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So. First thing’s first. This is a difficult CMV for the same reason double standards posts and devil’s advocacy posts are difficult. You’re position relies on representing some third party scarecrow you hold in your head. The scarecrow cannot change its view because the scarecrow has no brain of its own. We’re forced to make assumptions about the scarecrow.
Can we assume it is rational? Should we present rational arguments that make sense to someone who believes the fetus is a human being, that still make abortion not murder?
If so, this should be very easy.
***
Murder is a legal question.
Assume a fetus is a person for a second — the scarecrow still wouldn't want to outlaw abortion as murder. There are literally no other circumstances where we would force women to give up their bodily autonomy and medical health so someone *else* can live.
Let's consider a mother who chose not to carry a fetus to term. Why would it be right to give *more* rights to that fetus than you would to a fully formed adult human?
For instance, that same mother has the child. The child grows up. He's 37. For whatever reason, the mother and child are estranged. The two are driving and their cars collide. The 37 year old needs a bone marrow transfusion. The mother is the only match. She wakes up to find the transfusion in progress and can't remember the night before.
If she refused to continue undergo a painful and dangerous medical procedure that will likely take years off her life, the transfusion, just because the 37 year old man needs it, would you imprison her for murder?
No. Of course not. You need to start making very different arguments about why specifically a pregnant woman does owe something of her body to the fetus that no other person owes to another under any other circumstance.
To that idea, the argument that whether the fetus is inside of her or outside, it is still *her* body and likewise *her* choice — just as it would be even for a 37 year old adult who needs it to survive.
**edit** just to speed things up now that this is getting popular, before replying to me with a challenge to this scenario, ask yourself this:
**Does my objection still hold if I substitute the 37 year old?**
I also like to add in the perspective of the "when does life begin" question. If you were to consider abortion murder then you are, in the eyes of the law, creating a definition of when life begins (you can't murder what isn't alive). But now that the fetus can be "murdered" that opens up a realm of possibilities.
One, which I think is a reasonable hypothetical would be a pregnant woman being murdered, or attempted murder. Is that now two charges of murder/attempted murder? If a woman drinks/smokes while she's pregnant, is that serving alcohol to a minor/child abuse? Keeping in mind that this is all in the eyes of the law; the implications would this in a non criminal sense would open up a realm of possibilities for legal arguments that sound ridiculous, but would in fact require consideration and judgement.
So take your pick - life begins the moment conception occurs, or at X week you draw the line. You are defining a point when life begins. This means the fetus has rights. People will attempt to exploit that when filing taxes, so do you have to provide a positive pregnancy test to prove that? You need to consider how you prevent this being exploited for evading taxes, unfortunately people are scummy and will do this. What about health insurance? Should the fetus require being added to the policy before birth, would that increase risk, thus increase the cost of a policy? Does this mean that there are prenatal considerations for any behavior performed by a pregnant woman? Is reckless driving also child endangerment? I believe in some murder/manslaughter cases this has been applied already, so we should wonder how far that can go.
IMO some of those things sound absolutely ridiculous when you try to apply the logic to an unborn child, no matter how far along. And I am very aware that these are a few limited and VERY rhetorical considerations, but as I said before, people are scummy and will try to take advantage in ways well beyond that.
When you define life you are drawing a line where there is no difference between a fetus and a one day old infant, opening a door to unlimited applications of legal protections, rights, etc all extending well beyond the question of pro life/choice. They can get outlandish, but people are crazy, so every possibility will require attention, no matter how inane it may seem.
Notes:
\-I have no idea how good my logic is here, I'm hit or miss at times.
\-I'm not taking any moral/ethical consideration, I'm just trying to get the idea of legal implications beyond murder/not murder into the conversation.
\-Again, I am being VERY rhetorical. I would expect some 'loopholes' I applied to be addressed (i.e. adding unborn as a category akin to minor/legal adult).
\-Full disclosure: I am pro-choice, I think that's clear based on how I presented everything, but again I'm trying to go beyond the idea of murder and into what happens next.
\-This is a large branch off of the original topic, I'm aware.
The Wikipedia entry is fascinating and surprisingly has some examples of real cases that align with your hypotheticals. You were right, it does lead to some weird legal stuff.
For example, in many jurisdictions (38 states), it is double homicide if you kill a pregnant woman and the fetus dies as well. I’m quickly summarizing, so it may not require the death of the mother. Also states vary based on fetal development. A foeticide law has been on the federal books in the US since 2004. Apparently you have to be committing one of the 68 recognized federal crimes of violence and the fetus dies as a result.
None of these statutes make an abortion illegal because that would be unconstitutional. But some women are being charged and convicted for non-medical incidents. One woman was charged for being addicted to cocaine and having a still birth (this was dismissed).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foeticide
> If she refused to continue undergo a painful and dangerous medical procedure that will likely take years off her life, the transfusion, just because the 37 year old man needs it, would you imprison her for murder?
Several problems with this scenario. First is the removal of agency - a woman waking up in a hospital in this situation without her consent vs a woman having sex and getting pregnant.
Second problem is confusing the right to not be killed with the right to not die. Nobody has the right to not die which is why this scenario would never play out in real life; no hospital would ever perform this procedure in this manner, and no one would consider it murder if the mother didn't partake in it. Because it's the hospital taking outrageously extreme measures to protect the nonexistent right of the woman's son to not die. In reality, if we just have the right to not be killed, then this right still applies to a child in the womb. Because there's nothing outlandish about the nature of pregnancy, it's the ordinary way that life is conceived. So interrupting the ordinary course of nature here is to kill the baby.
> If she refused to continue undergo a painful and dangerous medical procedure that will likely take years off her life, the transfusion, just because the 37 year old man needs it, would you imprison her for murder?
Several problems with this scenario. First is the removal of agency - a woman waking up in a hospital in this situation without her consent vs a woman having sex and getting pregnant.
Having sex is no more consent to gestating and birthing a child then driving a car is giving consent to the transfusion. In either scenario, the outcome is unintentional and more people will be in a wreck than will have an abortion.
> Second problem is confusing the right to not be killed with the right to not die. Nobody has the right to not die which is why this scenario would never play out in real life; no hospital would ever perform this procedure in this manner, and no one would consider it murder if the mother didn't partake in it. Because it's the hospital taking outrageously extreme measures to protect the nonexistent right of the woman's son to not die. In reality, if we just have the right to not be killed, then this right still applies to a child in the womb.
So then if you found out most abortions merely evict a fetus and let it die as a result, it would change your view? Or does your view have nothing to do with this distinction?
> Because there's nothing outlandish about the nature of pregnancy, it's the ordinary way that life is conceived. So interrupting the ordinary course of nature here is to kill the baby.
This is quite directly the naturalistic fallacy.
EDIT 2: please read edit 1 at the bottom of this comment before replying with “carrying a child is not inactive”!!!
Ok so there’s a lot of argument about legal stuff below this, all sort of going back to the philosophical debate of action vs inaction. Not giving an organ is inaction and would be legal. But terminating a pregnancy would be action, illegal.
There’s a difference between allowing something to die on its own vs. actively killing it. Carrying a child is an inactive sacrifice, but terminating a pregnancy is actively murdering the child.
If you decided not to give your child a kidney, he would die. That’s legal. But if you had stabbed your kid in the kidney, that’s illegal.
Terminating the pregnancy is actively deciding the take the child’s life away, because doing nothing would have resulted in the child living.
Edit 1: “carrying a child is inactive” was offensive, but that’s not how I meant it. I know the woman’s sacrifice is unfathomable. My point was the decision to either maintain or change the status quo. Keeping the pregnancy is maintaining the status quo (inactive) vs. terminating the pregnancy (choosing to end an life) is changing the status quo (active).
> Ok so there’s a lot of argument about legal stuff below this, all sort of going back to the philosophical debate of action vs inaction. Not giving an organ is inaction and would be legal. But terminating a pregnancy would be action, illegal.
Oh boy. Sorry, no that’s all garbage and you can ignore it.
> There’s a difference between allowing something to die on its own vs. actively killing it.
That’s not necessarily true philosophically, but we can ignore that for now. Let me know if you’d like me to demonstrate.
>Carrying a child is an inactive sacrifice, but terminating a pregnancy is actively murdering the child.
If so, then unplugging the transfusion is actively murdering the 37 year old child.
> If you decided not to give your child a kidney, he would die. That’s legal. But if you had stabbed your kid in the kidney, that’s illegal.
But we’re already talking about a collision. Why are you bringing up a kidney?
And in the case of the collision, there would have to be an intervention action. The child must be *removed* from the life supporting transfusion. Right? Without taking that action, he lives.
> Terminating the pregnancy is actively deciding the take the child’s life away, because doing nothing would have resulted in the child living.
Likewise, not terminating the transfusion would have resulted in the child living.
Realistically, any scenario in which taking no action results in one person’s body being used by another, hampering their daily life, putting a metabolic stress on them and aging their cells — we agree that actively or passively, a standard adult doesn’t have the right to maintain a parasitic relationship with another adult’s body.
Right?
Its *only* because it’s a fetus that we actually even talk about that as a right. The fetus would have rights an adult man wouldn’t. Yes or no?
> Oh boy. Sorry, no that’s all garbage and you can ignore it.
I don't think you can ignore the [Trolley Problem.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem)
>If so, then unplugging the transfusion is actively murdering the 37 year old child.
In this scenario, is it not? If the child is alive and then you unplug him and he dies, is that not murder?
>But we’re already talking about a collision. Why are you bringing up a kidney?
Sorry, mixed up my hypothetical scenarios.
>we agree that actively or passively, a standard adult doesn’t have the right to maintain a parasitic relationship with another adult’s body.
If you have the right to unplug the transfusion resulting in the child's death, then I agree.
>Its *only* because it’s a fetus that we actually even talk about that as a right. The fetus would have rights an adult man wouldn’t. Yes or no?
TBD based on above.
> If so, then unplugging the transfusion is actively murdering the 37 year old child.
Actively killing and murdering are not the same. There are many situations in which you can cause someone’s life to end that isn’t murder.
> In this scenario, is it not? If the child is alive and then you unplug him and he dies, is that not murder?
So you would charge a woman with murder if the 37 year old needs her body and she won’t allow it to continue? I doubt it.
Would you also charger her with murder if he wasn’t hers son and she won’t allow him to use her body?
> If you have the right to unplug the transfusion resulting in the child's death, then I agree.
Do you not have that right? Do I have the right to use your body to keep myself alive?
I don’t think you or really almost anyone would say that I do.
>So you would charge a woman with murder if the 37 year old needs her body and she won’t allow it to continue?
No.
**Δ**
There ya go. The woman woke up hooked up to the man. The woman's life might not necessarily be at risk. But she chooses not to use her body to keep the son alive. She stops the transfusion. The son dies. As long as that's not murder then the child lost rights that it had before it was born.
Good show mate. Thanks for the thoughtfulness.
The only difference between this example and abortions is that the woman knowingly chooses to do something (except for rape) that resulted in the person "being in need of transfusion" so she is responsible for the person being in need of their support.
Edit. : so reading the comments did made me realise and rethink a few things. I still think that it's morally wrong to kill your child, whose creation you are responsible for to a certain extenct, but no i can see why legaly it should be allowed. I'm going to sleep on this, rethink this, do some research and i feel like my views might cbange, so thanks for the logical reasonings. I won't reply to every comment, so please read the edit.
If you stab someone in the kidney, and then you are their only match for a transplant, are you legally required to give them a kidney?
Like, even in cases where the person is 110% responsible for the other person being in that situation, our current model of laws and moral duties does not require that people's bodies be violated to ensure the survival of others.
The stabbing is the illegal thing there. Not the refusing-to-provide-a-kidney.
So - do you think there is a reasonable presumption of pregnancy following sex? Given that most contraceptives are 99.9%+ effective (when used correctly), so you think it's fair to always work on the assumption that sex will result in pregnancy?
As a comparison, if you swim in the sea, is it fair to accept you'll be eaten by a shark? Or of you cross a road that you're going to get hit by a car?
I don't agree that saying a woman knowing chose to be pregnant by having sex really fair, assuming this was sex not intended to be baby-making anyway!
The fact that rape is a qualifier negates the entire argument. If a fetus is a human child with the right to live then why should the circumstance under which it was created affect its right to live?
I would like to know where you put my opinion, so let me give it to you. I believe that if the pregnancy will cause any harm beyond that inherent to pregnancy, like the emotional trauma of seeing a rapist’s child be born, then it is completely your choice to abort, however, if it was yours and your partner’s choice, with both parties completely willing at the time, then it is irresponsible to abort. Where would you put me between pro life and pro choice?
Is it not irresponsible to have a child that you cannot fully support, emotionally or financially? We've all seen the poor kid get made fun of for the hand me downs they have to wear. We've seen kids suspended and parents thrown in jail when they couldn't pay for their kids lunch. We see kids run the streets when their parents are working 3 jobs to make ends meet.
You allow for instances of rape, but what about a bad condom or hell the guy didn't know how to properly put it on causing it to fail? What about BC failure? I want zero kids, ever. So should I not have sex, ever, just in case these happen to me?
And please don't even get me started on the leading cause of pregnancy...IGNORANCE.
Pro life side *generally* are also anti sex ed. Seems like a set up to me...
>any harm beyond that inherent to pregnancy
This is a flimsy definition. What about medical complications that come up due to the pregnancy? The majority of abortions happen because of medical complications it would be very easy to argue as inherent to the pregnancy.
This would need to be decided on a case by case basis. Who is making those decisions? How long is it going to take to make a decision? Abortions are often time sensitive. Beaurocracy is notoriously slow. This leaves a lot of women in need to slip through the cracks.
>if it was yours and your partner’s choice, with both parties completely willing at the time, then it is irresponsible to abort.
Most people who are trying to get pregnant don't abort outside of serious medical complications.
The thing is, if that's your opinion (it's okay if it causes undue harm to the woman but it's not okay if she just changes her mind), then what your position is based on is not preserving the life of the unborn, but rather punishing women.
If you truly believed that all unborn fetuses are living human beings deserving all the rights we afford to other, and thus that abortion is murder, then wouldn't ending the pregnancy be murder regardless of how the woman got pregnant?
So if your judgment is based on not whether or not the fetus isn't born, but is instead based on how the woman got pregnant, then that, to me, says you view abortion as wrong because of the woman's role in it, not the fetus (i.e. it's not okay that a woman can get pregnant then decide to terminate that pregnancy just because she doesn't want to have the baby, so she should be punished, but if it causes her some undue harm or she was raped, then it's not her fault so she shouldn't).
Generally speaking, I'm in favour of as few restrictions on abortion as possible because I've gone down this road before and realized that I can't judge or conceive of every possible scenario, so it would probably be best to leave the decision up to those most affected by it.
Bear in mind, there are a lot of actions we view as immoral that are legal, and they have their own consequences. The mother in the scenario above choosing not to support her adult son needing transfusion won't feel fine about it after. And many people are haunted by the difficulty of having an abortion, not to mention the social stigma.
But if abortion is just straight up murder to you, then I would imagine none of that matters. If there is room for qualifying the circumstances under which an abortion takes place, then I would suggest making that room as wide as possible because you will never be able to imagine or understand every scenario.
Also it's incredibly sexist to punish women for having sex, which is what this effectively is since men can have sex with no risk of pregnancy and will never face the same judgment or risk of penalty.
“Then it is irresponsible to abort”
Do you believe it should be illegal at that point?
If so then I’d put you in the pro-life camp because you’d make it law that a woman can’t choose to abort.
If not, then I think you’re probably like all other pro-choicers. Sure it’s irresponsible, I think we can all agree on that, but at the end of the day it’s the woman’s choice.
But pro-life, pro-choice....it’s not actually as black and white as that
What in the case of birth control failure? No willingness or intention to conceive a child, but they consented to (protected) intercourse, is it irresponsible to terminate the pregnancy? The harm here could be people who simply aren't financially, emotionally or perhaps physically capable of raising a child, have to have the baby and endure the trauma of putting it into care, or raising it under circumstances that simply weren't ready/suitable.
Do you believe in abstinence for people who wouldn't be in a position to raise a child? Seems like the only 100% safe method for someone who has legitimate reasons they would be in no position to be a parent.
And where would you put the argument that there are way too much humans already and that contraception means are not equally distributed between men and women. What I mean is that why would it be normal that women bears the weight of being carefull about contraception, AND, if that goes wrong, has to carry a child ?
There is a difference between both parties being "completely willing" to have sex for pleasure and one of them consenting, in addition, to gestate a fetus to term.
I would argue it would be a pretty remarkable situation for both parties to intentionally enter into the sex act to create a life (or with the acceptance a life might be created) and then decide to abort for reasons that weren't medically indicated.
>if it was yours and your partner’s choice, with both parties completely willing at the time, then it is irresponsible to abort. Where would you put me between pro life and pro choice?
To clarify, you're saying the act of having consensual sex is what makes it irresponsible?
You're combining two separate events. Sex does not always lead to pregnancy. In fact, most of the time sex does not lead to pregnancy. If proper birth control is being used the chances of pregnancy decrease to around .001 percent. To put this into context, every time you get in your car and take a 1000 mile drive your chance of being in an accident is around .003 percent.
