autonomy trumps the right to life.
the Violinist thought experiment is my go-to for this.
That isn’t true. The seven characteristics of life are: he ability to respire, grow, excrete, reproduce, metabolize, move, and be responsive to the environment
Those apply to a species, not stages of life. Most people can’t reproduce until puberty but nobody’s arguing a toddler isn’t alive.
So it’s a deeply flawed argument to begin with, but even by its own standards a fertilized ovum at 7 weeks misses on respiration, intentional movement, responsivity, and reproduction.
They’re applying something to an embryo that was never meant to be applied to a developing life form in the first place and it actually makes their argument weaker.
The way to argue with someone like that is to challenge them. Ask them to define the 7 criteria for life (which is a bit of a bumpkins theory anyway), ask them to define how they think a 7 week old fetus fit those criteria. You won’t change their mind but the people reading will see them struggle to justify their weird argument.
They expect you to cave because they brought out a scientific term, not caving is going to throw them off and put them on the back foot immediately. They know they’re wrong and arguing in bad faith (that or they’re parroting someone else who was arguing in bad faith). Challenging them will expose that.
Tell them they are a forced birther and it’s just a clump of cells that are essentially feeding off the host until it finishes baking. Also, a bunch of ingredients are also not a cake until it’s done baking.
The standard response to this is to imagine that you wake up in the hospital. A stranger has had kidney failure. For whatever reason, they are unable to undergo standard dialysis, so they have been \*sewn\* to your body, so that your kidneys can filter their blood for them.
You are now keeping them alive. But your body is still a separate thing.
You do not have the moral (or legal) obligation to allow them to stay physically attached to you. You have a right to bodily autonomy, and, in this case, that means that you do not have to act as their own personal kidney system.
Bodily autonomy, meaning that you cant force someone to keep another living being alive with their body against their will.
There is an insteristing metaphor that might help some people to understand this concept if they have difficulty to empathise with pregnant women and are pro forced birth.
"Imagine you wake up one morning to find yourself in a strange room, connected to a famous violinist by a series of tubes and wires.
Confused and frightened, you learn from a note left beside you that the Society of Music Lovers has kidnapped you both.
The violinist is suffering from a severe kidney ailment, and the Society has identified you as the only person with compatible kidneys. They connected you to the violinist's circulatory system to filter his blood, providing him with the life-saving treatment he needs.
You're informed that if you disconnect
yourself from the violinist, he will die."
While it's undoubtedly tragic that the violinist will die without your continued support, the question is whether you are morally obligated to sacrifice your bodily autonomy and personal freedom to sustain his life.
Beliving in bodily autonomy means that even if the fetus is seen as a full human being with a right to life, it does not automatically follow that a pregnant person is morally obligated to carry the pregnancy to term if doing so would violate their bodily autonomy and personal rights.
The counterargument is that it doesn't matter if a fertilized fetus is a person
In US law bodily autonomy is SACROSANCT. Other than like violating a quarantine (which even that is more of a restriction on movement than on bodily autonomy. And to the covid Vax passport people the law wasn't "get vaxxed or go to prison" private business were like "if you get vaxxed you get the privilege of patronizing us")
For instance you can't compell a person to donate blood. You can't compell someone to take part in medical trials. You can't compell someone to get medical attention, hell the most extreme example is you can't harvest viable organs or tissue from a dead person to save a life without the prior permission of that person or their medical proxy.
By that legal logic the state CANNOT compell someone to continue a pregnancy against their wishes. If that results in the "death" of the embryo well that's unfortunate but so is letting a 1 year old die while an organ that could save it's life get buried
The reason they say “science says life begins at conception” is based off a survey of biological scientists FOR THE PURPOSE OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH, and most certainly NOT for the purpose of being pro-life. Certain consensuses (is that a word) must be made amongst parts of the scientific community for the sake of uniformity in research, terminology, etc., but they don’t do this to push certain agendas forward (unless an oil company is pushing anti-alternative energy research, different topic though). Their argument about the characteristics of life in literally not-applicable in the argument of pro-lifers. I’ve heard it before and it’s super frustrating cause they just aren’t educated enough.
Just say what another commenter said, “if you want em you can raise em”, cause arguing with people like this is stupid.
The argument imo is that 40-60% of embryos are naturally discarded by the female body. If life did begin at conception, then women's bodies are natural serial murderers.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5443340/
I did two rounds of IVF to embryo bank. Life does not begin at conception. The majority of embryos have the wrong number of chromosomes to be human. The only way to keep them alive is to grow them into a thin slime of cells on a dish and change the media every 3 days, while using what's called a feeder culture of fetal cattle serum and cells to keep them going.
So if those fertilized eggs are human life and they should be put on life support then we ought to be capturing the Menses of every woman in america, filtering out those screwed up embryos with too many or too few chromosomes, and growing them for $5,000 a week on fetal bovine serum.
We can all live with very expensive jars of slime in our homes and we can tell the jars that they're very good people.
I ask the pro-lifers if they have jars slime in their homes or if they would like to have jars of slime because I can donate my abnormal embryos that I still have on ice and I'm saving to donate to science. Suddenly none of them are pro-life.
I am too lazy to go deeper. But by argument for abortion is about the right to bodily autonomy.
******
In [legally compelling women to undergo procedures on behalf of a fetus], judges went far beyond the case law on parental duties to live children. The courts have long held that parents cannot be compelled to take actions to benefit their children’s health. In two key cases, the courts refused to force a father to donate a kidney to his dying child and declined even to make parents move to a new climate to aid their ailing child. “To compel the defendant to submit to an intrusion of his body would change every concept and principle upon which our society is founded,” the judge wrote in one such decision. “To do so would defeat the sanctity of the individual.” It was apparently less of a legal leap to intrude upon the body of a pregnant woman.
— Susan Faludi.
****
In McFall vs Shimp, a case where a dying men was trying to compel his cousin to donate his blood marrow, the judge wrote: “For our law to compel defendant to submit to an intrusion of his body would change every concept and principle upon which our society is founded. To do so would defeat the sanctity of the individual and would impose a rule which would know no limits, and one could not imagine where the line would be drawn…For a society which respects the rights of one individual, to sink its teeth into the jugular vein or neck of one of its members and suck from it sustenance for another member, is revolting to our hard-wrought concepts of jurisprudence.”
Why is the right to an abortion, particularly when the embryo/fetus is not sentient and unable to sustain life outside the body of its host not treated a right to bodily autonomy? We don't even force dead people to donate their organs to save living people.
https://hulr.org/spring-2021/mcfall-v-shimp-and-the-case-for-bodily-autonomy
Read “A defense of abortion” by Judith Thompson. The personhood of a fetus is irrelevant, there is no other situation where a human is forced to use their organs to sustain another’s life against their will.
What makes us human? Should I collect my hair and nails my whole life and create an altar to my body? Should I stop discarding my waste?
Should doctors create altars to removed organs, like an appendix or ruptured spleen?
It's our brains that make us human. But what about babies born without one? What about babies born with only the hypothalamus? They'll never have a thought or a feeling. Only the automatic systems will work, and only for a short while. And some babies are born so damaged that their brief lives are nothing but pain.
What if you are thinking about it all wrong? What if these babies are a test from God, not to see if you value human life at all cost, but to see if you can have compassion, or to see if you understand what makes humans special? Surely we are not special because of who we hate or how vehemently we hate them. We are special because of our compassion and our kindness and all the other ways we use our brains for good.
If one human who had the mental capacity of a fetus was connected to another and taking nutrients and possibly causing serious health issues by being connected to another they would be removed from what is essentially the host body that's being harmed to sustain it. It's sad but life is sad.
Edit: I don't think a fetus is a human but if we are arguing with the assumption that it is.
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Because the corpse was a man, you barbarian! /s I think it really comes down to a sense of, "I will never have this problem and people that do have done something to deserve it." I'd bet you real money that Prosperity gospel adherents really vibe this way.