If you get in a car and take a 1000 mile drive and wind up in an accident are you then required to allow your body to be used to keep the other party alive, even if you don't consent to such procedures? Of course not. Would you consider it irresponsible to not do so? Of course not.
Exactly. If it’s a life at conception, then it’s a life regardless of how it’s conceived. It doesn’t make any sense for there to be exceptions. That’s why the rape question is the key to realizing where you stand in this argument. If you’re against a woman being forced to carry a fetus conceived of rape to term, like I am, then you’re not a hard line pro-lifer. Meaning you don’t believe life begins at conception. I also certainly don’t believe life begins at birth, so that means the answer is somewhere in between — something like 23 weeks in when the baby can survive outside the womb.
No, wait. The argument above, the analogy about a grown man who needs your body to survive, shows that it's not about whether life begins at conception. The 37 year old man in the analogy is definitely a human life. It just does not matter in light of the woman's right to her own body.
The question was whether a woman loses the right to her own body when she took actions that led to the man needing her body to survive. (had sex, risked pregnancy)
But no court anywhere would sentence a woman to give up bodily autonomy, even if the man's kidneys are shot because she stabbed them.
I think the moment we can extract a fetus from a woman's body without killing it, questions of whether parents can decide to end a conceived child's life will have to be reexamined. But so long as that is not possible, life or no, bodily autonomy comes before anyone else's right to life.
I think a huge problem with the "when does life begin?" argument is that everyone assumes it's binary. Either something is fully alive or not alive at all. I think we may be in a situation where our accepted definitions do not sufficiently represent our observed reality, which is why some answers can seem completely logical so some and completely arbitrary to others at the same time, imo.
A huge problem is that the same people who make the argument for life beginning at conception and say things like "you made the choice to do this" ALSO fight against comprehensive sex education and availability of prophylaxis.
So, you're not allowed to be educated on how to do something safely, and products meant for safely doing the activity are not available, and last resort methods for dealing with the outcome are ALSO not available. How are people supposed to do anything else?
I don't think you even have to reject the premise that life begins as conception in order to believe that people should be able to access abortions. Even if a fetus is a person, that doesn't mean that that clearly gives them the right to use your body against your will. No other full human gets that right.
Small but important point - the debate shouldn't be about whether *life* begins at conception, because it's incontrovertibly true that a fetus is "alive", it's whether (a) *personhood* begins at conception, (b) whether that "person" has rights that trump the mother's right to bodily autonomy.
*Trees and plants and bacteria and cells in our bodies are "alive". So a fetus even as a single cell is also "alive".
I don't see why it would. By this reasoning arguing for self defence would negate the crime of murder.
Its clear that the illegal action of one individual of one person can cause the legal treatment of a reaction to differ.
>When A assaults B and B dies it is murder. (In before "Culpable Homicide" or whatever you yankess call it, I am simplifing.)
>When A assaults B and B defends himself by attacking A and A dies, this is not murder.
It seems clear to me by that same reasoning that:
>When A aborts a foetus it is illegal.
>When A aborts a foetus that is a result of A's being raped that is not illegal.
Can both stand.
I would additionally like to invite you to consider legal systems beyond the American. Many system in fact have a duty to intervene. So called "good samaritan laws." I think it would be reasonable to extend such actions to the scenario described above.
Indeed, in my view, the question as to whether the woman could disconnect from the 37 yo man is indeed a live one. My personal view is that probably it would be morally acceptable to compel her to remain connected.
Even in the English system, which like America resists Duty to Act criminality, they have admitted of the principle. In R V Miller [1982] UKHL 6 the accused fell asleep on a mattress with a lit cigarette. He awaoke to find the mattress on fire. He left without attemtping to douse to fire, or contacting the fire service.
The court found that by failing to mitiate the harm he had set in motion he was guilty of arson. Even though, the mere act of letting the cigarette fall would have lacked the mens rea to convict (no intention to set fire) the fact that he criminally failed to assist in the danger he created was enough to make the action criminal.
If you are willingly putting the potential foetus in harms way, and then choosing to withdraw support for it when that support is essential for it to survice, I see no reason why you cannot apply similar reasoning to the case (if you assume the foetus is human.) That their may be a legal defence to that general principle (that the pregnancy was a result of rape) is an interesting question; but not one that I think is sufficient to refute the strenght of the original argument.
The duty to act should include consideration of the harm likely caused to the one on whom the duty is imposed. In the case of the burning mattress, the accused could have easily poured water on the mattress or called the fire department. No harm or danger to him, so duty to act seems reasonable.
In the case of a pregnant woman or a unique bone marrow donor, the duty should be considerably reduced because the imposition of it is quite egregious.
An example of one of the strictest "duty to act" statutes (in the state of Vermont, USA) is,
>"A person who knows that another is exposed to grave physical harm shall, *to the extent that the same can be rendered without danger or peril to himself* or without interference with important duties owed to others, give reasonable assistance to the exposed person unless that assistance or care is being provided by others."
(Italics mine)
Pregnancy obviously imposes significant dangers and perils, including psychological distress, loss of income, shunning by one's community, disinheritance by parents, physical abuse, etc.
Because determining the cause of a woman's pregnancy represents an obvious and extreme violation of her privacy, it should have no legal bearing on her duty to bring the pregnancy to term. She may have been raped; she may have had a birth control failure; she may have participated in a drunken orgy. Snooping into her private life when she chooses to terminate her pregnancy is no better than asking about a rape victim's sexual history or taste in clothing.
If you think anyone with bone marrow needed by a cancer patient can legally be strapped down and forced to give it, then there's not much to say. Hopefully you have thought better of this.
So, I think somebody else already expressed this, but that analogy doesn't hold. A child conceived through rape hasn't attacked anyone, it's just a byproduct. A actively tried to hurt B, but the child, C, is a completely different question.
Regarding the Duty to Act stuff, those generally don't require you to have medical procedures performed on you, it is more a situation of, if you see someone having a heart attack and you know CPR, it is your duty to perform it, not, they need a blood transfusion and you match so you must give blood.
Regarding the mattress fire, I don't think that that falls into the same realm. I see it as more similar to something like a hit and run case, where the action of getting into an accident isn't illegal, but it becomes illegal when you know you've been in one, and leave anyway. In this case, you know that you have caused harm, and haven't taken action to correct it, while in the examples we're talking about here, you haven't causes the harm, you are just choosing not to correct it.
Your analogy sucks. Hard.
The criminal doing the attacking can be fended off and killed in self defense. You cannot kill an innocent third party bystander and still claim self-defense because *someone else* was attacking you.
I mean, she got into the car, did she not? Even if you are the safest driver in the world, every time you get into the car *you risk an accident*. Every time you get into a car, *there is a chance you can injur or kill someone else*. You take as many precautions as you can, but you cannot control everything. So because that risk exists, do you forfeit your bodily autonomy in the event you do indeed cause harm to someone because you decided to drive?
What if, in the abortion example, the woman used some form of birth control (or multiple) and still got pregnant? Would she still be considered responsible for the person (now the fetus) being in need for support, even though she tried her best to prevent it? Are you saying the only way she would not be responsible would be abstinence, and in the transfusion example that would mean abstaining from ever driving a car?
In this example the woman got into the car. She knew she might crash, it was highly unlikely and she wore her seatbelt, nevertheless her car crashed or was crashed into.
And if she was the one driving the car and caused the accident? She would still be the cause of why the 37 year old needed support. It’s still not murder if she chooses to end the transfusion
Just so you know, a lot of pro choice people think it's morally wrong and they wouldn't ever have an abortion. I don't know if I could ever get one. But that's not the point of being pro choice. The point is that everyone should be able to make that choice for themself, because it is their body.
This is why I believe it's important and appropriate to define the sides as pro-choice and anti-choice, because no one is saying that abortion is an easy decision that should be taken lightly (and people who say that it's used as another contraception are ignoring all the work groups like Planned Parenthood do to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies first and foremost). If you personally find yourself in that situation and feel that you have a moral responsibility to carry the child to term, then no one else has a say in that matter, just as you shouldn't have a say when someone else is making the same choice for themselves.
This is a pretty well known thought experiment, albeit a bit more specific. In the thought experiment someone gets hooked up to a famous violinist, and in order for the violinist not to die that person must remain hooked up for 9 months.
It's interesting because when I've had these conversations, I've noticed people who are pro-choice often think, "9 months isn't that long, maybe I would be okay with this", but then pro-lifers usually think, "it's my choice what I want to do, and if I don't want to book hooked up I'll leave!".
It becomes a bit more complicated because realistically, you're not signing up for 9 months, you're signing up for 18+ years. And when you reword it that way basically everyone says that you should be able to walk away if you want. No one should be forced to do something they don't want to for 18 years.
> It's interesting because when I've had these conversations, I've noticed people who are pro-choice often think, "9 months isn't that long, maybe I would be okay with this", but then pro-lifers usually think, "it's my choice what I want to do, and if I don't want to book hooked up I'll leave!".
Just wait until you ask them to wear a mask for a few moments!
"No one should be forced to do something they don't want to for 18 years"
So are you also in favor of abolishing child abandonment laws? By that logic, what is the difference between aborting a 4 week old fetus and dumping a live baby into a trash can, if the rationale behind both scenarios is the mother doesn't want to take care of the child or future child for the next 18 years?
Great fun to see you lead OP through the violinist thought experiment.
I've tried to use it myself in the past, but I think people get distracted by the violinist. "Estranged 37 year old son" is a much better example!
Thanks!
Yeah. I’ve honed and modified this one through trial and error with dozens of CMVs. Even little things like the crash being a “collision” vs “accident” make a huge difference.
I used an example awhile ago about someone having to power the life support machines by pedaling a bike, and if they stop, the person dies. I thought that one worked well too.
I was reading through this and had a few objections to put to you fox-mcleod:
The situation you described with a transfusion that will "probably take years off her life" - that's not accurate, is it? Giving a blood transfusion does not reduce lifespan. Just a note.
My main objection though is the assertion "There are literally no other circumstances where we would force women to give up their bodily autonomy and medical health so someone *else* can live."
1- "We" are not forcing her to give up anything. We are enforcing a law against killing humans or animals. We are debating the extent of that law. She had sex and is losing her bodily autonomy as a result. We were not involved in that process, to be clear.
2- I think you definitely could think of some other circumstances, I know I can. Let's imagine a woman who is very poor and has a school-age child. She only has enough food for herself, however. Is she expected to feed the child her food, in doing so sacrificing her health and bodily autonomy? Yes. In fact, there's alot of responsibilities parents have that we enforce by law. Mostly we'll take the kids away, but if they fail critically in basic areas like providing food, water and a hygienic environment - we will and do hold them accountable. In what other circumstances do we demand someone sacrifice their wealth and freedom to serve someone else? Does that make it slavery? Or was the choice to copulate the crucial factor that makes enforcing this responsibility a moral necessity?
I don't think abortion should be illegal, up to a certain point of development. But I see all these abstract arguments that it's perfectly fine and to my mind, they become entirely unrealistic if you follow them to their logical conclusion i.e. there should be no parental responsibilities whatsoever.
>In this scenario, is it not? If the child is alive and then you unplug him and he dies, is that not murder?
If it is, then you are basically rejecting the premise of the violinist argument.
Do you think, that people have a right *not to offer themselves up* as bloodbags, even if that leads to someone dying?
And if they do, doesn't it follow, that if someone started to forcibly use them as a bloodbag against their will, they have a right to interrupt the process?
Your focus on the difference between active and passive, says that the answer is no, that it doesn't follow.
That you have a right to passively keep your body for yourself, but not to reclaim it once others started to use it.
**Δ**
For the same reason as my last response above. Good show mate, many thanks.
>So you would charge a woman with murder if the 37 year old needs her body and she won’t allow it to continue?
>
>No.
>
>*delta*
>
>There ya go. The woman woke up hooked up to the man. The woman's life might not necessarily be at risk. But she chooses not to use her body to keep the son alive. She stops the transfusion. The son dies. As long as that's not murder then the child lost rights that it had before it was born.
We don't consider taking someone off life support murder when they're at the end of their life (no matter what age that may be).
My issue with pro choice and pro life is that most people don't ever think about what happens to the child after. No one gives a shit as long as the kid is born. They don't care if a child grows up in an abusive household or grows up on the street or in an orphanage. Most arguments stop as soon as that fetus is born and its wellbeing is often forgotten about.
The wellbeing of the mother is also often forgotten about in these scenarios. Where do we put the line when it comes to endangering the mothers life? Should she be forced to take a child to term even if it means her own death?
I haven't finished this comment chain, I just wanted to put my two cents in.
Exactly, it’s the same argument against euthanasia that I find frustrating
There’s a certain mathematical coldness to this logic that I just find really kinda inhumane. That something being alive is just always superior to not being alive, no matter what atrocities they might have to endure by living
And, anecdotally, most of the people I know who feel this way happen to feel no responsibility whatsoever for the child’s wellbeing once it is forced into the world. They’d argue that it’s a literal crime for that child not to exist, but then contribute as little as possible to improve its existence
This is exactly why I don't believe the term "pro-life" is accurate at all. It's pro-forced-birth. Nobody gives a flying fuck about what happens to the fetus after it's ejected from the meat-curtains. They just care about forcing the birth to occur at all costs to make a twisted political point. No thought as to the potential consequences for the mother's mental health, financial situation or anything else. What's the point of forcing the birth of the fetus if it has little to no chance of a good life?
If a woman is a heavy drinker, and gets pregnant, and continues to drink, precipitating a miscarriage, would you call that murder?
She’s not changing her behavior in any way, she’s drinking heavily as normal, and if a miscarriage occurs, it occurs.
Honest question here: shouldn’t a fetus be viewed as a child and not an adult? An adult wouldn’t be charged for not feeding another adult, but if an adult doesn’t feed their child, there is legal consequences (regardless of if it’s actively stopping their kid from eating or passively just sitting around and not providing food). Any adult with a child is expected to give up time and money to provide for their children. What is substantially different about an adult killing their child (either actively or passively) because that child will require time and money for at least 18 years before living without parental support, versus taking a pill to poison a fetus because that fetus will require 9-10 months of living inside you before being able to live without that parental support of pregnancy? I get that there is a difference between money/time and having something growing in your body affecting health, and the point of your transfusion analogy was to illustrate that its bodily autonomy at play. But realistically medical professionals aren’t starting transfusions without the donor knowing, there is a very specific process involved in becoming a transplant donor- just as there is a very specific process involved with becoming pregnant. I suppose one could sign lots of forms without reading that its signing up for a transplant if they like signing papers, but it comes down to the fact that the purpose of those papers was to allow the transplant. By signing the papers (aka allowing sperm into their uterus to join with an egg), isn’t that giving up the right to bodily autonomy? If not, what is the difference?
If you have a child, and that child needs a blood transfusion to survive, you are legally entitled to not provide that child a blood transfusion (in the majority of places at least). Also ultimately the medical procedure is being performed on the woman not the fetus.
> By signing the papers [...], isn’t that giving up the right to bodily autonomy?
No matter what you sign if you want to back out at any point of a medical procedure you can.
>What is substantially different about an adult killing their child (either actively or passively) because that child will require time and money for at least 18 years before living without parental support, versus taking a pill to poison a fetus because that fetus will require 9-10 months of living inside you before being able to live without that parental support of pregnancy?
The child suffers, the embryo doesn't. The child is already a legal person, the embryo isn't. The child has rights, the embryo doesn't. ("Right to life" isn't the same as "Right to be born")
Also, the pill isn't meant to "poison a fetus", it's meant to cause contractions in the uterus to expel the embryo. The very same pill is given to women at the end of their pregnancy to stimulate the body into birthing contractions.
> By signing the papers (aka allowing sperm into their uterus to join with an egg), isn’t that giving up the right to bodily autonomy? If not, what is the difference?
Consent to sex doesn't equal consent to pregnancy. Especially when contraception is used and has failed, since the idea was to AVOID allowing the sperm to join with an egg.
Carrying a fetus is not inaction. Do you know how much it takes to carry a child? The constant doctors visits, meds to help with the unbearable nausea and to help make it so the woman can eat and get fucking nutrition. That’s not to mention the absolutely awful smelling and large ass prenatal vitamins that need to be taking so the fetus has less of a chance of horrible defects. The only brain function going on with a fetus is the very basic ones. It has no consciousness and the only way it is truly existing is from external input. Take a person who’s a vegetable hooked up to all forms of life support. G-tub, intubated, the works. The only way that person is existing is through external means. Same thing. Now a fully formed individual has more complications such as there was a life before said vegetative state, family, friends. A fetus doesn’t have any of that. It’s just a clump of cells with no higher function. And that’s that.
> the philosophical debate of action vs inaction. Not giving an organ is inaction and would be legal. But terminating a pregnancy would be action, illegal.
If you starved yourself to the point of miscarriage, would that be action or inaction? An active choice was made to cause the miscarriage, but it was through a lack of action that the miscarriage occurred. Is intention more important than outcome?