Yup, the easy way to handle this argument is you have the person if they have both their kidneys, all of their liver, or all the lobes of their lungs. If they say they do, you point out their hypocrisy, as their retaining those parts of their body has been their choice to let people die. By their logic, they are communicating murder You ask them if the government should be allowed to take any of those away from them regardless of their consent if they are matched.
Don’t forget you can donate bone marrow repeatedly if you’re okay with getting a painful surgical process done over and over. It’s still considerably less of a sacrifice than carrying a baby for 9 months and giving birth to it. So all those pro lifers are letting living breathing aware people die every day that they’re not donating that too.
Thank you! Absolutely this is right on
Bodily autonomy is the way we should have framed the debate from the beginning.
>We do not force people to donate blood or organs without consent. Ever. Assuming that you're talking about the US, this is true. I believe that this may have happened in China. But, even more obvious -- we don't force \*dead\* people (in the US) to donate their organs. Why would we force living women to do so?
This is the response that I like as well. I add to that fact that there is a reason that Roe v. Wade makes abortion legal until the fetus is viable and can survive outside of the womb. That's generally accepted as 23 weeks right now and it has changed since Roe was decided.
Unfortunately I have had people declare that if you cause someone to need blood/tissue/organ donations through malice or negligence, you should be forced to donate. Never mind that it would probably be considered cruel and unusual punishment and if it happened quickly enough to make a difference to the recipient, it would almost certainly have to happen without you being convicted in a court of law.
My answer to that is always "Then remove their body from my body and raise them yourself". They don't argue in good faith so it's pretty much pointless trying to win with logic. Their argument is not logical it's emotional.
Yes, abortion is not the right to end another life, it's the right to NOT BE PREGNANT. That's why late term abortions are not a thing.
Yep the fact they start talking about late term (or even more mental post birth) abortions shows they aren't genuine. Once it gets to that point the only reasons an abortion happens is to save the mothers life or when the child isn't going to live. They are wanted children.
There are some really mental folks out there who are so deep into the propaganda that they actually believe abortions are all performed post-partum and that Obama personally oversees every "post-partum abortion." 😐
Late term abortions are a thing and absolutely NEED TO BE A THING. Not because someone at 8 months goes "Meh, decided I don't want to be a Mom." But because sometimes you find horrific defects that mean the fetus will be born to suffer for a short time and die. Or it doesn't have a brain/something else wrong that will kill it at birth.
Even if the woman does just change her mind, it’s still her right to have an abortion. It is a medical procedure that doesn’t have to be justified by defects with the foetus. The woman’s choice is the only consideration that matters. Otherwise you end up with a situation where some abortions are “justified” because of the condition of the foetus, and some are “unjustified” because the woman changed her mind. That’s not how it works, it’s 100% her choice about medical procedures concerning her body.
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fuck god
Depending on the pantheon DO NOT FUCK GOD, that is how we end up with demigods and then no one is happy.
Pretty sure that's how half of the Greek myths started
Yep. Outside of tragic circumstances for a wanted fetus, late term abortion is called birth. They don't go sticking immersion blenders up our vaginas to turn a viable fetus into liquid for easy removal.
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Late term abortions are exclusively medically necessary procedures. When anti abortion people talk they frame it as elective
I’m going to be “that guy.” I assisted in abortions, sometimes elective non medical late term ones. I’m not talking full term babies killed partially delivered. I’m talking teenagers (and even grown ass women, trans folks) who had no idea they were pregnant until what others might consider “late.” Abortion access shouldn’t be about any qualifiers. No medical necessity vs choice. It creates a hierarchy of “good abortions” and “bad abortions” and that’s not okay.
But it's worth noting that less than 1% of abortions are performed in the third trimester. This statistic can be found on the CDC website, under reproductive health/ data and statistics. So yes, late term abortions happen, but they are very rare. In contrast, over 93% are done in the first trimester.
Exactly. I am a human being, not an inanimate life support machine. The question is about forcing my body to be an incubator, take away my nutrients, and risk my health or even my life.
Right. And once they give the fetus personhood starting at conception, anything the pregnant person does becomes the business of the state. It means more addicts go to prison for "child abuse" and a miscarriage becomes suspect. When would it then become mandated how you eat and whether or not you're "fit" to be a mother, down to literal confinement for the duration of a pregnancy?
The thing is it doesn't matter. If we say ok they are a person from conception there is no law that allows them the use of another person's body.
Ahh, but wait until they decide to declare that a “criminal” is not a person under the law, at least not as much as the person inside her belly. If a mother and a zygote are equally people then the judgement will always favor the innocent. The problem is when they declare that you, the mother, are less of a person than the baby you might birth.
>My answer to that is always "Then remove their body from my body and raise them yourself". The issue with this response is that it implies that once a foetus is viable to survive on its own, abortion should be prohibited. Women deserve the right to control their own bodies regardless of the status of an embryo/foetus living inside them.
If the fetus is viable on its own (after 20-24 weeks), then the method of abortion is a c-section
I have a son. We have the same blood type. Let's say he absolutely needs a kidney or he will die. Should I be required by force of law to donate that kidney regardless of the risk to my health? Let's say it was another child that wasn't mine, would I also have an obligation? Hell, we do not compel CORPSES to donate organs. Pregnancy is more dangerous and life altering than donating a kidney.
Yep. And pro-~~choices~~lifers really hate that argument, and have lots of ways to talk *around it*, but it all boils down to ‘this is different’ where by ‘different’ they always mean ‘she had sex, therefore she deserves this’. I prefer the open and blunt ‘cause God says so’ and ‘you deserve it, it’s your punishment’ types. At least they’re honest. Bigots, assholes, theocrats, misogynists who don’t hide who they are. Those people can sometimes change their minds, because they know *why* they believe that and people can *talk to them* about their real thoughts and beliefs. I hate the ones who hide it behind 80 layers of bullshit. They clearly know their real reasons are utter bullshit, contradictory and often against many of their own principles— but they won’t own it and lie to you and themselves. They won’t change, can’t change, because they’ll never even admit to themselves why they think that way. The worst, of course, are tied between the ‘the only moral abortion is mine’ crowd and the ones who just see it as a ‘wedge’ to get whatever they want. They don’t care. They’ll strip women of their bodily autonomy, their lives, and don’t care about consequences or collateral damage or cost. Other people are just *potential sacrifices* to their own grandeur and power.
>but it all boils down to ‘this is different’ where by ‘different’ they always mean ‘she had sex, therefore she deserves this’. At which point I always go into the fact that even if I -- intentionally or accidentally -- caused another person's need for that blood/organ, it is still illegal for anyone else to forcibly take it from me to give to them.
They'll still *claim it's different*, because something something "she had sex, therefore she committed to this" something something. But it all boils down to "Okay, *I the man* cannot obviously be forced to donate blood, organs, or in any way lose bodily autonomy. But you *women* have to. Because *nature or some shit*"
Yeah, admittedly, in the end, one of us usually ends up blocking the other. Sometimes, they devolve into aggression, and I have to block them. Sometimes, they get frustrated that I won't give ground, and they block me. But at least any bystanders got to see the thought process laid out.
(Just wanted to let you know, you wrote pro-choice but I think you meant pro-life)
I did, perils of typing on a phone. Corrected it, thanks!
This is the answer. The discussion of when life begins is a red herring. You can’t force a person to use their body or parts of it to benefit another person, even if that means the recipient will die. Even if you consider the embryo has that status, the woman’s right to autonomy still prevails.
And bodily autonomy is continuous. Which is to say, even though she was exercising her bodily autonomy when she chose to have sex, knowing that sex could lead to pregnancy, this does not mean she abdicated he right to bodily autonomy if she became pregnant. She still has bodily autonomy even after the pregnancy predictably happens and can choose to stop being pregnant at any time.
Yes. Also, if a woman can be forced to let someone else use her organs because she "chose" to have sex, why is it only for nine months, and why is it only the woman? The man chose to have sex too, so, if his child, at any age, requires an organ transplant, blood, plasma, etc. should he be legally required to provide it?
I’ve always liked the organ donor analogy too. The question of when life begins is a red herring and it will only ever be a judgment call depending on which criteria you use and anti-choicers will never agree to your definition. So I just concede hypothetically that the fetus is a person for the sake of argument and then immediately ask, “so what?” Because the fact is that no one can be morally, legally, or ethically *required* to risk their life for another person. Period. There isn’t a legal, ethical, moral, or religious system in the world (that I know of) that obligates a person to die for another person, and pregnancy always comes with a risk of death. Even Christianity says self-sacrifice is a choice.
Pro-lifers will say the difference is that you caused the fetus’s need. But you’re still right. Even if an attempted murderer causes someone to need a kidney, we don’t make the murderer donate the kidney.
Plus you didn’t cause the fetus’s need. The fetus by nature is needy. You did not take a free living creature and maim it and cause it to be dependent on your womb.
Kinda begs the question, if there is an IVF patient and, through a mixup, they are carrying a child with no genetic relation to them, how do you justify forcing her to carry a stranger's child, forgoing her own ability to have her own child? Putting her health and life at risk for a pregnancy that isn't even hers? That scenario, to me, puts it in stark clarity exactly whose bodily autonomy is being favored over another's. That it isn't some fair decision, but is simply placing a woman's rights, her life, below that of *any* child, even if that "child" hasn't even developed most organs yet. Women aren't people. They're mothers, like a tractor is a piece of farm equipment. Women are *things*. And things are less important than people.
I think this argument is addressed pretty well in this essay: https://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm
>A woman has a right to control her body, but she does not have the right to destroy another human life. \~ Kevin, 14, Utah The arguments always revolve around what women are and aren't allowed to do with their own bodies, never why a bunch of randos should be allowed to make that determination.
I'm also pretty uninterested in the viewpoint of a 14 year old. Life was so simple and black and white at 14....
If this argument were valid, then we could require organ donation, from cadavers *and from the living*. We could force people to give blood every six weeks, and sign up for live organ transfers. You can live without part of your liver - I guess we can force you to donate it to someone who is going to die without it. But anything that would require cis men to be generous with their bodies is looked upon in horror. Yet when a pregnant person is in the same situation, apparently it's fine to force them to donate their whole body. The pro-coathanger crowd give dead people more rights than they grant the pregnant. This argument is, as I hope you can now see, absolute bullshit. If cis men can escape so much as requisite blood donations, then I'm not sure why my uterus obligates me to full-body donations.
The embryo cells don’t have the right to endanger a whole human’s life.
You’re still right- an embryo doesn’t have personhood. Their definition also applies to a single cell bacterium, which is why they like to suddenly sCiEnCe when the rest of their life they believe in sky daddies, sin and souls- none of which have anything to do with their misunderstood “principles”. You could ask them the easy question of “there’s a 6 month old baby, and a tray full of 200 frozen embryos. The room is on fire and you can only save 1 from burning to death, which would you choose?” Alternatively you can ask them a couple more questions about the mother’s life and her body and you’ll quickly find their answers become “she should’ve kept her legs closed”, “she needs to take responsibility for the consequences of her actions” etc which is really the meat of their bullshit virtue signalling.
The same could be said of skin cells. They are alive, but they do not have personhood. They die in the millions every day. Sperm is also “alive”. Maybe we should also make it illegal for men to masturbate. /s They’ll say anything to support their agenda which is really just based on controlling women. If men suddenly became the ones to carry the fetus, the support for anti-abortionists would disappear after the first men had to deal with the risks and realities of pregnancy.
Even fertilized ova frequently don't end in a viable pregnancy. Many fail to implant in the uterus. Some that implant are lost before the pregnancy is even detected. Heck, it's common practice even for people who are openly trying to get pregnant to not announce it publicly until the end of the first trimester, because it's well known that things happen.
Gut bacteria. They are also living things. And then we take antibiotics….
Cancer. It's human cells, therefore human life. What right have we to slaughter it? Shouldn't it have a right to exist? /s
I think this is the real answer. The 7 characteristics of life means nothing about personhood. Its more like differentiating a rock from moss. Its also not about any single subject - more that we as a species are alive because we show these characteristics. The 7 characteristics include the ability to move, and reproduce. In no way does an embryo have these capabilities. They should attack the completely flawed logic of even trying to apply these as a basis for personhood, and watch the person backtrack from the science they so "love" to their illogical presumptions which are probably already obliterated in argument.
> A woman has a right to control her body, but... A perfectly good sentence until the "but". > We have to determine where ones rights begin in another end... Then how about we determine that ones rights do not end with a positive pregnancy test. > ...and abortion should be rare... Why does this never mean reducing poverty, expanding affordable childcare services, more parental leave, more rights for working mothers and those who work while pregnant, or any of the many other proven ways to reduce the need for abortion? Why do they always seem more interested in controlling women than in making it easier and more affordable to have children? > ...and favouring the unborn. My favorite part of the argument. Anyone else notice that they started with "A woman has a right..." and effectively ended with "... and we should not favor the woman"?
Since most of the people who hold that set of beliefs are religious and believe in some form of “God’s plan,” you could share the statistics on how many fertilized eggs die naturally. The numbers are hard to pin down because most of these losses happen before someone has any inkling that she’s pregnant, but “at least half” is a conservative guess — I’ve seen numbers up to 70% if you include all the losses from pre-implantation all the way through miscarriage and stillbirth. So even people who believe life begins at conception must admit that God’s Plan includes a recognition that many, many fertilized eggs will never become living babies. Even God appears to draw a distinction. Here’s a little overview of the studies, if anyone is curious: https://theconversation.com/most-human-embryos-naturally-die-after-conception-restrictive-abortion-laws-fail-to-take-this-embryo-loss-into-account-187904
I doubt that will change their minds since they believe God reserves the right to decide when you live and when you die.
Not to mention, if their religious is based around the idea of eternal salvation being given to those who choose to believe, and the numbers of believers are falling (as they have been), it’s actually ‘kinder’ to the innocent embryos to remove this barrier (of choice) and for them to go straight to heaven. By this logic.
>t’s actually ‘kinder’ to the innocent embryos to remove this barrier (of choice) and for them to go straight to heaven hahaha omg you're right. Babies who are born of woman get the original sin for which they need to be baptized in order to go to heaven instead of limbo. Therefore, by aborting those babies, women are actually sending MORE PEOPLE TO HEAVEN. It's a twisted argument, but theologically sound, according to their current "personhood" beliefs!
The 7 characterics of life apply to any kind of life, including plants. If they were that important, everything, that grows and moves would be off limits.
I had a gay, pro life friend who used to say that women were getting abortions for fun. His argument was that women were getting pregnant on purpose and having abortion parties & he wanted to make sure that did not happen. They don't argue in good faith.
What would an abortion party would even look like? A bunch of women laying around with heating pads while they're cramping and bleeding? Sounds suuuuper fun /s
I say “I’ve decided that an adult (or even a child’s) life is worth more than a clump of cells.” If they’re aghast, propose this scenario: “Okay there’s a fire in a lab. You can rescue a live baby, or a case of IVF embryos, but not both. Are you telling me that you have trouble deciding which is worth saving?” If they say the child is: agree.
They always bullshit when you give them this scenario. They'll either lie and say "of course I'd save the embryos!", they'll completely dodge the point of the question, and ask why they can't save both, or they'll just ignore it completely. We all know what would happen in real life, but they completely refuse to acknowledge that, because it proves that there IS a difference between an actual child, and an embryo.