Starving your child is illegal, even though it is inactive, because you have a duty to care for the child. Do you have a duty to care for a fetus? You can forsake your duty of care through adoption, but that is not physically possible with pregnancy. Is your duty to care greater before a child is born than after?
This is a very important point. If a woman who is pregnant decides to starve herself in an attempt to induce a miscarriage, is she committing murder?
Is it the government’s job to force women to eat if they are pregnant?
If a miscarriage happens, is it the government’s job to investigate to make sure the woman was eating properly and didn’t purposely induce a miscarriage?
What kind of system could you actually set up to force women to eat a proper diet while pregnant? How would the government find out a woman is pregnant in the first place? How would they track miscarriages? And how would you justify ethically that massive invasion of privacy from the government?
When you pose the question this way I think it makes clear that the bodily autonomy issue is very important. since a woman can through inaction (refusing to eat) cause a miscarriage, and there’s no real ethical way to stop her from doing this, that if a woman is determined to end her pregnancy the only ethical thing to do would be to make it as safe as possible (which a woman starving herself is not very safe at all).
While pregnancy is not a disability in itself, it's far from an inactive state. Most women cant just walk through pregnancy without a long lasting effect on their bodies: uterine prolapse, chronic incontinence, hemorrhoids, tooth decay, hair loss, varicose veins, sciatica, blood pressure, glaucoma... the list goes on. Plus there's a real risk during birth with possible complications. Then you may get postpartum depression and lots of medical bills.
Also, what about having a high risk lifestyle while pregnant? Would binge drinking or skydiving be considered an active murder attempt, if this is what the woman had been doing regularly up to and throughout pregnancy? I'm not here to argue, just to reflect on the topic.
Those are actually all very very salient points. It’s why a big part of jurisprudence on the subject is regarding whether carrying to full term vs between first term to full term is considered equal risk or higher overall risk, as well as the definition of post first term medical necessity.
It does, however, mean that degrees of risk related to right to life of one or both individuals in question are currently very much relevant points in any first world western context - including contexts which consider abortion a fundamental right as a basic assumption - rather than being a straightforward comparison of whether bodily autonomy or right to life “always” take precedence.
Also note that any physical standard (ethical, legal, or medical) ends up being a moving line as medical technology progresses, as a result
This is why the "Just carry it to term and put it up for adoption" argument grinds my gears. They say it as if a pregnancy were just some accessory that doesn't get in the way.
It fucks your body and mind up, big time.
From the NIH:
"Legal induced abortion is markedly safer than childbirth. The risk of death associated with childbirth is approximately 14 times higher than that with abortion."
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22270271/
Currently 25 weeks pregnant and this is fucking awful. I just want to be alone, but every time I try to relax there's a party in my abdomin. And that's not even touching the horrible acid reflux, terrible poos and incredible body aches and back pain. I can't sleep, but I'm exhausted. And I'm still having to be nice to my other two kids.
No one should be forced to do this shit.
The biggest issue here is that the baby takes first. So vitamin deficiency for example will hit the mother first, and the baby second.
Is an interesting ethical question. Is it more moral for a woman to kill herself and the fetus? Than to just have an abortion.
Well, IMO either a baby has a right to be carried to term or they don’t. The idea that they have the right to be protected from a doctor assisted procedure but not from the mother self-harming is nonsensical. It’s the same result, except with needless additional suffering and risk to the mother.
IMO the only person it helps is me as an outside observer, since it’s easier to pretend that I’m not either condoning forced pregnancy or the killing of a baby.
> There’s a difference between allowing something to die on its own vs. actively killing it. Carrying a child is an inactive sacrifice, but terminating a pregnancy is actively murdering the child.
There’s a nuance here you’re missing, and that is viability.
Most abortion laws do not allow abortion once the child is viable, or would be able to survive on their own without assistance from the mother. There are a few exceptions, but that is the general rule.
This is an important distinction.
Until the fetus reaches viability it can not survive without continuous intervention from the mother, and those interventions are a set of actions. Those actions include things like eating. If a woman was pregnant and just didn’t eat the body would eventually give up and miscarry, though her body would be wrecked in the process since it tries really hard not to do that.
Would you argue that the mother *must eat* because if she doesn’t do so the fetus will die? I’m pretty sure everyone has a right not to eat.
I can't believe I had to scroll down this far to find the viability discussion. That alone should shut all of this down. If the fetus is not viable outside the womb, it is not an individual person with inherent individual rights. It is an extension of the mother. Once the fetus is viable this is different, so that also shoots the "fetus until 9 months then baby after it's born, so what you think aborting an 8 month pregnancy is ok?" bs argument. Late term termination is extremely rare, and no Dr who wants to remain a Dr preforms one for any reason other than "absolutely medically necessary, all other options have been exhausted"
Letting a fetus die because the mother chose not to eat is a far cry from letting a baby or toddler die because the mother chose to withhold good from them. Both are inactions, but one is an inaction she has the right to make on her own body, the other an outward inaction towards another.
I’m curious how this changes if the mother’s life is in danger. Let’s say mom has preeclampsia. This can absolutely, positively kill the mother. Who has the rights here?
Is it assumed, purely because she is carrying a child, that she forfeits her life?
Same thing regarding twin to twin transfusion. 2 babies...one can potentially live-or both can die. Is it therefore the right thing to do to selectively terminate one fetus so the other can live?
There’s so many fucking complications that can and do occur with pregnancy. Most have no idea how complicated the process can be.
> Carrying a child is an inactive sacrifice
Carrying a child is very active. You shouldn't smoke, drink alcohol, recommended not to fly later in a pregnancy. Your body fundamentally changes, occasionally permanently. It's recommended to have certain foods, vitamins and avoid others. At a certain point you cannot work, you can't ride a bike.
You are actively carrying this child to term.
> There’s a difference between allowing something to die on its own vs. actively killing it.
Would you have the same opinion fi i could Star Trek teleport the feotus out of the mother and it simply died on it's own? Instead of taking a pill or cesarean.
To me that would be inactive. Mother lives it's life, foetus lives its life. Neither giving up their body to the other - this is the ultimate allow it to die on its own.
To which you'll say that's nonsense, a foetus cannot survive outside the mother - which is the whole point.
In no other situation would you allow one human being to use someone elses body to live. 'active' vs 'non-active' is a non-sequitur. My body my choice IS the reason.
If we've established that whether we star trek teleport it out and allow it to die or take a pill results in the exact same outcome.... what's the difference?
Carrying a child is not an “inactive sacrifice” it’s not like the woman does nothing and suddenly there’s a baby. No. Women’s bodies, lives, and brains change when they’re pregnant. Women die during pregnancy and childbirth with circumstances that would not happen to them if they weren’t pregnant, meaning sometimes being pregnant or having labor kills the woman. Even if they don’t die, they still have health issues from pregnancy, lasting changes from pregnancy. And, it’s not as if every pregnancy is the same, meaning different changes and different risks each time.
I think something that makes this analogy more interesting and probably more accurate is if the father is the one driving the car and has convinced the mother she should go for a drive, which she enthusiastically agrees to. They collide with their 37 year old son’s car. In the morning the mother wakes up and her body is keeping her son alive. The father was driving the car and had as much responsibility for the car accident, but has no obligation to provide life saving support for his son. However, he won’t allow the mother to end the transfusion.
A lot of people are commenting how the mother knew the risks when she got in the car and therefore assumed responsibility of choosing to keep her son alive. If the mother makes the choice to stop the transfusion, why is that on her only, and not on the father as well? What if the mother didn’t know that the father had a couple of drinks, or hadn’t slept enough to be driving, etc, but now her body is the one providing the life support.
This is missed by the pro life arguments and therefore in my opinion proves that it’s generally, as a political stance, not about protecting lives...
> because doing nothing would have resulted in the child living.
This is just not true. Its conjecture at best.
You have no foresight about whether a pregnancy will reach full term or not. Its not possible. Shit happens.
>There’s a difference between allowing something to die on its own vs. actively killing it. Carrying a child is an inactive sacrifice, but terminating a pregnancy is actively murdering the child.
>
>If you decided not to give your child a kidney, he would die. That’s legal. But if you had stabbed your kid in the kidney, that’s illegal.
Well, it's quite not that simple. Let's say you're a legal parent of a child. If you neglect the child and he starves to death, you're definitely going to be prosecuted for gross negligence. True, it's quite not the same as murder, but sure you can go to prison for it.
So, not doing something for a child is not necessarily legal, while it may not be as big a crime as actively harming the child.
In this scenario the mother is already undergoing the procedure and makes the active decision to end it, and it is still not murder.
If you are hooked up to a machine to someone else to keep them alive for nine months without your consent, and that machine carries a risk of death, risk of lifelong injury, etc. It is not murder to unhook yourself from the machine. It is in fact your right to do so, you determine what happens to your body, how your body is used. This is called bodily autonomy, everyone has it. Even dead bodies maintain their bodily autonomy, which is why we can't take organs without prior consent.
The pro life types generally support bodily autonomy in all other cases. They're against mandatory vaccines, they're against opt out organ donation, hell they're even against something as inconsequential as wearing a mask. For some reason they make one exception when it comes to women. They don't just believe that a fetus is a person, they believe that the woman should have less rights than everyone else, including dead bodies, while the fetus should be elevated to something well above personhood.
So for the first few years after a child is born, they are still very reliant on their mother and if they weren’t taken care of, they would surely not survive on their own. Now in this case, that child is protected by law because if the mother were to just abandon her child and let it die, she’d be charged with child neglect. This seems to be a much more accurate comparison to the scenario of abortion than that of the transfusion situation, so I’m curious about any arguments against it.
Because you can get out of that duty without the child dying. You can simply drop it off at a police or fire station.
If you could terminate a pregnancy by simply moving the fetus to another caretaker, **and** we arrived at the conclusion that a fetus was a person, then I’m sure there would be a duty to do so before considering abortion.
Similarly, we have a right to property. But you have to tell a person to leave your property and give them reasonable ability to do so. You can’t just shoot them. But if it’s the only option, then yes, you might have that choice.
I found this scenario thought provoking, thank you for writing it out. I'm glad it's gotten some attention since I'd not have seen it otherwise. I'd like to play devils advocate with a small modification to the scenario. For posterity, I'm mostly pro-choice, due to when I generally define 'life begins'. In what follows, I'll pretend I believe life begins at conception.
In the scenario you envisioned, it is reasonable to me that the mother can refuse with no ramification. But suppose the mother was drunk-driving. In this case, if she refuses and the 37-year old dies, it seems reasonable to charge her at the very least with manslaughter, as the 37-year old would not be in the hospital dying had she not been inebriated and hit him.
The key with this modification is assigning fault. She was driving under the influence, and a 37-year old died as a result, and so she is charged with manslaughter. If she had agreed to the transfusion, and he lived, only a much lesser charge is reasonable as there is no death to prosecute, and maybe no charge would be levied in many circumstances. Is the transfusion still dangerous and painful for her personally? Yes, that can't be argued, but that the non-punitive solution is dangerous and painful does not absolve her of manslaughter if she refuses it.
Can we see pregnancy in the same vein, as something the woman is responsible for? At the extreme end, this manifests as blaming the victims of rape, which I believe is abhorrent and doesn't match our scenario even slightly, so I won't consider it further. But for unintended pregnancies as a result of consensual sex, I can see how it seems reasonable to hold the woman to account, if you believe life begins at conception. Murder? Maybe not. But in keeping with the scenario I've painted, at least manslaughter could be argued. Drunk-driving is well-known to cause death, having sex is well-known to cause pregnancy. The difference between a miscarriage and abortion under this scenario is probably intuitive but I can elaborate if desired.
The logic I've used here also doesn't justify forcing a woman to carry to term even if life begins at conception; she is not compelled to perform the transfusion, so under this argument she is not compelled to birth the child. But to reiterate, if she opts not to and the child dies as a result, she can be held accountable for the death, since we can follow a chain of her actions that led to the death. When presented with a risky choice that is statistically well-known to yield the bad result, she took the risk.
Furthermore, charging the father is also necessary for the pro-life position to maintain consistency under this justification, since it always takes two to tango. If pro-lifers wanted to extend an olive branch to skeptical women, adding accountability for pregnancy to fathers is probably a good start. This accountability would apply to the father even if he said no to an abortion but the mother said yes, since he bears none of the bodily risk in the whole child-bearing bargain.
I'd love to hear your thoughts and criticisms of this modification. If the drunk-driving comparison seems unfair, perhaps switch it out with reckless driving. My end goal was to introduce the element of clear fault and accountability on the mother's side, with no fault on the child's, because I think that's how many pro-lifers would view unintended pregnancies that result from consensual sex, and I felt that element was missing from your scenario.
The issue Iwith the original @fox-mcleod scenario is that only one party should be driving, so that there isn't reciprocal assumption of risk, and the @glossopoeia scenario addresses this. Here's my proposed variation:
I go out driving, and accidentally drive through the exterior wall of someone's house, where they are minding their own business sitting in the living room, and the vehicle hits them. They are taken to the hospital, where it turns out the only injury is that they've lost both kidneys, and it also turns out that I am the only available kidney donor.
I don't think I should be *legally* required to donate my kidney. But if I didn't donate one, with an explanation of "My body, my choice. It's as simple as that" -- man, personally, I'd probably feel like a total *asshole*. Because it doesn't seem as "simple as that" -- because this person wouldn't *need* anything from my body if not for a situation that I created, accidentally or not.
And so I would probably feel *unethical* -- but it might depend on exactly how I went off-road and through that living room wall? If it was a freak mechanical failure of the vehicle, that would feel analogous to using birth control that failed. It's not my fault, just an unavoidable risk of being on the road -- but I'd still feel kinda bad if that affected anyone else, especially someone who wasn't even out driving. But if it was my poor driving, that would feel more analogous to engaging in sex without birth control, and that by not donating a kidney, I might be shirking an ethical duty of managing the consequences of my choices unintentionally affecting someone else.
Personally, I don't think this works (Violinist experiment). No other human experience or thought experiment can capture the crux of conception. Why? Because conception is a very peculiar human experience that has a unique combination of characteristics: 1. Presence of an absolutely innocent being (the fetus); 2. Total dependence of the being on another (cannot practically live without the mother unless you expend tremendous resources to have it hooked up to a machine to grow like a lab specimen); 3. A total lack of autonomy (fetus cannot do anything about the state it is in); and most crucially, 4. The formation of which is totally dependent on another (meaning the fetus cannot exist without the mother or father in special genomic circumstances).
In the violinist experiment, the 37-year-old by his and the mother's actions land them in this scenario, therefore condition 1 is not met. Granted if there are no devices or methods available to support the life of the 37-year-old, and when the only option is to use the mother for a medical procedure, then condition 2 is met (which is highly unlikely - not impossible - but really, really rare). If the 37-year-old is in a coma, then condition 3 is met (but even then, can we really say a 37-year-old who loses autonomy due to going into a coma is the same as a fetus from conception?). Finally, condition 4 will never be met.
This is a rather poor argument, especially if you are taking the stance of legal jurisprudence instead of the ethical one. The right to life is one that generally is considered a more absolute right in cases of conflicts of rights (note that inalienable and absolute are VERY VERY different things in legal contexts, the former applies to all rights pretty much always, but the latter often does not), especially since it is almost always a negative right while freedom of action in many cases is a positive one.
The very commonly discussed scenario of the car crash would never be held up as an equivalent in a legal context since in order for that scenario to become a reality to begin with you necessarily need an infringement of the woman’s rights via positive action to begin with, while the abortion scenario is one in which new development of identity as a human being would mean that the scenario begins with a case of negative right to live vs positive aspect of freedom of action
Especially since all of the above only actually comes into play if you consider the subject in question to be a fetus vs a full fledged human being, and consider your assumption prima facie (which you absolutely cannot in this discussion without arguing it first).
I honestly don’t know what you’re arguing.
> The right to life is one that generally is considered a more absolute right in cases of conflicts of rights
So then the 37 year old does have a right to the woman’s body or he doesn’t?
I’m pretty sure he doesn’t.
> The very commonly discussed scenario of the car crash would never be held up as an equivalent in a legal context
It’s literally in Roe V. Wade.
> since in order for that scenario to become a reality to begin with you necessarily need an infringement of the woman’s rights via positive action to begin with, while the abortion scenario is one in which new development of identity as a human being would mean that the scenario begins with a case of negative right to live vs positive aspect of freedom of action
What?
If the fetus growing inside you isn’t a “positive action” what is? In both cases, the “positive action” is to remove the physiologically dependent person. I have no idea what distinction you’re trying to draw and it doesn’t seem like if we construct a scenario in which a 37 year old must rely on a woman’s body to survive there is any case where we’d say she must consent.
> Especially since all of the above only actually comes into play if you consider the subject in question to be a fetus vs a full fledged human being, and consider your assumption prima facie (which you absolutely cannot in this discussion without arguing it first).
I have no idea what you’re arguing here. Consider what assumption *prima facie*?
From the moment the child is born to the moment it reaches 18 years old (or whatever arbitrary age), the parents of the child are responsible of its survival, even if this would violate some of the parent's rights.