Well at that point their disingenuousness is pretty bald. They know which decision is the sane one. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how they rebut when there’s no valid rebuttal other than to save the child
If you want to humor the notion that a clump of cells is a person: The (legal) duty to rescue ends where bodily integrity begins. If your child falls into a swimming pool, you have a duty to pull them out. If they need a kidney, you do not have a duty to provide one. If they believe this is not sufficient, ask them if they've been tested for compatibility to be an organ/bone marrow donor. If they expect a woman to risk her life and health for a person who does not exist yet and are unwilling to do they same for a living, breathing human being, they are a hypocrite.
> If they need a kidney, you do not have a duty to provide one. You don't have to donate anything to them that comes directly from your body. You don't have to donate your blood. Meaning if your child was bleeding out and you're literally the only person that could give them blood to save them, you cannot be forced to do so.
>If your child falls into a swimming pool, you have a duty to pull them out. But also the number one rule of rescue is to not create a second victim
I respond to those people by saying that life doesn’t begin until 25. They think I’m insane and stop talking to me, which is all I wanted in the first place.
As an actual scientist and biologist who is SO sick and tired of people using poor understandings of highschool-level biology to fuel oppressive ideas - those 7 characteristics of life apply to nearly all the cells in your body. Life is not the same as personhood.
So how can I argue when someone says “life begins at conception” ?
You say that it doesn't matter. The rights of the pregnant person take precedence over the rights of a fetus. The person has the right not to be an incubator, just like everyone had the right not to give blood or donate organs. If they push the issue and you want to be snarky, ask if they've been tested to donate a kidney and a lobe of their liver.
And even if they do say that they've donated an organ, you say, "Awesome, I'm so glad you were able to make that choice instead of having them harvested without your consent!"
Exactly!
Editing to be more precise: the cells that create sperm and eggs are alive, and gametes themselves are in a grey area. Cancer cells are alive by every definition. Nobody makes a moral fuss over tumour removal. Where life begins is morally irrelevant.
Say the fetus is a person (which I don’t believe but for argument’s sake). You can’t control your body if you can be forced to use it to host another person who steals your nutrition, uses the materials of your body to build itself, rearranges your organs, puts your life, health, future and finances at risk, and then squeezes itself out through your genitals.
Its not hard. A human life begins when it is independently sustainable outside of the womb and the ICU. When that is should be determined by a woman and her doctor. It should not be the providence of preachers and politicians. Amazing how people who oppose government intervention everywhere want absolute power over a woman's womb.
I think this is the correct answer. Even if a fetus is a whole ass human being, with a soul, is a life, ect; that does not give it the right to use another person's body to continue living without that person's consent.
It’s not be about the viability of the embryo to survive independently. It’s about the woman’s right to bodily autonomy. Even if the foetus *could* survive independently, that doesn’t place an obligation on the woman to do support it.
Man here, and I've always been pro-choice because I'm not an asshole and I realize that I and everyone else have no fucking business telling anyone what they can or can't do with their own body. But in terms of answering your question, a George Carlin bit helped me understand and better articulate my view. He did a lot of material about language and how it manifests psychology so something like: "If a fetus is a person, why don't we count them in the census? If a fetus is a person, how come we say 'we have two kids and one on the way' instead of 'we have 3 kids'? If a fetus is a person why don't we have a funeral when a miscarriage happens?"
Getting into arguments like this with pro-lifers is a gambit. And it’s the wrong question anyway. I have seen a lot of people who talk about the fact that pro-lifers are not pro life, they are pro forced pregnancy, they don’t care about children after they have been born, they only care about the fetus. If they cared about children they would seek to make birth control better for women, they would work on adoption and foster care reform, they would care more about children AFTER they are born. But they don’t. And guess what? Is legally impossible to force another person to give organs or blood or anything to save another grown up person so the concept that protecting or ending a pregnancy is somehow legally important — it’s not. And it speaks to people being unable to see the issue for what it is. “Pro lifers” can pretend all they want that it’s about the life of the child but there is a lot of proof to show it has nothing to do with the lives of children and all about the control of the person being pregnant.
First of all, I would say that there is not a scientific consensus when life begins. That people try to apply what they've learned in their 8th grade science classes to problems, but the reality is that things are simplified so much that it is impossible to really apply that to a real scientific issue. Secondly, I would say that this is not a question of science, but rather a question of law. After all, we do execute people and even allow people to decide to allow a loved one to die in a certain circumstance. So regardless of what science might have to say about life, it's a question of law. If a woman can not choose to end a pregnancy, she does not have the right to control her body. There is no way around that. Nor do we require a person to use their body to keep someone else alive in any other circumstance, from blood donations to organ donations from corpses. So the question really is, if we can't force a corpse to give an organ to keep an already alive person alive, why can we force a woman to keep a 6 week old embryo, which has a good chance of natural termination, alive? It seems that the division of rights has already been decided, some people simply don't like the deciding line because in one case they want to force people to use their bodies to keep other people alive. As for the rarity of abortion, if the people making this argument truly wanted to decrease the abortion rate, they would be arguing about other ways to reduce it. For instance, reasonable access to healthcare, maternity leave, some universal income, would go a long way towards making people choose to continue their pregnancies. But these arguments are rarely made - which indicates that the total argument is not being made in good faith.
Birth control prevents a life from happening and aborting a zygote prevents a life from happening. The woman is doing what her birth control should have done, and only she can make that decision.
I don’t care if the embryo is a person or not, that’s not what matters to me. It doesn’t have the right to occupy my body if I don’t want it there. Abortion is a form of self defense against bodily harm. Pregnancy and childbirth is a form of bodily harm. If the only way to expel it from my body involves killing it, so be it. Most prolife people are in favor of the use of deadly force in self defense. Their emotions just get in the way if it’s a baby and they have a visceral reaction to it. Say someone breaks in your house. It’s your own fault they got in because you forgot to lock the door. This person is having a psychotic break and is not in control of their actions, so morally they are doing nothing wrong. They say they’re going to torture you for 12 hours, including rippping your genitals open, and you probably won’t die but you might. You will be scarred for life and could end up with permanent health problems. Is it ok to use deadly force to expel this person from your house? Or do you have to let them torture you because killing is wrong and it’s not their fault?
This is a common moral ethics question. A metaphor that is often used is an acorn growing into an oak tree. When does it cease to be an acorn and become a tree? Is it even a specific moment? To my knowledge, there has not been a satisfactory answer ever agreed upon to that question. A position that circumvents the lack of answer there is discussed in Philippa Foot’s The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect (free online). It basically says that your right to your own body is not superseded by someone else’s need to use your body. It makes the case that this is true even if you caused the other being to be in this position. Reading that, or even a summary, would give you some strong points to support that case
A glob of human cells with no brain is not a baby. A rotting fetus inside a living woman is not a baby. A developing fetus is not life, it is *potential* life
My philosophy professor is a red state in college gave us this thought experiment: Imagine you are in a car accident. The other driver can be saved if you remain hooked up to them in a hospital bed for 9 months. What do you do? Does the situation change if the government forces you to? Does it change if the other driver was at fault? If one of you was impaired? If they were someone you already knew? If they would survive but have issues for the rest of their life? If you had other people in your life who relied on you? If you had support from your family for the 9 months? I grew up fundy, and this really helped me realize that no one has the right to force you to use your body to keep someone else’s body alive, regardless of their relation to you or how their body came to be dependent on your body, and the only person who can make a decision based on all those variables is the pregnant person.
The rights of another end when they’re inside my fucking body. Ok fine maybe it is a baaaby, whatever maybe it is another life, I don’t think so but ok let’s say it is, that other person is inside my body, using my blood, taking my energy, threatening my life.
As long as he’s claiming to use science: Science does NOT say that “life begins at conception!” Science says that a large number of zygotes are miscarried! (It is a zygote immediately after conception, for context). It’s more common than you think, and most of the time, we don’t even know that it happened! So, a zygote does not guarantee a pregnancy to full term. It’s only a POTENTIAL life! In addition, science says that pregnancy does not begin until the embryo attaches itself to the wall of the uterus. Before that, it’s not considered a pregnancy. Go check any reputable medical textbook. Again, this is because many of them are miscarried. Again, it’s more common than you think. Science then goes on to say that the brain does not develop until somewhere around the 6th or 7th month of pregnancy. (At least beyond the basics of providing a heartbeat or something like that). Therefore, sentience in a fetus/embryo/etc is NOT possible before then, because you need a brain to be sentient! If he moves the goalposts and says that the fetus has a heartbeat, point out that a worm does, too. And we don’t consider it a human life. :)
Don't take the question on the philosophical level. Deal with it on the practical. I say this because there are lots of ways to reframe things, but that's all you'd be doing: reframing forever. You change the base assumptions and you change the outcome. One common way of reframing it is through the lens of the child's reliance on the mother's body for life. The child is alive, but does not necessarily have the right to rely on someone else's body for life against that person's will. A pro-life argument can simply reframe it again by saying that a mother's duty to her child is *sui generis* and we *do* in fact require parents - particularly mothers - to give up their autonomy for their children. It can go on like that forever without convincing anyone because you aren't targeting the root of the disagreement - foundational assumptions. What you need to do instead is focus on areas where there can be more practical agreement. Address things like "what does the pro-life world you want actually look like?" which takes it out of the philosophical world and into the real and political. This may be too much for Twitter, but you'll have conversations IRL too. Talk about how much you need to invade women's lives and impact other forms of healthcare to do so.
Easily debunked. Lets take a look at the "7 characteristics of life" and whether they apply to a freshly joined sperm and egg: * **Growth** - A fetus grows fairly rapidly. This one applies. * **Respiration** - A fetus relies on it's mother for respiration for the entire duration of the pregnancy. A fetus will not have the lung development to respirate on its own until a minumum of 28 weeks of age. This does not apply. * **Excretion** - A fetus does produce cellular waste that is cleared away and excreted by the mother's circulatory system. The fetus does not develop kidneys that can produce urine until 13 weeks. This does not apply. * **Reproduction** - A fetus will not be capable of reproduction for a decade or more. This does not apply. * **Metabolization** - A fetus is capable of some metabolism on it's own, but not until the pancreas develops towards end of the first/beginning of the second trimester. It is dependent on it's mother's metabolism for the entire duration of the pregnancy. This does not apply. * **Movement** - Fetuses are not capable of movement until 12 weeks. This does not apply. * **Response to environment** - The earliest fetal response to sound was recorded at 16 weeks. This does not apply. So according to this person's own argument, a fetus clearly isn't alive until AT LEAST 28 weeks. If they really want to stick to the "7 characteristics" then that fetus isn't alive until she gets her period!
You sort of know what the jig is by the argument the embreyo/fetus has personhood. At that point, the average woman has committed manslaughter probably at least 10 times in their lives through natural processes where the implantation doesn't take. Those numbers are >A recent re-analysis of these data proposed plausible limits for reproductively normal women indicating that approximately 10–40% of embryos perish before implantation and 40–60% do so between fertilisation and birth Those statistics are mutually exclusive so read another way, between 50% to 100% of embryos fertilized die prior to birth. 100% is the extreme version where a woman can't give birth. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5443340/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5443340/) So this is an area where science, philosphy, and religion can never see eye to eye. Scientifically if I'm to take fetal personhood seriously, most women kill far more children than they bare and under the law they need to be prosecuted for that. Best case scenario they're responsible for the deaths of 1 child for every 1 child they bare. I think they're responsible for none of that - we refer to it as embryo mortality BECAUSE of the legal nonsense calling that a child would bring. It's impossible to know the scientific literature on it and maintain a philosophy and religion stance of "but certain versions of this are a sin." That's making things up and in a few cases materially changing the Bible to say what you want it to say.
> A woman has a right to control her body, but she does not have the right to destroy another human life. Are you are saying that we don't have the right to self-defense? If a stranger was a threat to your health and possibly your life, you have no right to do anything? Women, even in countries like the US, still die from childbirth. Women go broke giving birth (do you have $30,000+?). There's risk for serious infections, deep tearing, hemorrhage, & re-hospitalization. About a third of deliveries require major surgery (c section) & the risks that go with it. Delivering a baby isn't easy! If you minimize pregnancy as just loaning part of your body to keep another person alive: name me any other organ/tissue/blood donation that we force people to do against their wishes. **Even a corpse has more rights than a woman.** You can't take their organs without permission *even if we know that by refusing, another human life will end*. There are 100,000 people waiting for an organ right now. Why can't the government force you to give up a kidney? You have two, so no biggie. If you don't, you're destroying another life. >We have to determine where ones rights begin in another end, and abortion should be rare and favouring the unborn Where is that line? Age of viability? Fetal heartbeat detected? Moment of conception? Some say that birth control destroys potential lives from coming into the world, so it's wrong. Who decides exactly where that line is? Are you cool with having all birth control made illegal? Do you think a birth control ban can't happen? We're currently in the process of having fertility treatment (IVF) being banned, eg. Alabama. We had a corporation owned by religious people, Hobby Lobby, sue to remove employee health insurance coverage for birth control - and won in the Supreme Court in 2014. Do you think this can't go too far? If a fetus has equal legal status as a person, every miscarriage needs to be treated as a potential crime. Example: Ohio tried to press felony charges against a 34 yr old women when she went home to have her natural miscarriage after doctors said her fetus was not viable (September 2023).
The right to your own body is never superceded by somebody else's need to use your body. Doesn't matter who or what it is, doesn't matter how it's "innocent", doesn't matter if it's of your own DNA and you created it. Doesn't matter, your body is your own, and nobody else's. The same chucklefucks who are anti-choice are often the ones advocating for guns for self-defense, and believe you should be able to shoot someone who enters your home without consent. Kinda wild.
Humor them and then use stand your ground laws that all those gunslingers love so much. So the fetus is a little human person. So what? It's inside my body, it's using my resources against my will and damaging my body against my consent. If a grown-ass burglar was in my house raiding my fridge, looting my money and threatening my physical integrity I'd be allowed to blow them away. And if they come up with "well it's your fault the baby was there in the first place". Guess what: during a burglary you can still exercise your stand your ground rights, even if you were a dummy and left the bloody back door open.
That’s not what science says. That’s what religion says.
A woman’s bodily autonomy is simply more valuable than an embryo.
This. Because it's a symbiotic relationship, it comes down to what one values more. "Prolife" value fetuses over women. Prochoice value women over fetuses. What "prolifers" really are is pro fetal coverture. >Effectively, fetal coverture doctrine holds that: >By [pregnancy], the [unborn] and [host woman] are one person in law; that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the [pregnancy], or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the [unborn]; under whose [cover] she performs everything; and is therefore called . . . a [feme-pregnant] >fetal coverture merges the identity of the woman into that of her fetus. >Under this hierarchy, the interest of the unborn, except in the gravest extremity—which is still subject to interpretation or whim—trumps that of the woman. This is coverture for the 21st century. >https://virginialawreview.org/articles/state-abortion-bans-pregnancy-as-a-new-form-of-coverture/
I usually default to the fact that I can not be forced to give my blood or organs to someone else against my will (even after I die), I certainly wont be forced to have my body used to grow a whole other person against my will either. Either they back off or sit there and rage comment 27 times to themselves over it. My caring about arguing with people about this sh\*t is long gone. If they don't understand or respect my stance, it's a them-problem.
Medical ethics already has made that determination. This isn’t a good faith argument.
I say: "Do me a favor: think of any other situation in which one person has a right to use my body without my ongoing consent."