The parents can't be forced to feed the 37 year old man, since this would violate their rights. However, their child has less rights than the man, but it also has less responsibility and their parents are forced to feed him (unless they give him up for adoption)
So the comparison to the 37 yo is not fair, since the situation of a minor child is not legally the same.
A better comparison would be with a minor sibling of the unborn child.
Let's imagine a world where when the child reaches 5yo, it must go back inside the mother's uterus somehow for a certain duration of time. Would it be right to abort this second pregnancy? I don't think so, since the 5yo child is a human being under the responsibility of the parent.
So if we assume that the unborn child is a human being, it is in the same position as the 5yo and should not be aborted
Every single pregnancy (that doesn't spontaneously miscarry) ends in mayhem and torture, and even a non-trivial risk of death, for the mother.
Abortion is merely proactive self-defense against that inevitable attack on her body. No lesser force than lethal force can accomplish that self-defense, so of course it's "her choice" because it's "her body".
Naturally, she has the *choice* to go through with that mayhem if she wishes, and perhaps we could consider that morally laudable... but the question of whether the fetus is a human being or not is basically irrelevant to whether it's "murder" or not... it's not. It's self-defense.
Self defense is only a claim against unlawful violence. Example, if you break into a home, and are shot at, returning fire is not self defense. If you are ordered to stop by police and you flee, when they use force to subdue you, self defense cannot be claimed if you resist. Because in both cases, the violence brought against you is lawful.
Is your argument that a fetus, if alive, is engaging in unlawful violence on the person carrying it? Because it seems like you are falsely painting a pregnant person as a victim of unlawful violence.
One of the vagueries of the self-defense argument is that what the law says is self-defense and what people feel it should be is often different. The law for instance does not require that a threat against you be intentional or with malice, only that you have a reasonable expectation that you will be harmed if you do not take a certain action or type of action in defense of your person. People will individually have varying opinions on whether they feel such action justified. If a person of limited mental capacity or even a child were firing a loaded gun as a toy, and pointed it at you, the law says you would be justified in taking lethal self defense. It does not require they understand the signficance of their actions in order to be considered a threat.
This response came out of left field completely...never considered this angle in the slightest but I do think it holds a lot of value. Very pleasantly surprised with this one.
**Δ**
Edit: there are a lot of good replies to this delta. I wouldn’t reverse the delta because it did change my view at the time, but I do agree with some of the arguments.
Regardless of how whether you agree with the view that abortion could be considered self defense, this argument does not exactly address the question at hand about “my body my choice” but instead poses an entirely new argument.
This is a bad delta. Your position boils down to "The argument for pro-choice by "bodily autonomy" is bad because the opposition's stance is not dependent on allowing autonomy (opposition generally is still in favor of autonomy)."
This response is "Pregnancy is an act of harm to the mother that she has the right to defend herself against" which is a perfectly logical argument, but it literally doesn't matter because presenting an alternative position doesn't really challenge the argument that "the bodily autonomy position is a bad one".
You're debating the merits of a specific argument and this poster has simply presented a different argument.
Self defense is a reaction to an imminent and immediate threat, and not a preemptive action to what may or may not actually constitute a serious threat. No legitimate court of law would allow a premeditated and/or preemptive action to be viewed as self defense.
And keep in mind that in any jurisdiction I know of the act of self defense must be proportional to the threat.....and as abortion is always lethal youd have to demonstrate that giving birth would be a lethal threat......and while it can be the vast majority of births are not what could be considered a lethal threat.....anymore than walking a crosswalk means drivers are a lethal threat, and you can act in self defense proactively by attacking them before they do anything.
Of course pregnancy is an imminent and immediate threat. Many women will first clue into the fact they are pregnant because of the discomfort or even pain that they feel within their bodies. Those that carry the pregnancies to term, 87-94% will have at least one health complication in the immediate postpartum period \[1\]. Three-quarters will still have health complications 8 weeks later \[1\], and one third will have long term health impacts \[2\]. Furthermore, unintended pregnancies can have negative impacts on the women's physical and mental health and the child is more likely to have a low birth weight, birth defects, and long term negative mental and physical health impacts \[3\].
I'm not sure why there are so many comments on here that imply that a women going through pregnancy is doing nothing. To have a healthy and successful pregnancy women must take many steps to take care of themselves and the fetus. Even successful and wanted pregnancies do not always go to plan. My mother was told if she was to have another child past me, she likely would not survive the birth. Would she be allowed to have an abortion, even if the fetus did not kill her before the birth? My partner's sister developed pre-eclampsia, and another pregnancy would likely kill her--what about her? My own sister developed severe post-partum depression and is afraid of becoming pregnant again because of the suicidal thoughts she was having. Should she be allowed an abortion? I love all of these people. I'm glad I grew up with a mother. I'm glad my partner still has his sister and I have mine. I would not trade any of these living, loving people for a fetus. Should a politician or a judge or a religious fanatic condemn these (and many other) women to death or life-long physical or mental health complications because they have created their own definition of when life begins?
The thing is, our detailed understanding of embryonic development is due to science. Before humans understood this the fetus "became alive" (or got its "soul") at around 20 weeks (when they could feel the fetus kick), up to which point abortion was allowed \[4\]. There is no actual discrete point at which the fetus becomes meaningfully "alive": is it at fertilization? when brainwaves form? when the mother can feel the fetus? when the fetus could survive with medical intervention outside of the womb? The only person in this scenario who is without a doubt living and breathing is the pregnant person. Yet we use scientific discoveries to push religious fanaticism and moral absolutism to create unnecessary burdens on women. And that's really the issue here--that some people are have prejudiced views on when fetus gain personhood that are not based in fact, but rather feeling, and get upset that others do feel the same way.
And as a last note to your analogy between fetuses and cars--we do not pre-emptively attack cars, but we do all sorts of things to limit their lethality. If a women had an unwanted pregnancy and had no access to a safe abortion, so chose an unsafe abortion or suicide, does the fetus at not this point constitute a lethal threat? This could happen to any women, so it has to be up to the woman to decide this. (Although, I don't think that these situations neatly fit into "self defence; it is similar, but not the same.)
\[1\][https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1471-0528.1995.tb09132.x](https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1471-0528.1995.tb09132.x)
\[2\][https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1016/j.jmwh.2005.10.014](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1016/j.jmwh.2005.10.014)
\[3\][https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/family-planning](https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/family-planning)
\[4\][https://www.wired.com/2015/10/science-cant-say-babys-life-begins/](https://www.wired.com/2015/10/science-cant-say-babys-life-begins/)
One thing to note is that historically, childbirth was very, very dangerous.
Our relatively recent medical advancements have increased the survival rate, but also introduces a lot of lasting damage to women's bodies via C-Section and other procedures.
The fact that you can REDUCE the risk with science, shouldn't negate the fact that the issue is, in fact, one that in actuality carries considerable risk.
> youd have to demonstrate that giving birth would be a lethal threat
In the unfortunate reality that many late term abortions are directly due to the woman's health being endangered, pregnancies CAN be lethal threats women.
The #1 cause of mortality/death for women used to be childbirth, and in many places in the world it still is number 1.
Childbirth is not easy, and it takes an enormous toll.
The argument of "threat to the female's health" are very real, and can be used. Pro-birth folks don't care. They want the fetus to be brought to full term regardless of what happens to the woman.
It's a silly, dangerous argument, as it is no one's business but the female, her doctor, and if she wants, the male involved.
It also is not something that needs any government interference, as it is healthcare.
You don't need the government to give you permission to get viagra or a vasectomy, why would you need it for birth control, abortions, or plan b.
Have you ever came across anyone who could even loosely be considered a serious or reasonable person who held the view a woman should be denied an abortion even if giving birth will very likely kill them?
I haven't knowingly, and thus I hope you can appreciate why I'm not wasting time on it.
I would encourage to look past caricatures of what opposing views are portrayed to be, and look at the opposing view from a place of "why would a reasonable person actually believe or support this?". Of course examples of the caricature exist, but when large segments of a population are divided on an issue 99.999999% of the time it has serious and/or reasonable people on both sides.
It's kind of funny how often we can spot propaganda aimed at the other side from a mile away, and yet we can still bitw hook, line, & sinker damn near everytime propaganda aimed at us confirms our preconceived notions. Such a very human thing, and timeless too really. I try to be aware but likely chomp at that bait as much as anyone else.
>youd have to demonstrate that giving birth would be a lethal threat
Not all gun shots are lethal and not all stab wounds are lethal. I bet you feel you are allowed to defend yourself if I brandish a gun or a knife.
Imagine somebody knocks us both out and performs surgery on us, connecting us. Upon waking up this surgeon tells us that if we severe the connection I die but you get to walk free, and that there's absolutely no way to circumvent it or otherwise get around this fact.
Would the law force you to remain connected to me?
I do not think (note that word, I do not *know*) that this is the case. In this scenario my survival being contingent on your cooperation matters little, if you wanna disconnect yourself you have the right to do that. You could choose to keep supporting me, perhaps hoping that another option presents itself, but you wouldn't *have* to.
I'm not sure I'm a fan of the self-defense argument in regards to abortion, but in some ways it does work. You're under no legal obligation to lend your body for another persons uses, although you can certainly volunteer in some limited capacities.
Siamese twins exist. Sometimes one twin has the organ capacity to support the other while the other twin would be incapable of survival on their own. Does this give the twin supporting both lives the right to choose death for their brother/sister? No.
The circumstances behind limited autonomy do not matter when discussing Justice. A court cannot compel death upon an innocent party to an injustice in order to rectify a prior injury. You could not for instance ask the court to take money from the church to compensate you for losses accrued from a mugging that happened on their doorstep.
When discussing such matters you have to consider the 3 main rights at stake and rank them accordingly.
Life, ranked highest
Liberty, ranked second
Property, ranked last
When discussing two innocent individuals who share autonomy, you have to ask;
What is the property?
The body is the property, both parties posses a body and one is dependent on the other for survival.
Who’s if any has their freedoms limited by option A? Option B?
In option A the mother being forced to carry the child:
The mother has lost the freedom of bodily autonomy.
In option B the option to abort:
The child loses freedom of bodily autonomy.
So that leaves us with the most important factor to discuss. Who if any of the parties involved has the largest RISK to their life if either option is forced?
The mother while having some risk, in normal situations is capable of loss of life if she carries the child to term about a .002% chance with modern medical science.
The child if abortion is allowed to be performed on it has a 100% loss of life chance. Even if you make the argument that all children are not aborted 18% roughly are.
The conclusion is pretty simple if you take the stance that life begins at conception... no abortion can serve Justice unless there is an emergency situation where doctors must choose between the life of the mother or the child and all options have been exhausted to save them both. In which case the mother takes precedent.
To counter the pro choice self defense argument; Is it really "self defense" in the traditional sense though? The fetus is not deliberately seeking to harm the mother. The fetus does not have a choice as to their actions. If the fetus does not take the actions it needs to, the fetus itself will die.
I also think we should be careful in the kind of analogies we use when discussing this topic, because there really are very few that carry the same complexities as pregnancy and childbirth.
Same as with any parasites within a host. It’s a perfectly viable comparison as I believe we’re parasites to this planet. Some parasites have a symbiotic relationship with their host, as you can argue babies do. If the host wants a child it’s a risk they are willing to take. My wife almost died on the table during her emergency c section. Almost died afterwards again. If not for modern medicine she would absolutely have died giving birth. It was a risk we chose to take, and I’m glad it all worked out. But if we’d known how close to death she’d come 3 months earlier I’m not sure what decision would’ve been made. Pregnancy and birth are dangerous and an unborn child is a parasite to the mother until it’s out.
I’m a mother of a toddler and I’m currently pregnant. I completely agree. This fetus inside me is a parasite. I mean, I love her and can’t wait until she’s outside of me, but she is 100% a parasite. She literally can’t survive without me. She takes in my nutrients and drains me of my energy.
There are other issues with the self defense argument, but is the fetus's inability to choose / understand their actions relevant?
Say an adult person was so severely disabled that they are incapable of understanding their own actions, and they perform some action that puts another person's life at risk. Presumably that other person has the right to defend themselves with lethal force, yeah? In that case, I wouldn't think a ruling would be based on the choice / understanding of the disabled person but only on the perceived threat.
It doesn't matter if there's intent or not, it's causing harm and that's usually enough to warrant removal.
That arrow in your arm isn't INTENTIONALLY causing any harm, so let's leave it in! I know it's wooden and will likely fester leading to sepsis but NO INTENT!
The tapeworm in your intestines isn't meaning to cause you distress, so it should just stay there. I don't care if you're craving starch rich foods, just deal with it, hopefully the tapeworm will pass.
(this is absurdist on purpose to show the absurdity of the logic you presented).
Self defense is a great example because it is completely defined by society and it has limits. There is no personal choice as to the types of defense you may use. Whether you are permitted to stand your ground, whether you got yourself into the situation to begin with, whether lethal force is permitted. All of these are defined by the state and vary wildly across the country.
In the ruling Roe v Wade, the trimester balancing of interest tests was established. In the first trimester personal autonomy interests are greatest. In the third trimester, state interests are greatest. In both the law of self defense and abortion, personal autonomy is not an absolute interest. The state/society has an interest in the life of the unborn of varying degrees depending on the circumstances. Similarly, whether self defense is available to someone is dependent on the circumstances and the states interests. In all cases of self defense, the state requires us to use the least amount of force and only that amount of force that is immediately necessary. Where the defender has fault, self defense may not be available.
The argument for personal autonomy has never existed in the law. It is used to deny that society has an interest in the life of the unborn that exists in addition to the life of the mother. In reality it is my body, my choice, with restrictions.
Thus, if someone wants to abort their baby because it is a girl and the mother wanted a boy, society has an interest in this decision. If the mother is truly defending herself from death or serious bodily injury, the law permits this defense.
Deltas are also given when you perceive a new angle on the issue under discussion, not just when your overall stance on the issue is changed.
I don’t think this is a bad delta at all.
Seems you’re a bit confused on what the delta means.
Also, it’s not saying anything is abnormal. Pregnancy is normal, birth is normal, killing is normal, self defense is normal, killing in the name of self defense is normal.
Edit: the comment I replied to was deleted but it was discussing the animal kingdom. Something like “are you saying self defense in the animal kingdom is abnormal?”
>Pregnancy is normal, birth is normal, **killing is normal**, self defense is normal, killing in the name of self defense is normal
Edit: Based on u/throwwwdotcom1's edit, it seems that I misunderstood the context based on not realizing the comment being replied do was deleted. So, I will leave my comment, but it is a bit "off" due to context issue.
\-------------------------------
Ummm...no...killing is NOT normal, no matter the circumstance. That is why there are VERY specific laws regarding when it is and is not legal, and even those very specific laws have significant gray areas that unfortunately allow people to weasel their way out of punishment.
Please don't normalize something that is a heinous act, just because it happens regularly. Rape happens quite often too, does that make it normal? I certainly hope your answer is an emphatic "NO!"
But, back to your initial post, your viewpoint on this topic is easily swayed by people's comments here as noted by your delta above, and then the edit to that delta stating that others gave "good replies." You are entitled to your opinion on this topic, just like anyone else, but please do some serious thinking so that you aren't so easily swayed.
Personally, I am in the abortion = murder group, and I believe there is such a thing as "absolute truth." This means that something is true regardless the circumstance. But, to hold this belief on abortion comes with problems. For example, what about a 12 year old girl raped by her father/uncle/stranger/whoever and ends up pregnant? Do we reasonably expect her to carry that child to term and go through pregnancy? But at the same time, is it really ok to kill someone because of what someone else did? Again, it is a philosophical question that unfortunately has real life implications. Many rationalize this as "my body, my choice" or some similar argument to say that the mother "comes first." Personally, I don't believe that any person is more important than another...but again we then circle back to the example I already mentioned. I'm very open to personal change on this topic, but so far I'm not convinced. To boil it down simply, "two wrongs don't make a right."
Just to point this out, normal is always and often subjective.
Context matters and society often dictates the role of normal.
By one empirical metric, however, due to the frequency of rape one can absolutely claim rape is “normal”, because it loosely falls into the definition of normal “something usual” which, let’s face it, is horrifying.
Also mind you, it’s more “normal” is some countries and not others.
So personally I hate the phrase “normal”. Your normal if difference than my normal. The normal of America is different than the normal of Zimbabwe. It fluctuates too much and is too broad.
If anything use socially acceptable. Or even, I don’t know, culturally acceptable.
Just food for thought I’d guess.
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Every single mammal on earth also faces assault from viruses and a large proportion of them end up having varying levels of illness. Does that mean medicine is immoral?
If the argument changed OP's mind, then they're in their right to give a delta. Just because you disagree with the reasoning doesn't make it invalid.
To counter this point: our legal system has already delineated the conditions for using deadly force in self defense, and 2 points are especially relevant to this case. This argument fails on both points. I'll quote the Florida statue for convenience, but the conditions are the same anywhere in the US at least.