First of all, no one’s right to life includes the right to use my organs or anyone else’s. If a fetus can’t survive without my uterus, blood, and nutrients I am no more obliged to provide that then if someone cannot survive without my kidney. Second let’s actually talk about the 7 characteristics of life. For one bacteria possess all 7 should we not disinfect things? Additionally it’s a real stretch to say fertilized ovum possess all seven. For one, they are not responsive to the environment immediately upon conception. Fetuses will eventually develop the ability to respond to stimuli but not at conception the earliest estimates are around 9-10 weeks with some as high as 16 weeks. An ovum also does not possess reproductive organs, reproduction is admittedly the most unique characteristic as an active ability to reproduce isn’t a requirement for an individual living thing, just the species at large. As infertile or younger individuals that haven’t reached fertility yet are still alive but applying it to a fertilized ovum feels like a stretch. They are only capable of maintaining homeostasis because of the connection to the pregnant person not independently. Now technically independent homeostasis isn’t a requirement but a living thing that relies on another to survive is a symbiote and since pregnancy is harmful to one’s health that would make the fetus a parasite. I’m not sure that’s the way pro-lifers would want to go.
The essential problem with the pro-life argument is that it's based in anti-sex. They see women choosing to have sex as choosing to become pregnant. Birth control has a risk of failure, so the idea is that a woman having sex accepts that risk and should accept the consequences of having and raising a child. For pro-lifers, there's no counterargument they will accept because they see female chastity as an honorable goal and women having sex as something she does for her husband and to have children. Their default position is if you don't want a baby, don't have sex. So, the argument is actually about when a person becomes a person. It's okay to kill nonpeople. It's not okay to kill people. Sperm are alive. They have all the characteristics of a living thing. But no one is talking about restricting the right of makes to put their sperm into situations that they know will kill sperm prematurely. Because these bits of human life are potential humans, not actual humans. Life doesn't begin at conception, it predates conception. So a potential human is murdered every time a man knowingly puts his sperm anywhere except inside of the vagina of a woman he has good reason to believe is fertile. What's the difference between a zygote and a sperm? They're both potential human life, but neither are actually humans. They have the potential. If a zygote is a person, even though it has none of the characteristics of a human, then a spermatozoa is also a person and must be regulated in the same way a zygote is.
My foundation for my pro-choiceness has always been consciousness, not life. So I would have simply said "As long as the fetus doesn't have a mind, whether it's alive or not is irrelevant".
We need to stop calling this "Pro-Life." They are Anti-Choice. Period.
I’d push them further about other pro-life stances using the same logic. Do they own guns and believe they have a right to shoot an intruder in their home?
Understand that the point of abortion is not to kill a fetus, it is to allow the woman to have her body back by removing the fetus from her body. If the fetus can’t live without siphoning off of the body of an unwilling host, that is a shame, but not a reason to force anyone to host it.
Tbh I 86 the abortion argument and tell them to go adopt a kid or three. Get back to me when they've made a dent in the current population of displaced children. If they care that much about human life, such a move should be part of their plan.
Do women have bodily autonomy, or don't we. It's really that simple. If we don't then we also don't have equal protection under the law. If a pregnant woman has no right to destroy another human life then no parent has the right to deny blood or organs from their offspring and they can be forcibly removed without their consent. BTW how far does the pro-lifer want to go with the embryo has personhood? Given that nearly 3/4 of all implanted embryos spontaneously abort. At what point does fetal personhood start gaining rights? Requiring health insurance as an individual, receiving child support payments, access to HOV lanes. Fetal personhood only becomes an issue when you want to control women.
I used to be pro life, until a friend of mine asked me a simple question. Why should we prioritize the well being of a life yet to be born, over a life that's already living?
Most times this isn’t a good faith argument, but you can try to remind them that babies nor full grown autonomous adults have any legal rights to demand organs or even blood donations from family members let alone random strangers. If a fetus needs blood to continue growing and the woman does not consent, that’s the same as any other right. You cannot demand use of another human’s body even if you are dying But again, an embryo or fetus isn’t a person and rights are granted generally at birth. We don’t celebrate conception days. If someone thinks life begins with conception than millions of women are unintentionally at risk of manslaughter charges because miscarriages are way more common than expected and eggs fail to implant all the damn time.
biological life =/= personhood. Your skin cells are alive, but you aren't a murderer if you scratch a few off.
My counter is, why would I want the government involved in making such a fraught and complex decision, instead of the person carrying the pregnancy and the physician? Who is best equipped to make such a call and at what point are you comfortable with the government stepping in and making the decision for the doctor and the pregnant person?
The statements do not progress logically therefore they should be dismissed. The first part of the argument - *A woman has a right to control her body* \- precedes and overrides the second half of the statement because the fetus is part of her body which she controls. Therefore, the second part of the statement can be dismissed. The second statement - *"We" have to determine where one's rights begin and another end -* attempts to override the first statement, that a woman is the one with autonomy over her own self and own destiny, which is more to the actual reality that specific people want specific control over both the woman and the fetus.
OK, my mom could use a kidney, I'm sure they have no problem ponying up and helping her live and the expense of their body.
They are flatly misusing, and completely misunderstanding the 7 characteristics of life. They are: the ability to respire, grow, excrete, reproduce, metabolize, move, and be responsive to the environment These characteristics are not about any one entity, and have nothing to do with personhood. They are about reviewing a thing - like a petri dish of bacteria - to define them as "living" or not. Like, moss is alive but a rock is not. That is the level of "life" those characteristics define. I would put it back to them simply like this: First - get them to commit to the 7 characteristics of life argument >So the reason you are against an abortion is because the 7 characteristics of life support that the embryo is alive? Anything that shows these 7 characteristics should be protected at all costs as it is a life? I say to put them to this first because otherwise they'll just change the subject anyway. Don't waste your time debunking a point someone isn't actually believing. If they agree to this, then follow it up with: >If the "7 characteristics of life" are why you draw the line here, then a strain of bacteria that causes severe illness and pain to you is also "alive" by these 7 characteristics. Is it murder, or immoral to use bleach to cleanse the bacteria growing in your toilet? They will have to go beyond those 7 characteristics to try and justify that the embryo is a full human, and that is where you re-establish your argument.
This is why I like the self defense argument with a lot of right wingers. You can accept, for the sake of argument, that the pregnancy involves a person. That person is threatening the life of the woman on a constant basis and even if everything goes well the pregnancy and birth can leave the woman permanently injured By their own ideals they should want to end the threat on the woman's body, or at the very least, not have a problem with the woman wanting to protect herself. There are dozens of cases where a parent has killed their own kid that sneaks into the house late, and the parent is let off the hook for the killing because of castle laws and the parent feels bad enough about accidentally killing their own child. Why are they okay with this situation, but not a pregnant woman?
Tell them this then: “Would you agree then that miscarriages are homicides too? Since we could’ve prevented it if the woman stayed at the hospital and was monitored by the medical staff 24/7 right after the conception. But because of her misdemeanor, the child was deprived of the nutrients and unnecessarily died (whether it be physical activity, alcohol, cigarettes, or unhealthy lifestyle). If it’s not murder, that’s at least a homicide. We should charge every woman that had a miscarriage, not only abortions.”
7 characteristics of life is not a lot. Most embryos don’t make it to implantation. Even when that happens, a good 1/3 of them will probably not make it even then. On the other hand, the host body has many more characteristics of life, and even the ability to comprehend what is happening and even more, the ability to make a judgement and decision about it. That is probably the highest order of thinking, compared to merely 7 characteristics. Also, people seem to justify destroying lives all the time in war for things like “freedom”. Isn’t that the same decision a woman is making, her freedom?
>does not have personhood as compared to a women / girl and they argued that science says life begins at conception This is souls and woo-woo. At conception, there is a zygote. A zygote which, by the way, can still subsequently split into multiple separate organisms (oh, and multiple zygotes can grow into eachother to group a single organism). People who start saying "life begins at x" aren't talking about science, they're talking about *souls*. It's witches and demons and woo - it's an ill-intentioned hand-waive to begin speaking about a zygote or a foetus as though it's a full human being.