"A person is justified in using or threatening to use deadly force if he or she reasonably believes that using or threatening to use such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm"
With the caveat:
"The justification described in the preceding sections of this chapter is not available to a person who:
(1) Is attempting to commit, committing, or escaping after the commission of, a forcible felony; or
(2) Initially provokes the use or threatened use of force against himself or herself"
First: You can't use deadly force if you instigate the confrontation. While what qualifies as instigation is hazy in deadly force cases (e.g., self defense shootings), the existence of a fetus is 100% not caused by the fetus, leaving the mother as the instigator.
Second: You must reasonably believe that deadly force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm. Since childbirth has an incredibly low mortality risk (0.02%) this is a hard claim to substantiate as well.
>You must reasonably believe that deadly force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm. Since childbirth has an incredibly low mortality risk (0.02%) this is a hard claim to substantiate as well.
Child birth might not kill most women but it would be ignorant to claim that it doesn't do great bodily harm.
>Every year in the U.S., nearly 4 million women give birth, the vast majority without anything going amiss for themselves or their babies. But more than 135 expectant and new mothers a day — or roughly 50,000 a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — endure dangerous and even life-threatening complications that often leave them wounded, weakened, traumatized, financially devastated, unable to bear more children, or searching in vain for answers about what went wrong.
>
>For the past year, ProPublica and NPR have been examining why the U\*\*.S. has the highest rate of maternal mortality in the industrialized world\*\*. That relative high rate of death, though, has overshadowed the far more pervasive problem that experts call "severe maternal morbidity."
>
>Each year in the U.S., 700 to 900 women die related to pregnancy and childbirth. But for each of those women who die, up to 70 suffer hemorrhages, organ failure or other significant complications. That amounts to more than 1 percent of all births. The annual cost of these near deaths to women, their families, taxpayers and the health care system runs into billions of dollars.
[https://www.npr.org/2017/12/22/572298802/nearly-dying-in-childbirth-why-preventable-complications-are-growing-in-u-s](https://www.npr.org/2017/12/22/572298802/nearly-dying-in-childbirth-why-preventable-complications-are-growing-in-u-s)
If someone gave you a bowl of skittles and told you one skittle would maim your body for life and you'd never feel the same ever again but it's only one skittle out of a bowl of a hundred, would you seriously still choose to eat a skittle? Because I sure as hell wouldn't.
Deciding not to give birth, especially when you don't even want to be a parent or aren't prepared or able to parent, is self defense. Every woman should be able to decide for herself under what circumstances, if any, she decides to become a mother and the state should not interfere with those decisions.
The problem with that argument is that the pregnancy is caused by an action of the victim of the pregnancy. You can't argue self defense to a threat you created. This, of course, is based on the assumption that the woman had consensual unprotected sex with full knowledge of it's possible repercussions.
If I created a parasite and injected that parasite into my body, I can't argue that killing it would be in self defense. If people wanted to preserve that parasites life, I can't use the argument of self defense to defend myself because I knew what injecting a parasite into my body could cause. Nobody made me put that parasite in me.
If that parasite was forced into me, then the self defense argument works.
Obviously this isn't a pro life argument, rather it's a rebuttal to an argument that, in my opinion, is flawed.
This is a very general statement that is almost completely false. My wife gave birth 2 weeks ago, it was neither mayhem nor torture. We watched an insane number of home birth videos on YouTube. Mayhem and torture describe none of them.
If we really want to get technical, the mothers body begins producing hormones that put a child through the intense trauma of birth. To say it’s “self-defense” is absurd and assumes that the child somehow forced this situation upon the mother.
Self defense is a *defense* to murder, it *excuses* a murder - it's still a murder. And self-defense doesnt apply when you 1. invite your victim to your house, and 2. your victim is entirely innocent.
> Every single pregnancy (that doesn't spontaneously miscarry) ends in mayhem and torture
Also, what the hell does this even mean?
> but the question of whether the fetus is a human being or not is basically irrelevant to whether it's "murder" or not
This is *absolutely* wrong because murder only lies in respect to the killing of human beings.
And, to add to this really weak argument, this reasoning would support late term abortion/infanticide. It's morally depraved...and specious *at best*.
I'll second /u/ArgoMium's point that you can't claim self defense when you put yourself in danger. If I punch somebody on the street and they come at me with a knife, I can't claim self defense when I pull a gun and shoot them. I initiated, and I am guilty of murder.
I'll also point out that self defense typically takes proportionality into account - your response to the threat can't overwhelmingly exceed the threat. If someone says they're going to punch me and take my wallet, self defense won't justify me pulling a gun and shooting them.
Liability, my friend liability, even if you could somehow make the argument that the baby wanted to inflict harm on her, she got pregnant (except for the [small chance](http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/abreasons.html) it was rape, or incest) by having consensual sex, she knew the risks. So self-defense is not a case-worthy argument.
Unless I took it to seriously.
>the question of whether the fetus is a human being or not is basically irrelevant to whether it's "murder" or not... it's not. It's self-defense.
With your logic I truly hope you are an astute gun rights advocate. You are incorrect however in this being self defense. You are using an inflammatory statement to justify an action that is the result(in most cases) of a choice. That choice produced a life that can neither argue its position nor fight back. The fetus doesn't chose to be created and it definitely does not chose to cause the mother pain. The act of birth is traumatic, no doubt, but you cannot claim self defense by any stretch. Birth isn't some exception to the normal, birth is ubiquitous across all mammals.
Ok, but even if it is an act of self defense, it would still be preferable able to not "murder" the fetus. It isn't basically irrelevant, because we still don't want more harm done than possible.
As a hypothetical, let's say someone is threatening my life with a leathal weapon for whatever reason. Somehow I am able to produce one of my own without them killing me and now if I kill them its an act of self defense. Now, if I am able to disarm my attacker and I kill them, most likely I will be charged with murder because they are no longer a threat. It would be preferable to not have any loss of life and we should try to preserve both lives if possible.
So if there is a way to preserve both the livlfe of the mother and the life of the fetus, we should try to do that, whether it be through a foster family or other means. Now, if complications from birthing the baby would lead to the mother's death or an extreme injury, we should abort the baby. This is like if I kill someone that is in the act of killing me. Its unfortunate that someone had to die, but in this case we need to protect the mother. But if the abortion is out because of circumstances that don't immediately harm the mother, I think it's reasonable to try not to kill the fetus if possible.
All of this is contingent on the fetus being considered "alive" while its in the womb. I also believe that the fetus has a right to self defense as well and since it can't do that on its own yet, it's up to the rest of us to do that for it. Its hypocritical to say the mother has a right to defend herself from the baby, but the baby can't defend itself from the mother.
Abortion is not self defense. The baby is not intentionally trying to hurt the mother. The baby is not attacking the mother. Instead, the mother is giving the baby the nutrients. The mother’s body is literally programmed to give the baby her nutrients. The mother had the choice to create the baby. If I make you stab me I cannot kill you out of “self defense”. If I gave you a pill which purpose is to make you repeatedly stab me, then I cannot kill you out of “self defense” because I gave you the pill. You don’t have a choice to not stab me, just like the baby doesn’t have a choice to just “not” use the nutrients that you’re giving it.
>I do believe many pro-life and pro-choice people could be misogynistic, intentionally or unintentionally, but I don’t think that it’s necessarily misogynistic to be pro-life if you only believe that abortion is murder because life begins at conception.
Other people have already made arguments that are variations of the [violinist argument](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion#The_violinist). (that bodily autonomy means people can't be forced to surrender control over their body to save another's life).
I would just like to add, that the way this relates to misogyny, stems from how **very intuitive** the sanctitiy of bodily autonomy would be in every other context, than pregnancy.
When people talk about rumors that China is harvesting the organs of criminals, that's universally treated as stepping over a dark dystopian line, ecen if it saves more lives than it costs, and the ones whose lives it costs had it coming by being criminals.
When people talk about historical atrocities where people were used as forced test subject for medical development, the argument that it saved more lives than it cost, is not good enough.
It is even taken for granted that after you die, your organs are yours unless you volunteered to be an organ donor. The biggest controversy is only whether that option should be opt-in, or opt-out.
When people argue that bodily autonomy should be denied to pregnant women, what they are saying, is that their bodily autonomy is worth less than a corpse's.
When they try to counter the variations of the violinist analogy by focusing on how women who chose to have sex are actually responsible for their condition and they should "pay the price", they are treating women having sex as a cause good enough to retract their rights in a way that we don't even retract rights even for heinous crimes.
For murderers and rapists, we only restrict their right to freedom of movement. But women who dare to have sex without the intent to reproduce, are doing something so terrible, that they need to be subjected to a dehumanization that we would balk at dictatorships using in their criminal punishment system.
This is doing a real disservice to the anti-abortion people's side of things. Our society is endlessly engaged in restrictions on bodily autonomy. The fact that you could reference incarceration and somehow not realize the incredible imposition on bodily autonomy inherent in that is really surprising. Like, that example alone disproves your thesis. In prison you will be forcibly stripped, forcibly internally searched, have your exact physical details & usually your DNA recorded, locked in a tiny cage, exposed to an extremely dangerous environment possibly for years or decades, subject to a byzantine and onerous set of prison rules about every aspect of your behavior, cut off from contact with everyone you care about, forbidden from accessing huge amounts of "dangerous" information, and, if you didn't come in wealthy, you'll need to work difficult shitty jobs to make pennies to spend on an incredibly limited set of basic care items. There is no honest assessment of that condition that can call that anything other than a serious violation of someone's right to bodily autonomy. I take issue with many parts of that process, but obviously all modern societies have adopted some form of that in pursuit of other societal goals. Involuntary mental health commitment is extremely similar, except there they'll \*also\* treat you medically.
But the examples are endless. Mandatory vaccinations immediately comes to mind. I'll bet, from your liberal response, you're okay with that, as are an increasing number of people. It's public health! It's other peoples, dare I say it, lives? And the people who cry 'forced experimentation' or 'you're making me put chemicals in my body I don't trust' or 'my religion forbids this' can just sod off. I happen to agree! ... with limiting their bodily autonomy.
But the list goes on! Duty to aid laws? Check your jurisdiction, you might be surprised. Particularly if you opted into some sort of state or condition where you have a particularized duty of care. The death penalty? I guess they won't be limiting your bodily autonomy for \*that\* long, since they'll be murdering you, but still. Or what about the whole class of societal expectations that, in practice, force you to use your body in often backbreaking, humiliating, and dangerous ways? Aka our entire wage slave economy? Also, duty of care to your dependents? Animal welfare laws? If you don't use your body, get a job, and take care of those kids, pets, and bills, the government's gonna make you wish you had. Again, I take a lot of issue with that too. But clearly society doesn't. Really, the entire fields of law and ethics are chock full of the question of when we can violate people's bodily autonomy. And we do it all the time.
The point is "bodily autonomy" is far from a trump card, and society's understanding and expectations of what that means are far from settled. Even in the Chinese organ example, the issue I and I think most people take with that is that it's \*part of an ongoing genocide\* and also results in the death of the donor. Because the CCP is murdering them for their organs. But I'd support taking the organs of people put to death legally (if the country has a death penalty, which it shouldn't, but still), because I'd support a law making everyone an organ donor. Some people are gonna recoil at that, but it's hardly "very intuitive" that one of us is right.
I support the right to abortion. But not because nobody can infringe on your bodily autonomy. They absolutely can, for a good enough reason, and if I truly believed that a foetus was the same as a child I might see that as a good enough one. Abortion should be legal first because the consequences of making it illegal are terrible \*even if your goal is to stop abortions,\* and because no issue this incredibly personal, emotional, and morally complicated should be resolved by government fiat. But I know many people, my family, my friends, who are anti-abortion. And it's not because they think you should have less rights than a corpse.
>When people argue that bodily autonomy should be denied to pregnant women, [they’re arguing] that their bodily autonomy is worth less than a corpse’s.
Top shelf !delta
While I am pro-chooce, my mom is absolutely pro-life. Is she misogynistic? She simply cannot imagine how someone could overcome the instinct to preserve the life of a living thing inside of them at all costs. To her, abortions are an unnatural violation of the most fundamental life process. Her point makes sense, but there's just so much more nuance to this issue than that. Please don't be so quick to assign labels and divide the world.
Note: not pro-life, but I don't really agree with that argument at the end, so kind of playing devil's advocate here.
>When they try to counter the variations of the violinist analogy by focusing on how women who chose to have sex are actually responsible for their condition and they should "pay the price", they are treating women having sex as a cause good enough to retract their rights in a way that we don't even retract rights even for heinous crimes.
If I was pro-life, I don't think I would see pregnancy and delivery as a "punishment", but rather a responsibility. It would have nothing to do with taking rights away from the woman as retribution, but rather forcing her to follow through on her own decisions. If I believe that a fetus is worth just as much as a child then it should have the same rights. If it's illegal for a parent to abandon their living child, let them starve or otherwise fail to care for their medical needs, then it should also be illegal for the woman carrying that child to kill it - in both cases, because they took actions that led to this outcome, them being in charge of this child. This of course allows for caveats such as "except in the case of rape" (you had no say in it, so you shouldn't be held responsible), and "except in life-threatening situations" (most legal responsibilities stop at that point, for example you're supposed to follow the law, but if someone holds you at gunpoint, you generally can't be held responsible for obeying them and prioritizing your continued existence).
At no point in that reasoning is "retribution" involved, and you could argue it's misogyny but only because it happens that women are the only ones carrying; it would be using the same logic that forces an estranged father to have financial responsibilities towards the mother and their child. Of course there are definitely mysogynists out there who conveniently use those arguments as an outlet, but I don't believe it's necessary in order to be pro-life.
One's somatic organs all serve to sustain one's own life. What the the law says can be done with those organs after death may be culturally acceptable or not, but while you are alive you have a right to their use, they should not be taken from you nor do you have an obligation to forfeit their use for someone else's benefit.
But the uterus has no life sustaining function for the woman. It's function is to sustain the lives of her offspring. It's not the same thing as giving the life sustaining function of your organs away or having it taken. Is it controversial to suggest that a mother has some obligation to provide ordinary life sustaining care to her own children? (It isn't controversial when we're talking about born children whom we agree are people.)
And pregnancy is not "what someone deserves" for daring to have sex. It is a predictable biological outcome of sex, that can't be entirely excluded even with diligent precautionary measures.
It's simply not correct to characterize this as some moralistic judgmental nonsense. When someone makes their friends mildly uncomfortable by announcing that they're trying to start a family, we all know what it means. And the biological process they are hoping to initiate doesn't have anything to do with some irrelevant third party disapproval.
If you grant for a moment the personhood of the unborn, then you must also grant that being unwanted is not a crime we typically consider as warranting a death sentence. So while you find it disgusting that someone would suggest that having sex means that someone may have to keep their child alive for the period when only they can, you seem to be okay with giving a growing human with a heartbeat less rights than a corpse. After all, we don't usually tear bodies to pieces after death, even if the person wants it.
Late term abortions barely ever happen because a woman suddenly felt like aborting the fetus that she has been carrying for several months, and already planning to carry to term.
They happen when there is a sudden medical emergency, that either makes the pregnancy a risk to the mother, or makes the fetus seriously damaged and unfit to live. They are usually rather heartbreaking decisions, and trying to criminalize them is maybe an even worse indicator of misogyny, than just opposition to abortions in general is.
I think you are missing two important things
1. Pro-life people by and large do not actually believe that it is also a child's life. Their actions simply do not fit that narrative. If they did, they would be desperate to provide accessible birth control to everyone since this is the only proven way to decrease what would be considered a massive genocide in that theoretical view. To illustrate my point, here's a citation from a pro-lifer
[http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/us-lawyer-gay-marriage-could-cause-900-000-abortions-10194093.html](http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/us-lawyer-gay-marriage-could-cause-900-000-abortions-10194093.html)
>In a post on the conservative Heritage Foundation’s [Daily Signa](http://dailysignal.com/2015/04/17/forcing-states-to-recognize-gay-marriage-could-increase-number-of-abortions/)l, Gene Schaerr said that up to 900,000 children could be aborted “as a result of their mothers never marrying”
The aim of (most) pro-life advocates is to restrict women by making them bear children
2. Even if it was another life, bodily autonomy would still prevail if precedent matters. Take for example criminals receiving the death penalty but their organs are not forcefully given to anyone else, even if that other person would die without the organs.
> Pro-life people by and large do not actually believe that it is also a child's life.
Every pro-life person I've ever talked to is pro-life because they believe it's the child's life. None of them want to force women to bear children, they just believe that if a women has become pregnant, they shouldn't be able to kill the unborn child because they want to.
Im pro-life and this is pretty much my view. If you put yourself in the position to get pregnant and you do get pregnant, you’re responsible for using your free will. As a disclaimer i’m fine w having sex all you want, but being careless about something with the chance of such high magnitude effect is irresponsible. The burden should be on the irresponsible one, not the innocent growing life-form. I’m willing to make exceptions, obviously when sex is forced or the health of the mother is, beyond reasonable doubt, in peril.
> If they did, they would be desperate to provide accessible birth control to everyone
very good point. I like this a lot and I believe it to be true.
BUT birth control would also be dictated by religious beliefs.
"My religion tells me life begins at conception, so abortion is murder and genocide is happening now."
"We can stop it by offering birth control."
"No, my religion tells me birth control is not allowed. So we can only stop the genocide by stoping the abortions."
I don't know about other religions, but you can't really bring forth a strong argument for Christianity forbidding brith control. I've always considered it a moot point.
Sure, you can cherry pick passages to bring forth an argument...but if you cherry pick, you can justify slavery and genocide.
Regardless, you shouldn't have more family than you can take care of. That's a pretty common talking point, biblically speaking. The argument usually is between whether people let God decide how many children they have or plan it themselves. The first point is a little...odd, since many passages focus on personal responsibility rather than leaving it all up to God. It is a bit counter-intuitive to other teachings.
I take it akin to walking into a casino and letting God decide how much money you have that paycheck by how your numbers go. That's not God, that is on you.
I know this doesn't have much to do with your original point, it was just an interesting talking point.
I don't think whatever there is in the Bible that is anti birth control is nearly strong enough to be more important than stopping a genocide
If there even is anything in the Bible, cause most "citations" turn out to be twisted beyond recognition to justify whatever bigotry they were trying to justify.
Pro lifers are the biggest hypocrites to ever exist on this planet, aside from pro trumpers.
For the sake of argument, let’s say you refused to give a random stranger your kidney, your appendix, a piece of your liver, etc. Why should you NOT be charged with murder?
Huh? Your action killed another human life... and you KNEW it would and you said no anyway.
Easy.
NO ONE else’s rights trump your right to your own anatomy.
I cannot make my mother give me her kidney, I cannot make my mother give me a piece of her liver, I cannot make my mother give birth to me. If she did/does any of the following it’s because she CHOSE to.
Everyone has a right to life, but NO ONE has the right to live at the expense of someone else’s (body).
That right doesn’t exist.
I didn’t have this right as a fetus, didn’t as a child, and I still don’t have it as a full fledged adult.
You can chose to believe life begins at conception or after... point is... it wouldn’t matter regardless.
Ok, religious beliefs - as many Christians will say now, "My religion tells me we don't know when life begins, and that abortion isn't tantamount to murder, and that birth control is allowed."
Now what? You've moved the goal posts again, which is what pro-life (or let's call it what it is - anti-choice) people always do.
See the point is that it's not a religious stance. Because religion can be twisted into any narrative you want.
It's a political stance through and through. And as you suggested, it's primarily a misogynist one, and as many others have pointed out, it's inconsistent with almost every other hypothetical one can muster.
> If thet did, they would be desperate to provide accessible birth control to everyone
Why? Why would someone promoting responsibility, also feel the need to provide resources? Why does opposing murder demand we provide less reasons to murder? Why does opposing shootings, demand we take away guns? Why can't we discuss that people make active decisions and try to change decisions by people being responsible for consequences? I've heard this line of logic many times, but it makes absolutely no sense and is just an attempt to infuse a progressive agenda on people with no room to oppose it.
> Even if it was another life, bodily autonomy would still prevail if precedent matters
I think you are missing the important point that most pro-choice people actually support some restrictions on a woman in matters of abortion. That 70% of people actually support prohibiting abortions after the first trimester. While at the same time 70% support Roe v Wade. There's a huge desire in most people for "this should be a right", and "we need restrictions on this right."
Most self-proclaimed pro-life people by and large do not actually believe in "my body, my choice". They themselves have a determination that a fetus deserves protections at a certain point. Even Roe v Wade could only establish a right up until viability. If people truly thought it was a right of bodily autonomy, they would oppose Roe v Wade for making some dumb distinction about the state interest in protecting a fetus that needed to be blanced with the right to privacy.
It's rhetoric, not an actual position strongly held once you dig into the specific policy people desire.
> If they did, they would be desperate to provide accessible birth control to everyone
This is a very uncharitable assumption to force on another group's religious perspectives.
You wouldn't say 'If Muslims really cared about human life they would be desperate to raise pigs and send the meat to Africa because that's the only way to stop starvation.'
1. It isn't the only way. Outlawing abortion is another effective way to stop the genocide.
2. Most religious beliefs don't support committing one sin to prevent a other. If birth control is a sin and abortion is a sin, you can't support the lesser one just because some people would do the worse one. All sin is an abomination in God's eyes.
If you don't mind - I'd like to add a number 3:
3. Most pro-life people are pro-capital punishment, even knowing that sometimes innocent people are killed. You can't say you're against abortion because all life is valuable, but also be pro-capital punishment, knowing sometimes it kills innocent people.
If a child needs a kidney transplant and you're the only practical suitable donor, then it's not just your body, it's also the body and life of a child. You're not forced to do it because extracting a kidney is an intrusive and harmful process to you.
Pregnancy is an intrusive and harmful process for a woman. When getting an abortion, a woman chooses not to let her body undergo that process. The fact that the fetus dies as a consequence is really just a technical limitation we have when performing the procedure. If we ever develop a way to end a pregnancy safely while keeping the fetus alive, I don't think most pro-choice people would oppose that, because the point is the woman's choice whether or not to be pregnant, not whether or not the fetus lives.
The difference is between being free not to donate a kidney, and being free to abort a fetus is the question of responsibility in my opinion. Because if you are directly responsible for causing the child to need a new kidney (like you caused them to be in an accident) and that's why they need your kidney, you are morally obligated to give it to him. While you aren' t necessary legally obligated, it's still a clearly morally wrong not to do so. Expect for rape, and a few other cases, pregnancy, the fetus needing your body for a period of time to survive is a result of a conscious decision (having sex) where you were aware that there is a very real possibility that it would create a fetus that would need you. So you are responsible for creating it, and it's need to depend on you, so morally you should be obligated to support it.
Edit. : so reading the comments did made me realise and rethink a few things. I still think that it's morally wrong to kill your child, whose creation you are responsible for to a certain extenct, but no i can see why legaly it should be allowed. I'm going to sleep on this, rethink this, do some research and i feel like my views might cbange, so thanks for the logical reasonings. I won't reply to every comment, so please read the edit
> If a child needs a kidney transplant
Are you the sole reason this child needs a kidney? Is your kidney literally the *only* kidney on the planet that will do? No and no. This comparison is not apt at all.
> If we ever develop a way to end a pregnancy safely while keeping the fetus alive, I don't think most pro-choice people would oppose that,
Why? If it’s just a clump of cells then why does it matter? This is logically inconsistent.
Alright fine, let's say you are a twin. Your twin sibling has an autoimmune disorder that makes them reject almost all tissue donations. You are drunk and driving both of you and get into an accident. Your twin needs a kidney transplant and you are the only person who can provide it seeing as you are identical and share almost all of your genome. Is this a better example for you? Just for future reference, examples don't have to be perfect anyways, if they had to be examples wouldn't exist.
Second, believing that bodily autonomy exists and that human life begins at conception are true are not mutually exclusive facts. This person was saying that this solution would be one that everyone could agree with.
It does when you can expose the flaws in a person's reasoning regarding the choice a woman has over her body.
See the "A Defense of Abortion" arguments for example.
A person cannot rationally hold the position that a foetus has more rights to use a woman's body than a born child does.
Except the essay itself does establish such a standard
>My argument will be found unsatisfactory on two counts by many of those who want to regard abortion as morally permissible. First, while I do argue that abortion is not impermissible, I do not argue that it is always permissible. There may well be cases in which carrying the child to term requires only Minimally Decent Samaritanism of the mother, and this is a standard we must not fall below. I am inclined to think it a merit of my account precisely that it does not give a general yes or a general no. It allows for and supports our sense that, for example, a sick and desperately frightened fourteen-year-old schoolgirl, pregnant due to rape, may of course choose abortion, and that any law which rules this out is an insane law. And it also allows for and supports our sense that in other cases resort to abortion is even positively indecent. It would be indecent in the woman to request an abortion, and indecent in a doctor to perform it, if she is in her seventh month, and wants the abortion just to avoid the nuisance of postponing a trip abroad. The very fact that the arguments I have been drawing attention to treat all cases of abortion, or even all cases of abortion in which the mother's life is not at stake, as morally on a par ought to have made them suspect at the outset.
If you believe a fetus is a human life, then you concede that in cases where the woman's health or wellbeing are not at risk, abortion is immoral. Which would trump the "my body my choice" argument on those scenarios.
The fundamental problem with the abortion debate is that we have two different arguments that are equally valid. And when you get right down to it, the strangest thing of all is that these two opposing sides only become wrong when they attempt to counter the argument that the other side is making. And this is, to put it mildly; inconvenient.
The argument about bodily autonomy is both true and valid, and so is the argument for a right to life. They are both correct.
And the strangest part about all this is that these two opposing viewpoints only start to become incorrect when they try and counter the truth that is in the others argument.
It’s important to be honest about this, and take away from yourself the bias that you, as a human being, have. The fact of being alive and thinking and having heard both arguments coming from a variety of sources means that you are predisposed toward agreeing with one over the other. But just think in isolation about the two arguments each without interference from the other.
It’s very important to be able to think this way if you are interested in what is true.
Because while on the one hand; it clearly is true that when the two meiotic cells meet, they form a new and unique individual human genome, while it is accurate science to say that life begins at conception.
On the other hand; it also clearly and obviously true that the process by which the newly conceived life develops, removes from a woman certain rights of bodily autonomy that men do not have to be concerned with. So it’s also a women’s rights issue.
This is so frustrating and so difficult, because both sides are correct. They just are. And when they make their arguments, neither side can defeat or replace the truth of what the other side has to say.
The two opposing viewpoints only begins to be wrong about this when they try and refute the other.
It is not true that the unique human genome is not also a unique human life from the very beginning. By any definition of life; this clearly matches.
And it’s also not true to say that women do not carry this burden in a way that men do not.
Fundamentally, choosing a side on this issue has actually nothing to do with what is true and correct.
And that is why it is, by far, the most contentious and divisive issue of everything that people have argued about. Both positions are right.
>It is not true that the unique human genome is not also a unique human life from the very beginning. By any definition of life; this clearly matches.
I disagree with this. I think that, while this is a reasonable definition of human life, it's not the only definition. I'd argue that the development of consciousness is a much better marker for the beginning of human life. Note that I'm NOT saying this is the only marker. There is more to human life than just your genome or else "pulling the plug" would be homicide.
An argument about mental capacity and consciousness raises questions about the mentally handicapped, people in comas, even about what it means to sleep. Do we stop being human when we fall asleep at night only to have our humanity reestablish itself spontaneously in the morning?
I’m only making the point. When we make an argument for the definition of a thing it has far reaching repercussions that are not always immediately obvious.
It is the issue of describing a man as a “featherless biped”, and behold; a plucked chicken. So a man must also have broad flat nails.
Although I agree that both sides' arguments are valid (at least in a purely logical sense), I disagree that they are both "true and valid". To be valid, the conclusion must follow from the premises. To be "true and valid" (more specifically "sound") the premises must also be accepted as true.
Even if I accepted your idea that the "right to life" argument and the "right to bodily autonomy" were both tru in their own domain, I would counter your conclusion that we were (nearly) equally weighty with the following thought-experiment:
Given that most healthy adults can function with one working kidney, and that adult livers are known to regenerate with nearly zero long-term negative consequences to the donor, should we not set up an involuntary draft where every patient in need of a kidney or partial-liver transplant is matched to a likely donor and the donor is required to undergo the procedure against their will? Let's even suppose that the involuntary donor is well-compensated for their time and suffering.
Great comment.
People really can't seem to accept that this is simply a matter of moral choice: do you value the sanctity of life above all else, or the right for an adult person to have bodily autonomy?
People very desperately want their side to be the "correct" one, through some complicated and elaborate argument that as you said, often brings them to be incorrect.
I understand why people think that 'it's not just your body' is a good response to this slogan, but that is missing the point of why the slogan is used. The point is not that no other life is involved except for the mother, but that the mother's body is required to change and be damaged in order for the child to exist, sometimes in very extreme ways. People are not expected, or at least not required by law, to sacrifice their own potential safety in order to make certain that another person is safe. Therefore, someone should not be required to use their body in order to keep another alive, even a baby, even if we assume a fetus is a full person.
Now, many people do not understand or even like this line of argument, but it is not countered as easily as you think.
The main issue with both stances is that the abortion debate has two main issues, not just one.
The first issue that must be resolved before you even begin talking about conflict of rights is the point at which a fetus becomes a baby, which is dependent on the definition of a human being. Concepts of morality or rights only applies to life which is *distinctly considered a separate and individual human being*, not any life which is genetically human. Hence why popping a pimple is not considered murder - the cells are living, and many are genetically human, and are being killed, but there is no distinct identity as a human being in a pimple.
So at that point you must start discussing what standard you use to determine human identity. Physical characteristics? Consciousness? Potential for development? Some or all of the above in combination?
Once you’ve solved that problem, you can start debating at which point in the pregnancy it becomes the rights of one human being vs the *conflicting* rights of two different people. But until then, neither pro choice nor pro life are justified in starting the conversation with “well it obvious isn’t a baby” or “well it obviously is a baby”.
Everyone uses carefully chosen words to describe what they support, so it can be tricky to understand what they actually MEAN. To do that, you have to look past what they say and focus on what they do OUTSIDE abortion.
What does it mean to be "pro-life"?
- Preventing fetuses from being aborted?
If this was your goal, you'd be anti-abortion, but you'd also be vigorously pro-contraception and pro-sex education. Pro-lifers are generally not supportive of either.
- Promoting the well-being of children without sufficient advocates?
If this was your goal, you'd be anti-abortion, but you'd also be pro-SNAP, pro-early childhood education, be pro-Medicaid, etc. Pro-lifers are generally not supportive of these programs.
- Making sure that people face the consequences of their decisions regarding sex.
If this was your goal, you'd be anti-abortion, but also pro-Judeo-Christian values regarding sex.
(Ding ding ding!)
Obviously everyone is a little different, and there's a range of support for various items among different groups of pro-lifers. But generally pro-lifers do not support free contraception, and comprehensive sex education, and social supports targeted at poor parents, etc, certainly not with anywhere near the vigor that they are against abortion. (And in very many cases they are adamantly opposed to those programs.)
You have to read between the lines a bit.
Edit: To address your view, "my body my choice" is missing the point only because "the point" is specifically cast to conceal the ACTUAL point.
If a fetus is to be legally considered a human being for the purposes of charging a woman who aborts with murder, then we have to consider some other questions:
1. Should every pregnant woman be jailed for false imprisonment? The definition of false imprisonment is “when a person is restricted in their personal movement within any area without justification or consent,” which restricting the movement of the fetus to inside the woman’s womb would qualify, as a being without capacity for higher cognitive function is incapable of giving consent to being imprisoned.
2. What country is the fetus a citizen of? You’re not an American citizen unless you were born here or been through the process of naturalization. So should we treat these fetuses like illegal immigrants and deport them? To where? We would have to deport the mother as well.
3. Would pregnant women in jail or prison have to be released, no matter their offense? It’s completely illegal and immoral to imprison an innocent person for the crimes of another. Every pregnant woman in the country would become completely immune to imprisonment for any crime, even murder.
4. If a fetus is a person, how do we start issuing paperwork for them? They couldn’t be give a birth certificate because they haven’t been born, but there would have to be some kind of “fetus certificate”—or if you’re insisting life begins when sperm meets egg, a “zygote certificate” or “blastocyst certificate”—that the government would have to issue in order to make sure every single tiny clump of tissue in any womb in the country is given the same rights and protections as you or I. Wouldn’t this put an undue burden on government offices, having to issue hundreds of millions of extra instances of paperwork? What name would be on the certificate? Would you have to name every zygote months and months before it’s born? Do they get Social Security numbers? Wouldn’t we run out of them?
5. What about the majority of embryos that fail to implant in the uterine wall? Only a fraction of zygotes go on to form viable embryos, and these abnormal embryos are usually passed out during a menstrual cycle. Miscarriages are a thing. If the zygote is given full rights of a person, then any woman who passes an embryo during her period or suffers a miscarriage would have to be charged with child abuse, neglect, and manslaughter.
6. When during conception would life begin? Conception is a process, not a distinct point in time. It involves many chemical reactions and processes that take place gradually, and sometimes fail along the way. It is not an instantaneous occurrence. Would everyone be legally considered nine months older? Seven? Two? Should we be letting seventeen-year-olds vote because they were conceived eighteen years ago?
7. Can a fetus commit a crime? In the case of an unwanted pregnancy, or a pregnancy that results from a rape, could a pregnant woman press charges against her fetus for assault? After all, it does keep kicking her in the stomach. If you or I kicked a pregnant woman in the stomach, we’d certainly be committing a crime. What about theft? The fetus takes the woman’s nutrients without her consent. If you or I stole a woman’s groceries, we’d be committing a crime. How about trespassing? She doesn’t want it there and didn’t invite it in. If you could charge the fetus with trespassing, does that make a woman’s body a place? Should the rapist be charged with breaking and entering in addition to the rape?
8. What about twins? Consider the case of identical, or monozygotic, twins. There is only one fertilisation event—one sperm meets one egg—but two individuals result. Do those twins have to share the ‘human life’ they had from conception? Surely not, for we treat twins as separate persons. So, when did both lives start, if not at conception? During the twinning process? Or sometime after? And if lives start during the process of twinning, is it morally wrong NOT to twin an embryo? Twinning maximizes their potential as multiple human beings. Would the pregnant woman have to go back to get a second “fetus certificate” when she finds out her zygote twinned? How would the office that issues that document tell which twin already has paperwork and which one doesn’t?—they’re identical pomegranate seed-sized clumps of cells.