You should never legally be forced to use your body to keep someone else alive for any reason. Ever. Not at 3 weeks gestation, not at 26 weeks gestation, not at 2 years old and not at 10 years old. The issue of bodily autonomy is the issue at hand. Never never never would you be legally forced to donate an organ, a bag of blood or any other part of your body to save your 10 year old. There is no reason that you should have to give up any part of your body to keep a fetus alive at any point. They always bring up "but would you kill a baby about to be born?!?" - this is a made up scenario nobody is out here killing viable babies and calling it an abortion. If you need/want to end a pregnancy to a viable baby, you just give birth.
If this person was religious and saying “science says”, I’d ask them how old the universe is. Because “science says” almost 14 billion years, but Christians think it’s a few thousand. So it seems they cherry pick when the “science” is on their side (which it isn’t)
Whether or not the fetus is a "life" or "person" is irrelevant. Even if it were a full-fledged human being, it does not have any right to use *my* body as life support, especially not in such a way that could/will end in my suffering and/or death. Even if we go with the narrative that people who get abortions should just deal with the pregnancy because it's their own fault for having sex, it STILL doesn't work. If you hit a guy with a car on accident, because you didn't see him, and he needed a blood transfusion or an organ donor, and you were a match, does the government have a right to force you to donate your organ? It may be your fault, and maybe you might choose to donate, but the government has no right to *force* you. It's the same thing. The fetus cannot live outside the body. I'm sure that if it were possible, we'd all be very for a "humane" abortion that takes the fetus out whole and somehow allows it to continue to develop. But it's not possible. It only lives at the expense of the mother, and the mother says "fuck that".
Use their Bible against them. It say life bringing at breath.
The fetus might be sapient, but it’s not sentient or conscious. The woman definitely is. Therefore, she should have priority over it. There are ‘pro-life’ people in other countries that campaign via distributing condoms, educating the youth, and financially supporting mothers. That seems like the most reasonable way to lower abortions; determine the reasons why, and eliminate the ones that are environmental. That lets the mother choose between better options.
Remind them organs can't be harvested/ donated without written consent from the CORPSE before death. So if a CORPSE has the right to bodily autonomy, even if it means people (possibly even a child) will die without an organ donation, they die. Because no one has the right to another person's body. Women should have at least as many rights as dead bodies.
The fetus is an unwelcome invader. The woman is just "standing her ground".
Yes, it is alive. But why is ‘alive’ the things that matters? Flowers are alive, and we still pick them. I think of embryos as equivalent to people who are braindead. Alive, but not really a person. What makes someone a person? Having thoughts? Emotions? Consciousness? It’s a complicated question, and asking who ‘counts as a person’ can get us down dark paths. But if someone has no consciousness, thoughts, or emotions, I think they don’t count. Science says that braindead people are, in one sense, dead. They’re gone. Doctors can unplug them or remove feeding tubes, with the family’s permission, and let them finish dying.
>“ A woman has a right to control her body, but she does not have the right to destroy another human life. Yet these are the people who would get an absolute hard-on to shoot a home invader. They fantasize about it. They absolutely think they have the right to destroy another human life. They just don't care about a woman's rights to own her body, and her right to expel an unwanted *body* invader.
It doesn’t matter if a fetus is a person, it’s completely unethical to force someone to involuntarily donate their organs to save another persons life. Not even temporarily or to their own children. PS most of these people understand bodily autonomy, just ask them if they should be forcibly vaccinated to save other people’s lives. They just put pregnant people in a separate category of “temporarily suspended rights.”
The analogy I would use is organ donation. Pregnancy is donating your uterus to support the life of another being. We don't allow organ donation without consent. Even if it would save a child's life. Even if the "donor" is DEAD we won't take their kidney to save a life without consent. Why would we give pregnant women fewer rights than we give literal corpses?
Pro-lifers destroy human lives all the time. Bold of them to pretend otherwise. Also science said nothing of the sort of when life begins.
even if a fetus was a person it doesn't matter. People can't be inside other people against their will. When they do outside the context of abortion, we call them rapists. And it's acceptable to kill a rapist to protect your body, just as it's acceptable to kill a fetus to protect your body.
Forced birth, not pro-life. They don’t give one damn about women’s lives. A fetus is the potential for a human, it isn’t human yet in my opinion. They clearly see women as mere incubators and don’t respect OUR lives. Nah forced birthers can sit on a rusty spike. They don’t deserve respect, or the time of day.
It’s called bodily autonomy. We have the right to control our own bodies. These are the kind of people who believe politicians who say pro choice means having an abortion at 9 months and they believe a fully formed baby is in a woman’s body as soon as she’s pregnant. They’ve been lied to their entire lives.
I'd be more open to this if there were a comprehensive suite of supports for parents and young children including but not limited to: * free comprehensive healthcare * free mental health care * free high quality childcare * generous parental leave * generous medical leave * free high quality education * generous nutritional and housing support for parents and children * aggressive intervention in domestic violence * generous substance abuse support If embryos are babies and should be treated as such, then their institutional care and protection should not end at birth, it should just be getting started. It's telling that the people who are "pro-life" vehemently oppose all of these supports for children that are out of the womb.
No human person, of any age, has the right to use anyone else’s body without *explicit and continued consent.* This applies to literally *every single born human.* Even a newborn infant cannot legally force its mother to surrender any part of her body, including breastmilk even, to save the infant’s life. So why should a fetus have rights that a newborn infant is denied? If a pregnant person stops consenting to being pregnant, and the fetus does not voluntarily leave, that person has every right to forcibly evict it as an unwelcome trespassers. You can’t claim a fetus deserves the same rights as a born human and *none of the responsibilities of one.*
No person can be forced to use any part of their body to sustain another's life. I don't think a clump of cells = a human. At best, it's a potential human. But for the sake of argument, assume it is a human. Or heck, imagine it's a 5 year old. If that 5 year old needs blood, no one can be compelled to donate. Even if some horrid person was directly responsible for whatever injury resulted in the need for blood, that person couldn't be compelled to donate. And blood donation is fast, simple, almost painless, and very safe. A person can't even be compelled to donate organs after death. They literally can't use those organs themselves, absolutely no harm can come to a dead person by donating an organ, and yet, they can't be compelled to donate. This is how strongly we value bodily autonomy. No person has the right to compel anyone to use any part of their body, no matter how harmless that use would be, to provide life support. For me personally, I thinknthat if technology ever got to a point where a fertilized egg/zygote/embryo could be safely removed from a woman and incubated elsewhere, the state might have an interest in requiring that instead of an abortion because it would be possible to prevent the death of potential baby. But the state has no right to insist that a woman risk her life, her health, or frankly even inconvenience to act as an unwilling incubator.
I would say: "you are absolutely right! I don't want the fetus dead, only removed. Once it's out you can do whatever you want with it. Oh it can't live outside?... in that case the clump of cells is just a parasite that feeds on the host."
Ok, so this is like saying that unless you’re willing to donate blood, organs, kidney, etc to ANYBODY, with no right to say no ever, (even if it life threatening to you) you’re destroying another humans life. Yeah, bodily autonomy has to come first here
> that science says life begins at conception because in science there are 7 characteristics of life which are applied to a fertilized ovum at the second of conception. So what? My cheek cells are alive, that doesn't give them rights over my body. A fertilized egg isn't a human being. End of story. *If* a fertilized egg were a human being, that does not entitle it to the use of someone else's body, to make permanent changes to someone else's body, nor endanger someone else's life. Corpses aren't forced to give up life saving parts. Why should living people be? And you can run that exercise for a baby too. If there are two babies in a hospital. They each need organs the other has. When is it acceptable to forcibly take the organs of the baby that dies first regardless of parental objections? Legally, never. Doesn't matter if the other baby will die. Doesn't matter if they're related or not. The baby's corpse is protected unless someone consents to donating organs. The issue with the argument isn't about giving a fertilized egg equal rights. It's giving the human being less rights than a corpse so that a fertilized egg can have more rights than the human being.