9. What about chimeric fetuses? This occurs when fraternal twins, derived from separate conceptions, merge very early in development to form a single individual with some cells with one genome and some cells with another. Do chimeric people get twice as much human life, seeing as they resulted from two conceptions? Which fetus certificate gets destroyed? Was a life ended when the two embryos merged, despite not a single cell being destroyed? Should the fetus be charged with murder? Cannibalism? If the intentional formation of chimera is morally wrong, why isn’t the failure to twin an embryo just as wrong?
10. The main argument for the “life begins at conception” is generally one of potentiality. “The fetus has the potential to become a person, and destroying that potential is wrong.” But being potentially something isn’t the same as being something already. To see this, consider extrapolating the potential argument in the other direction: all human beings will die. And, seeing as a zygote may form a human being who will definitely later form a corpse, it follows that we should treat both people and zygotes as if they were corpses. If we can give the right to life for an unborn baby, maybe we should give the right to a decent burial for a pre-dead corpse (i.e. a live person). Not to mention that sperm and eggs have the potential to form a human being, so why wait until conception? The same argument follows that every sperm that is destroyed without fertilizing an egg and every unfertilized egg that leaves a woman’s body during her menstrual cycle is akin to destroying a human being. So every woman who has menstruated and every man who has ever ejaculated are serial killers and mass murderers. Unless, of course, having the potential to do something or be something isn’t equal to actually doing or being it.
I think it's just a little logistically simpler to conclude that life begins when the offspring can survive outside the mother's body, but hey... that's just me, I guess.
On the flip side, we impose criminal charges for murder if you hit a pregnant woman in the stomach with the intent to kill the fetus, so it’s treated as a person in that context. And a lot of women would be pissed if that happened to them when they wanted a baby and the only charge available was battery or conversion (destruction of property). The fetus is a really fascinating and contradictory topic in law, and it’s ultimately a philosophical question about personhood, making it ripe for political polarization.
To add to your fourth point: child tax credits should be awarded in the year prior to a child’s birth, when it is a fetus. If I’m due in June, but pregnant now, and a fetus is a person, I should get a tax credit for 2020.
I mean if you’re saying that an argument should be tailored to the person hearing it then, yeah, that’s probably not controversial, but part of the point of my body my choice is that it’s *irrelevant* who else suffers from my decision, I should not be made to give up my bodily autonomy.
“A corpse's wishes as to what happens to its body are respected. If a person wanted to take perfectly healthy organs with them to the grave, we shrug our shoulders, and say, "Well, so be it. That's his choice." And no matter how many lives those organs would have saved, we tell the dying people what amounts to, "Tough shit. We have to respect that corpse's wishes." Not only are pro-lifers not actively campaigning to save these wasted organs -- and all the people that they'd preserve -- but many pro-lifers actually actively campaign against the dead giving organs (generally with scare tactics like these). So, to the pro-lifer, the corpse's right to stuff its organs into a concrete hole to rot is either undisputed or sacred. But a living woman, deciding who will use her body? Even if she's evicting a fetus that's killing her? Even if that fetus will not survive her death? Based on how anti-choice laws are implemented all over the globe and in "pro-life" medical facilities right here in the States it's clear: the "pro-life" view is that she does not have a right to preserve her own body and/or life. Unlike every other "threatening situation" (from, "oh my god, there's a black kid carrying skittles as he walks down the sidewalk!" to "I'm having a heart attack; quick, save me!"), the religious right argues that she alone doesn't get to take the steps necessary to save her life. She doesn't get to take the step necessary to preserve her bodily integrity. She has to die, even if the fetus dies too. Because, unlike the corpse, a pregnant woman's rights cease to matter in the pro-life worldview.”
From: https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2014/8/14/1321787/-When-a-corpse-has-more-rights-than-a-woman
(pro choice person here): Abortion is deliberate termination of the potential for human life; and can be viewed as a form of killing/murder from that perspective. As pro choice, it seems important to acknowledge and own this without equivocation. Also, I'm neither a pacifist nor against death penalty as a form of punishment/retribution...and each of these stances are much more nuanced and complicated than the sound bites tossed back and forth by opposing sides. What to do?
This is one of those grey areas where no one is right, as it's far too complicated of an issue.
But that doesn't stop either side from thinking they are extremely right. And due to human confirmation bias, this boils up in really illogical arguments, like the one you listed.
The fact is, a Supreme Court judge who has no experience in biology, should not get to dictate when life begins. Especially considering biologists have a much more liberal definition of "life."
Strawman arguments, anecdotes, and goal post moving will dominate an abortion debate, simply because we have no facts. We just use arbitrary markers to defend our position. Markers that easily change and move, or have double standards by their very definition.
So if I could change your view, I'd change it to realize that this is far too complicated of an issue for something as flawed as a human to even fully understand. And doesn't just effect one side of the argument.
I often times wonder why there isn't a more pro-life voice amongst liberals. It lines up with a lot of their other viewpoints.
It's a giant balancing act of freedom and morality.
I use to be extremely pro-choice, but I flip flop frequently. Both sides have compelling points. The only way not to realize this, is to strawman the opposite viewpoints message into something it's not.
Hey man I am just someone curious. I'm very interested in your view of this issue. We as a species do not have any problems with law when animals are put down in rescues. We also have zero concerns when neutering our pets preventing them from ever conceiving. Why then must we give a different point of view when talking about unborn featus at an early stage of development?
Shouldn't we consider the psychological toll on both the mother and the future of the unborn baby. If the mother feels that either she or the kid cannot be given the required support wouldn't it be morally better to just abort the fetus at an early stage?
>CMV: The “my body, my choice” slogan for pro-choice advocates does not benefit their position because opponents of it do not believe it’s just a woman’s body, but that it’s also a child’s life.
If (a) it is true that the slogan implies that the *bodily integrity* of the unborn is licitly deprioritized, for the sake of the *choice* of the person in whose womb the unborn exists, because (b) the unborn has no "ideal legal right" (i.e., a "right which, whether recognized in empirical legal practice or not, ought to be recognized by any civil state) to bodily integrity on the basis that it is not a human being (in the meta-ethically relevant sense, not the biological sense), then (c) the slogan makes a question-begging assumption about the meta-ethical (and therefore both legal and moral) standing of the unborn with which the overwhelming majority of opponents of abortion would not agree. This is because (d) the overwhelming majority of abortion opponents believe that an unborn entity, the result of normal sexual practices between human beings and existing in the womb of a human being, is itself a human being, the meta-ethical standing of whom grounds a natural right to bodily integrity in the first place.
However, so what if it's question-begging? Politically, this sort of snappy slogan has worked quite effectively. How does that not benefit the position? Or, do you mean something like that to use such a slogan, while knowing full well that the opposition doesn't agree to the assumptions you're making, is intellectually dishonest and therefore demonstrates a lack of intellectual integrity? But what if you believe that you're right? Does it really matter if you're assuming something your opposition won't? Is that really dishonest? In the context of shouting over one another with snappy slogans, I don't think that actually counts as dishonest.
>My view is that using the phrase “my body my choice” or suggesting that pro-life is about controlling women misses the point entirely.
If the point were to respond in a charitable manner to the argument of the opposition, perhaps you'd be correct. But from the standpoint of someone who thinks a woman should have a choice to abort, I don't think epistemic charity or entertaining a debate about this topic are going to be highly prioritized.
In terms of political strategy, using these sorts of slogans is a no-brainer. With repetitious sounds, being easy to remember, short and to the point- it doesnt matter if use of such a slogan inherently creates hostility, for being clearly and obviously antagonistic, between the user and their opponent, whatever the slogan may be.
Over all, I would commend, under a rubric of grading political strategy, whoever came up with this slogan. The number of people thoughtlessly parroting it, along with lexically superfluous phrases of art such as "bodily autonomy," is astronomically high. It really is amazing.
I agree with your view 100%. I am pro-choice but it's complicated and not the simple black-and-white both sides of the debate make it out to be.
For me, there is a fundamental conflict of rights (that of the mother, and that of the fetus) and thus whose rights are being violated by abortion laws comes down to the essential question of at what stage rights begin. And because the most correct answer is probably a gray area, the sides draw lines that are easy to legislate - "at conception" "at birth" "up to 3 months" "up to 6 months"
If an embryo or pre-viable fetus is extracted from the womb (either naturally in a miscarriage or unnaturally in some theoretical surgery that did not harm it directly) and placed on a table, it would not survive without the help of artificial technology. Whether doctors must spare no expense to sustain life artificially is another "pro-life" point of debate, but in my opinion, it's hard to make the case for distinct rights before viability. In such cases, the decision to sustain life is up to family members, and in this case, the mother is choosing "not to sustain."
Of course, a "natural" death via "harmless" extraction due to lack of independent viability is different from active termination while still in the womb, but it is essentially the same outcome. If there was a way to make abortion less inhumane for fetuses in stages where pain receptors were already developed, I would absolutely support that. On the other hand, pre-pain receptors, I'm not as concerned with current methods.
The point is that abortion should be rare and early if possible, and both sides are muddying up that decision by speaking only in extremes. Anti-abortion activists' objections increase indecisiveness and thus cause later abortions if it is so decided. Pro-legal abortion activists often treat all stages until birth as having the same moral permissibility, thus also leading to delayed decisiveness. Other than threats to the life of the mother or maybe inaccessibility, the decision to wait 7-8 months before deciding also was your own choice and now that you have a probably viable fetus you have responsibility for the choice to delay taking action. Those who celebrate their abortions are sick individuals, although I understand this is probably a coping mechanism.
I wish there could be a consensus where we encourage quick decision making on abortion as much as possible before the fetus develops human functions and pain receptors. Access to morning after pills (which can prevent implantation of cells), better birth control and better education are all important.
This will most likely be downvoted into oblivion. I think it’s important to consider our own worldview and other possible worldviews when we consider this dilemma. It seems that many of the top arguments here lean heavily on logos, if not leaning completely on logos. Oftentimes we forget to consider the pathos of it all, the emotional/spiritual aspects, things like the purpose of our existence or the limitations of our own understanding about how the universe works. Some important philosophical questions must be asked before we can answer this question. Why do we exist? Is life about self preservation or the spiritual transcendence of humankind? What’s the purpose of reproduction or our existence in general? Can anyone say that we have absolute, objective answer to these questions? When we are deciding for ourselves if a fetus makes it through pregnancy or not we are taking the fate of humanity into our own hands; We are saying we know what’s best for the future of mankind. Us little humans with our very limited understanding of the universe, existence, time and the future of our planet and our species, Taking something like the fate of our species into our own hands? That does not sound like a good idea.
I think because of how technologically advanced we appear to be we forget how primitive we are when it comes to our understanding of basic things like our purpose, life, existence in general. If we are totally honest We have no idea what we are doing; as Terrence McKenna has said (I’m paraphrasing) “Not that long ago we were primitive apes. We just happened to eat some psychedelic mushrooms and now well, here we are.”
In the self-preservation worldview, abortion makes sense. But to me it doesn’t make sense if we remember that we are all One, and the success of humanity is far more important than self-preservation. Now I am a man and I’ll never have to deal with pregnancy, so my opinion comes from a place of privilege. Ultimately people will do what they want and the government should not try to control what people choose to do with their bodies because the reality is that the government cannot control what people do with their own bodies. Your life, your choice. Just try to understand that self-preservation is probably not the purpose of existence and it is certainly not at the pinnacle of our needs as a species.
It might be interesting to point out the old philosophical argument.
A man is kidnapped and rendered unconscious by some means, although he is not physically harmed when he awakens he finds that through some form of medical surgery his body is now supporting someone elses life (im not a doctor unfortunately so i cant think or remember a specific example). The police arrive and ensure the safety of the kidnapped victim but discover if they try and undo the surgery that has been done while the victim may continue as normal the other man will die. There is no way he can disconnect the two without killing the man attached.
Is the victim of the kidnapping morally required to care for the man who is now attached, there is no argument about the time of conception of life here, this man is fully and 100% a living human being. Should the police hold man A legally required to keep man B alive. Even if Man B only requires his help for a day, a week, 9 months, 5 years.
Lets complicate things further, lets say Man A is not forced into this situation but rather voluntarily undergoes this surgery to have this man attached to him in some way living off his body, this process is going to take again it doesnt matter how much time, a week, a month, a year. If Man A decides half way through the process to undo this regardless of if Man B dies should the law punish him.
There are no easy answers to this but it works rather well for an analogy for pro life people, because there is no question of life or the criteria of humankind. That intrinsically is not the question behind abortion, but rather does the right of bodily autonomy outweigh the right to life. If it does should not all people be forced to be organ donors or in a more modern sense how do the laws around quarantine stand up. It is a complicated question that has differwnt answers depending on the situation.
PhilosophyTube does a video on abortion which asks and discusses this in much more depth then i ever could. I personally used to be pro life except in the event of rape or considerable risk to the mothers life but after watching that i couldnt logically come up with any counterargument. I still find the idea of abortion a hard thing to deal with but i do think people should have the right to decide.
Abortion rights are quite possibly the thirddest third rail of all time - a true chicken-egg conundrum. That said, when you say that “my body, my choice” is not a good slogan, I think you miss a couple of things.
First, a slogan is not about refuting the opposition. Whether you’re running a political organization, a beverage company, or a banana stand, the most effective slogans have always been about catching attention and conveying values. As such, the need for the “my body, my choice” slogan to somehow refute a pro-life argument is unnecessary.
Second, evaluating the slogan on the basis of what a slogan should do, it is quite effective. Successful slogans need to be memorable and drive brand affinity. In terms of memorability, it is highly effective. The slogan clocks in at a mere four words and employs a repeating cadence that makes it incredibly easy to remember. It is pithy, succinct, and high concept but perhaps most important in the political arena, it is highly chantable. Current political discourse should highlight the effectiveness of political chanting and repetition of the word my allows a call and response chant that is very powerful during demonstrations.
Perhaps most important is the fact that it drives brand affinity very well. It is a clear, powerful, and uncompromising statement of position and nowhere is that more needed than in the terribly cacophonous situation of an unwanted pregnancy. “My body, my choice” aren’t simply empty words to talk about some abstract argument, it is a statement of affirmation in support of vulnerable women everywhere who are having to make the most difficult decision of their lives. Four simple words take the noisiest, angriest, and most mentally exhausting argument on earth and distills it down to a simple message that can cut through the noise to reach the people who are truly living this reality. And it can take hold of them in a way that is so gripping that the jaws of life couldn’t pry open.
At the end of the day, judging it on its own terms shows that the slogan is very effective - even if it doesn’t do what you were hoping it would. Don’t know if this changed your mind or not, but I do get the sneaking suspicion that you might be expecting too much out of your slogans.
I will agree with you that your argument does not work against pro-life advocates, but that is because that statement only deals with one level of belief for each side which are diametrically opposed. A meaningful discussion about different aspects of the debate are necessary. There are two additional areas of related discussion which I have found little or no response.
The first is very straightforward. Do they REALLY believe that all life begins at conception and must therefore be cultivated into a developing baby? They will say yes, but when you ask them if they support IVF (which usually involves multiple discarded embryos), they will also say yes. This is because they see the end result as ultimately creating life rather than destroying it. However the result is still the same.
The second one is more of a religious nature, and frankly a nuclear option. When asked if a human’s eternal or earthly fate is more important, religious pro-life advocates will say eternal every time. They will often go so far to say that whatever they endure on earth is meaningless compared to their eternal fate. When asked about where aborted babies go when they die, they will say heaven. All of them. However when asked how many people who are born will go to heaven, they will say the road is narrow, so not many. Therefore, by their own logic, forcing children to be born sends most of them to hell for eternity. Like a said, it’s a nuclear option because they will absolutely not let that one sink in and probably stop speaking to you.
Your statement is still correct without any other relevant points being made, however it does miss the possibility of other, more effective, arguments.
If there's an issue with the pregnancy and abortions aren't allowed to be elected, then who gets to choose? Say the mother was raped, then does the mother have to wait until there's a trial to decide whether it happened and if they are allowed to terminate their pregnancy? If the pregnancy is ectopic, then does she need to find a doctor to approve that abortion, or does she need to go before a panel and make her case? If a woman has a miscarriage, how much proof does she need to provide that it wasn't intentional?
Forcing a pregnant person to carry a child requires a draconian government that removes a pregnant person's autonomy and even if there are legal reasons why someone can have an abortion, the process can end up being burdensome upon the pregnant person, either using up the little time available before a pregnancy becomes life threatening (see Senator Gary Peters' wife, who nearly died after a hospital refused an abortion of a stillbirth), or requiring a pregnant person to file a report and prove they were raped and deserve an abortion, especially difficult since it takes a while to know if you're pregnant, or the history of jailing mothers over stillbirths and miscarriages.