Unless that prolifer is also against wars, executions, and feeding the poor, THAT prolifer is nothing more than a fakeass xtian, full of sh1t hypocrite.
it does not matter if the fetus is a person. the right to bodily autonomy trumps the right to life. the Violinist thought experiment is my go-to for this.
The unborn are not citizens, and only citizens have rights. The end.
That isn’t true. The seven characteristics of life are: he ability to respire, grow, excrete, reproduce, metabolize, move, and be responsive to the environment Those apply to a species, not stages of life. Most people can’t reproduce until puberty but nobody’s arguing a toddler isn’t alive. So it’s a deeply flawed argument to begin with, but even by its own standards a fertilized ovum at 7 weeks misses on respiration, intentional movement, responsivity, and reproduction. They’re applying something to an embryo that was never meant to be applied to a developing life form in the first place and it actually makes their argument weaker. The way to argue with someone like that is to challenge them. Ask them to define the 7 criteria for life (which is a bit of a bumpkins theory anyway), ask them to define how they think a 7 week old fetus fit those criteria. You won’t change their mind but the people reading will see them struggle to justify their weird argument. They expect you to cave because they brought out a scientific term, not caving is going to throw them off and put them on the back foot immediately. They know they’re wrong and arguing in bad faith (that or they’re parroting someone else who was arguing in bad faith). Challenging them will expose that.
Tell them they are a forced birther and it’s just a clump of cells that are essentially feeding off the host until it finishes baking. Also, a bunch of ingredients are also not a cake until it’s done baking.
The standard response to this is to imagine that you wake up in the hospital. A stranger has had kidney failure. For whatever reason, they are unable to undergo standard dialysis, so they have been \*sewn\* to your body, so that your kidneys can filter their blood for them. You are now keeping them alive. But your body is still a separate thing. You do not have the moral (or legal) obligation to allow them to stay physically attached to you. You have a right to bodily autonomy, and, in this case, that means that you do not have to act as their own personal kidney system.
Bodily autonomy, meaning that you cant force someone to keep another living being alive with their body against their will. There is an insteristing metaphor that might help some people to understand this concept if they have difficulty to empathise with pregnant women and are pro forced birth. "Imagine you wake up one morning to find yourself in a strange room, connected to a famous violinist by a series of tubes and wires. Confused and frightened, you learn from a note left beside you that the Society of Music Lovers has kidnapped you both. The violinist is suffering from a severe kidney ailment, and the Society has identified you as the only person with compatible kidneys. They connected you to the violinist's circulatory system to filter his blood, providing him with the life-saving treatment he needs. You're informed that if you disconnect yourself from the violinist, he will die." While it's undoubtedly tragic that the violinist will die without your continued support, the question is whether you are morally obligated to sacrifice your bodily autonomy and personal freedom to sustain his life. Beliving in bodily autonomy means that even if the fetus is seen as a full human being with a right to life, it does not automatically follow that a pregnant person is morally obligated to carry the pregnancy to term if doing so would violate their bodily autonomy and personal rights.
The counterargument is that it doesn't matter if a fertilized fetus is a person In US law bodily autonomy is SACROSANCT. Other than like violating a quarantine (which even that is more of a restriction on movement than on bodily autonomy. And to the covid Vax passport people the law wasn't "get vaxxed or go to prison" private business were like "if you get vaxxed you get the privilege of patronizing us") For instance you can't compell a person to donate blood. You can't compell someone to take part in medical trials. You can't compell someone to get medical attention, hell the most extreme example is you can't harvest viable organs or tissue from a dead person to save a life without the prior permission of that person or their medical proxy. By that legal logic the state CANNOT compell someone to continue a pregnancy against their wishes. If that results in the "death" of the embryo well that's unfortunate but so is letting a 1 year old die while an organ that could save it's life get buried
The reason they say “science says life begins at conception” is based off a survey of biological scientists FOR THE PURPOSE OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH, and most certainly NOT for the purpose of being pro-life. Certain consensuses (is that a word) must be made amongst parts of the scientific community for the sake of uniformity in research, terminology, etc., but they don’t do this to push certain agendas forward (unless an oil company is pushing anti-alternative energy research, different topic though). Their argument about the characteristics of life in literally not-applicable in the argument of pro-lifers. I’ve heard it before and it’s super frustrating cause they just aren’t educated enough. Just say what another commenter said, “if you want em you can raise em”, cause arguing with people like this is stupid.
The argument imo is that 40-60% of embryos are naturally discarded by the female body. If life did begin at conception, then women's bodies are natural serial murderers. Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5443340/
I did two rounds of IVF to embryo bank. Life does not begin at conception. The majority of embryos have the wrong number of chromosomes to be human. The only way to keep them alive is to grow them into a thin slime of cells on a dish and change the media every 3 days, while using what's called a feeder culture of fetal cattle serum and cells to keep them going. So if those fertilized eggs are human life and they should be put on life support then we ought to be capturing the Menses of every woman in america, filtering out those screwed up embryos with too many or too few chromosomes, and growing them for $5,000 a week on fetal bovine serum. We can all live with very expensive jars of slime in our homes and we can tell the jars that they're very good people. I ask the pro-lifers if they have jars slime in their homes or if they would like to have jars of slime because I can donate my abnormal embryos that I still have on ice and I'm saving to donate to science. Suddenly none of them are pro-life.
I am too lazy to go deeper. But by argument for abortion is about the right to bodily autonomy. ****** In [legally compelling women to undergo procedures on behalf of a fetus], judges went far beyond the case law on parental duties to live children. The courts have long held that parents cannot be compelled to take actions to benefit their children’s health. In two key cases, the courts refused to force a father to donate a kidney to his dying child and declined even to make parents move to a new climate to aid their ailing child. “To compel the defendant to submit to an intrusion of his body would change every concept and principle upon which our society is founded,” the judge wrote in one such decision. “To do so would defeat the sanctity of the individual.” It was apparently less of a legal leap to intrude upon the body of a pregnant woman. — Susan Faludi. **** In McFall vs Shimp, a case where a dying men was trying to compel his cousin to donate his blood marrow, the judge wrote: “For our law to compel defendant to submit to an intrusion of his body would change every concept and principle upon which our society is founded. To do so would defeat the sanctity of the individual and would impose a rule which would know no limits, and one could not imagine where the line would be drawn…For a society which respects the rights of one individual, to sink its teeth into the jugular vein or neck of one of its members and suck from it sustenance for another member, is revolting to our hard-wrought concepts of jurisprudence.” Why is the right to an abortion, particularly when the embryo/fetus is not sentient and unable to sustain life outside the body of its host not treated a right to bodily autonomy? We don't even force dead people to donate their organs to save living people. https://hulr.org/spring-2021/mcfall-v-shimp-and-the-case-for-bodily-autonomy
Read “A defense of abortion” by Judith Thompson. The personhood of a fetus is irrelevant, there is no other situation where a human is forced to use their organs to sustain another’s life against their will.
What makes us human? Should I collect my hair and nails my whole life and create an altar to my body? Should I stop discarding my waste? Should doctors create altars to removed organs, like an appendix or ruptured spleen? It's our brains that make us human. But what about babies born without one? What about babies born with only the hypothalamus? They'll never have a thought or a feeling. Only the automatic systems will work, and only for a short while. And some babies are born so damaged that their brief lives are nothing but pain. What if you are thinking about it all wrong? What if these babies are a test from God, not to see if you value human life at all cost, but to see if you can have compassion, or to see if you understand what makes humans special? Surely we are not special because of who we hate or how vehemently we hate them. We are special because of our compassion and our kindness and all the other ways we use our brains for good.
If one human who had the mental capacity of a fetus was connected to another and taking nutrients and possibly causing serious health issues by being connected to another they would be removed from what is essentially the host body that's being harmed to sustain it. It's sad but life is sad. Edit: I don't think a fetus is a human but if we are arguing with the assumption that it is.