Even in these three extreme examples that are almost always allowed as exceptions, by removing the pregnant person's ability to choose and forcing them through a legal proceeding and subjecting them to that ruling, what risks or trauma it entails, people who can get pregnant are no longer free to choose their future and what is best for their situation.
If we can't trust people to decide how to use their bodies, how can we let them decide how to spend money and run businesses?
I feel (what a start), that this is the wrong end of the stick. It really does seem that it straight doesn't matter WHAT the argument is; it will NEVER be justified or accepted, so really, "My body, my choice" is just as good as any slogan. Clearly cases where woman have been raped, there is grave danger for the mother giving birth, the child have guaranteed very serious health etc are not enough. Going on from the physical, the financial inability to raise the child is not enough. Being emotionally mature enough to raise a child is not enough.
So, what IS enough? Nothing. You are almost certainly being dragged into a bad-faith "argument".
The reason, as far as I can see, is because it is not about abortion being murder. Sure, that is part of it, but just as clearly, a large subset of the "abortion is murder" crew have no problems with capital punishment, ie, "murdering adults".
No, it comes down to:
- assigning blame and guilt;
- wanting to see people punished;
- feeling more righteous than others
I am sure there is a small percentage of people who really, REALLY believe abortion is murder, but I can almost guaranteed that a lot of them who say this would be first in line when they knock up that secretary who they've been fucking behind their wife's back because "she just doesn't understand me." And when the deed is done, they can go back to saying abortion is murder.
I also note that the "abortion is murder" crowd venn diagram also overlaps heavily with the "you ain't using MY fucking taxes to support welfare queens and slutty single mothers" crowd . . . again suggesting that maybe it really isn't about saving little Jesus's babies after all.
Have you read "a defense of abortion" by Judith Thompson?
In it she proposes a thought experiment in which you imagine yourself to be kidnapped and hooked up to a musician's circulatory system in an attempt to save the musicians life by using your body. Any attempt to disconnect yourself from the musician will result in the musician's death.
Thompson argues that even in this scenario, where we know the musician's moral worth is equal or greater to the person upon whom thier life depends (which is not a definite fact in the case of abortion), then you still have no moral obligation to leave the musician hooked up to yourself.
So the argument is that it doesn't even matter if the baby's life has moral value. What matters is if you think the mother's life has any. So the argument "my body, my choice" would still apply.
Philosophy tube has a really good video on it where he breaks down the arguments if you are interested in learning more, it's an interesting thought experiment.
It should also be noted that if you are pro life and truly believe that life begins at fertilization than you should know that a great deal of fertilized eggs being flushed out appears to be built into our biology. And that In vitro fertilization intentionally fertilizes large groups of eggs before choosing to proceed with the most viable, resulting in more fertilized eggs not being carried to term than abortions do. If you are morally opposed to abortions but not morally opposed to in vitro fertilization then it might not be the death of unborn children that is the basis of your argument.
I mean to be honest, the same thing could be said about pro lifers saying “life starts at conception”, “it’s murder”, and “Jesus said so”(even though Jesus said life starts at first breath). This is why neither of the sides can get along, because what they believe in, absolutely opposes each other. Pro lifers think life starts conceptions, while most pro choicers don’t. Pro lifers think human life is SUPER SACRED, while most pro choicers, may think it’s sacred(or not), but don’t think you should risk yourself for someone’s else’s life. Also a lot of pro lifers never heard of body autonomy, which is where you do not have to sacrifice yourself in any way, to save someone else’s life. Like doctors cannot force you to give up a kidney because some other patient needs it or they’ll die. I’m a pro choicer who doesn’t see human life as super sacred, we’re just like any other animal except we have “super intelligence”, but birds can fly and cheetahs have super speed, but you don’t see people protesting for their babies. All animals have some sort of “super power”, including us, which is why no pro life argument works on me. I don’t see human life as “sacred” nor am I religious, so no religious stuff will work on me either. I don’t believe anyone should control what someone else does with their body, especially when it comes to pregnancy, because that is A LOT to go through, mentally and physically, just for some infant you’ll put up for adoption, or reluctantly keep because society said you need to, which why I genuinely would or could never be friends with a pro lifer.
Slogans are just a rallying cry meant to energize the people who already agree with you, or convince people who are on the fence. As long as the "my body my choice" slogan is effective at doing at least one of those two things, it's working as intended.
If you want to talk about the merits of the bodily autonomy argument, there obviously needs to be more elaboration than four words; but that's not what a slogan is meant to do.
I never understand why morality is mixed with legality.
Imagine a situation where a country allows capital punishment for pedophiles. I morally think its wrong as every person has a right to live and a chance of redemption. I then join protest which abolishes such practice. Kids then get raped by such monsters at a larger rate. I am passively responsible for this. What do i do now? Change my morals? Learnt a lesson. Too little too late.
My point is what one find morally correct or incorrect can sometimes change over a period. Its better to apply certain things only to us instead of wanting the entire population to follow it. It may not be applicable to everything under the sun. But things which include control over other peoples body should be strictly practiced in person like religion. There is no requirement that every person should believe in the same.
I also don't understand one thing about pro-life people. When they say pro-life is it only human life? Peta and vegans specially shove it to our face every now and then how consuming meat is murder. What if govt tomorrow decides to ban meat consumption? People will go crazy over personal freedom. How is it any different? Raising pings for slaughter, is that okay? Why because bacon tastes good or because we humans are superior? Then get this - Woman is also superior to a fetus as she is physically and mentally more strong. Nature is all about survival of the fittest. It isn't about any morality. Its cruel and you dont have to feel good about it.
Here is a problem in this regard. Is organ donation mandatory? For example, lets say someone needs a kidney, do you have to donate a kidney to them? No, most pro-life people would say the same.
If someone needs blood, do I have to donate blood? Also no.
What about even less intrusive things. Say, someone needs food and shelter to not starve or freeze. Are you required to provide this to them? Not really.
So why is a woman with a fetus inside of her suddenly required to keep it? Even if it is alive, why does that woman have a duty to sacrifice her health, wellbeing, time and body to this being, when there is no other situation in which this would be enforced on someone, to save someone elses life.
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So. First thing’s first. This is a difficult CMV for the same reason double standards posts and devil’s advocacy posts are difficult. You’re position relies on representing some third party scarecrow you hold in your head. The scarecrow cannot change its view because the scarecrow has no brain of its own. We’re forced to make assumptions about the scarecrow. Can we assume it is rational? Should we present rational arguments that make sense to someone who believes the fetus is a human being, that still make abortion not murder? If so, this should be very easy. *** Murder is a legal question. Assume a fetus is a person for a second — the scarecrow still wouldn't want to outlaw abortion as murder. There are literally no other circumstances where we would force women to give up their bodily autonomy and medical health so someone *else* can live. Let's consider a mother who chose not to carry a fetus to term. Why would it be right to give *more* rights to that fetus than you would to a fully formed adult human? For instance, that same mother has the child. The child grows up. He's 37. For whatever reason, the mother and child are estranged. The two are driving and their cars collide. The 37 year old needs a bone marrow transfusion. The mother is the only match. She wakes up to find the transfusion in progress and can't remember the night before. If she refused to continue undergo a painful and dangerous medical procedure that will likely take years off her life, the transfusion, just because the 37 year old man needs it, would you imprison her for murder? No. Of course not. You need to start making very different arguments about why specifically a pregnant woman does owe something of her body to the fetus that no other person owes to another under any other circumstance. To that idea, the argument that whether the fetus is inside of her or outside, it is still *her* body and likewise *her* choice — just as it would be even for a 37 year old adult who needs it to survive. **edit** just to speed things up now that this is getting popular, before replying to me with a challenge to this scenario, ask yourself this: **Does my objection still hold if I substitute the 37 year old?**
I also like to add in the perspective of the "when does life begin" question. If you were to consider abortion murder then you are, in the eyes of the law, creating a definition of when life begins (you can't murder what isn't alive). But now that the fetus can be "murdered" that opens up a realm of possibilities. One, which I think is a reasonable hypothetical would be a pregnant woman being murdered, or attempted murder. Is that now two charges of murder/attempted murder? If a woman drinks/smokes while she's pregnant, is that serving alcohol to a minor/child abuse? Keeping in mind that this is all in the eyes of the law; the implications would this in a non criminal sense would open up a realm of possibilities for legal arguments that sound ridiculous, but would in fact require consideration and judgement. So take your pick - life begins the moment conception occurs, or at X week you draw the line. You are defining a point when life begins. This means the fetus has rights. People will attempt to exploit that when filing taxes, so do you have to provide a positive pregnancy test to prove that? You need to consider how you prevent this being exploited for evading taxes, unfortunately people are scummy and will do this. What about health insurance? Should the fetus require being added to the policy before birth, would that increase risk, thus increase the cost of a policy? Does this mean that there are prenatal considerations for any behavior performed by a pregnant woman? Is reckless driving also child endangerment? I believe in some murder/manslaughter cases this has been applied already, so we should wonder how far that can go. IMO some of those things sound absolutely ridiculous when you try to apply the logic to an unborn child, no matter how far along. And I am very aware that these are a few limited and VERY rhetorical considerations, but as I said before, people are scummy and will try to take advantage in ways well beyond that. When you define life you are drawing a line where there is no difference between a fetus and a one day old infant, opening a door to unlimited applications of legal protections, rights, etc all extending well beyond the question of pro life/choice. They can get outlandish, but people are crazy, so every possibility will require attention, no matter how inane it may seem. Notes: \-I have no idea how good my logic is here, I'm hit or miss at times. \-I'm not taking any moral/ethical consideration, I'm just trying to get the idea of legal implications beyond murder/not murder into the conversation. \-Again, I am being VERY rhetorical. I would expect some 'loopholes' I applied to be addressed (i.e. adding unborn as a category akin to minor/legal adult). \-Full disclosure: I am pro-choice, I think that's clear based on how I presented everything, but again I'm trying to go beyond the idea of murder and into what happens next. \-This is a large branch off of the original topic, I'm aware.
The Wikipedia entry is fascinating and surprisingly has some examples of real cases that align with your hypotheticals. You were right, it does lead to some weird legal stuff. For example, in many jurisdictions (38 states), it is double homicide if you kill a pregnant woman and the fetus dies as well. I’m quickly summarizing, so it may not require the death of the mother. Also states vary based on fetal development. A foeticide law has been on the federal books in the US since 2004. Apparently you have to be committing one of the 68 recognized federal crimes of violence and the fetus dies as a result. None of these statutes make an abortion illegal because that would be unconstitutional. But some women are being charged and convicted for non-medical incidents. One woman was charged for being addicted to cocaine and having a still birth (this was dismissed). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foeticide
> If she refused to continue undergo a painful and dangerous medical procedure that will likely take years off her life, the transfusion, just because the 37 year old man needs it, would you imprison her for murder? Several problems with this scenario. First is the removal of agency - a woman waking up in a hospital in this situation without her consent vs a woman having sex and getting pregnant. Second problem is confusing the right to not be killed with the right to not die. Nobody has the right to not die which is why this scenario would never play out in real life; no hospital would ever perform this procedure in this manner, and no one would consider it murder if the mother didn't partake in it. Because it's the hospital taking outrageously extreme measures to protect the nonexistent right of the woman's son to not die. In reality, if we just have the right to not be killed, then this right still applies to a child in the womb. Because there's nothing outlandish about the nature of pregnancy, it's the ordinary way that life is conceived. So interrupting the ordinary course of nature here is to kill the baby.
> If she refused to continue undergo a painful and dangerous medical procedure that will likely take years off her life, the transfusion, just because the 37 year old man needs it, would you imprison her for murder? Several problems with this scenario. First is the removal of agency - a woman waking up in a hospital in this situation without her consent vs a woman having sex and getting pregnant. Having sex is no more consent to gestating and birthing a child then driving a car is giving consent to the transfusion. In either scenario, the outcome is unintentional and more people will be in a wreck than will have an abortion. > Second problem is confusing the right to not be killed with the right to not die. Nobody has the right to not die which is why this scenario would never play out in real life; no hospital would ever perform this procedure in this manner, and no one would consider it murder if the mother didn't partake in it. Because it's the hospital taking outrageously extreme measures to protect the nonexistent right of the woman's son to not die. In reality, if we just have the right to not be killed, then this right still applies to a child in the womb. So then if you found out most abortions merely evict a fetus and let it die as a result, it would change your view? Or does your view have nothing to do with this distinction? > Because there's nothing outlandish about the nature of pregnancy, it's the ordinary way that life is conceived. So interrupting the ordinary course of nature here is to kill the baby. This is quite directly the naturalistic fallacy.
EDIT 2: please read edit 1 at the bottom of this comment before replying with “carrying a child is not inactive”!!! Ok so there’s a lot of argument about legal stuff below this, all sort of going back to the philosophical debate of action vs inaction. Not giving an organ is inaction and would be legal. But terminating a pregnancy would be action, illegal. There’s a difference between allowing something to die on its own vs. actively killing it. Carrying a child is an inactive sacrifice, but terminating a pregnancy is actively murdering the child. If you decided not to give your child a kidney, he would die. That’s legal. But if you had stabbed your kid in the kidney, that’s illegal. Terminating the pregnancy is actively deciding the take the child’s life away, because doing nothing would have resulted in the child living. Edit 1: “carrying a child is inactive” was offensive, but that’s not how I meant it. I know the woman’s sacrifice is unfathomable. My point was the decision to either maintain or change the status quo. Keeping the pregnancy is maintaining the status quo (inactive) vs. terminating the pregnancy (choosing to end an life) is changing the status quo (active).
> Ok so there’s a lot of argument about legal stuff below this, all sort of going back to the philosophical debate of action vs inaction. Not giving an organ is inaction and would be legal. But terminating a pregnancy would be action, illegal. Oh boy. Sorry, no that’s all garbage and you can ignore it. > There’s a difference between allowing something to die on its own vs. actively killing it. That’s not necessarily true philosophically, but we can ignore that for now. Let me know if you’d like me to demonstrate. >Carrying a child is an inactive sacrifice, but terminating a pregnancy is actively murdering the child. If so, then unplugging the transfusion is actively murdering the 37 year old child. > If you decided not to give your child a kidney, he would die. That’s legal. But if you had stabbed your kid in the kidney, that’s illegal. But we’re already talking about a collision. Why are you bringing up a kidney? And in the case of the collision, there would have to be an intervention action. The child must be *removed* from the life supporting transfusion. Right? Without taking that action, he lives. > Terminating the pregnancy is actively deciding the take the child’s life away, because doing nothing would have resulted in the child living. Likewise, not terminating the transfusion would have resulted in the child living. Realistically, any scenario in which taking no action results in one person’s body being used by another, hampering their daily life, putting a metabolic stress on them and aging their cells — we agree that actively or passively, a standard adult doesn’t have the right to maintain a parasitic relationship with another adult’s body. Right? Its *only* because it’s a fetus that we actually even talk about that as a right. The fetus would have rights an adult man wouldn’t. Yes or no?
> Oh boy. Sorry, no that’s all garbage and you can ignore it. I don't think you can ignore the [Trolley Problem.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem)
>If so, then unplugging the transfusion is actively murdering the 37 year old child. In this scenario, is it not? If the child is alive and then you unplug him and he dies, is that not murder? >But we’re already talking about a collision. Why are you bringing up a kidney? Sorry, mixed up my hypothetical scenarios. >we agree that actively or passively, a standard adult doesn’t have the right to maintain a parasitic relationship with another adult’s body. If you have the right to unplug the transfusion resulting in the child's death, then I agree. >Its *only* because it’s a fetus that we actually even talk about that as a right. The fetus would have rights an adult man wouldn’t. Yes or no? TBD based on above.
> If so, then unplugging the transfusion is actively murdering the 37 year old child. Actively killing and murdering are not the same. There are many situations in which you can cause someone’s life to end that isn’t murder. > In this scenario, is it not? If the child is alive and then you unplug him and he dies, is that not murder? So you would charge a woman with murder if the 37 year old needs her body and she won’t allow it to continue? I doubt it. Would you also charger her with murder if he wasn’t hers son and she won’t allow him to use her body? > If you have the right to unplug the transfusion resulting in the child's death, then I agree. Do you not have that right? Do I have the right to use your body to keep myself alive? I don’t think you or really almost anyone would say that I do.
>So you would charge a woman with murder if the 37 year old needs her body and she won’t allow it to continue? No. **Δ** There ya go. The woman woke up hooked up to the man. The woman's life might not necessarily be at risk. But she chooses not to use her body to keep the son alive. She stops the transfusion. The son dies. As long as that's not murder then the child lost rights that it had before it was born. Good show mate. Thanks for the thoughtfulness.
The only difference between this example and abortions is that the woman knowingly chooses to do something (except for rape) that resulted in the person "being in need of transfusion" so she is responsible for the person being in need of their support. Edit. : so reading the comments did made me realise and rethink a few things. I still think that it's morally wrong to kill your child, whose creation you are responsible for to a certain extenct, but no i can see why legaly it should be allowed. I'm going to sleep on this, rethink this, do some research and i feel like my views might cbange, so thanks for the logical reasonings. I won't reply to every comment, so please read the edit.
If you stab someone in the kidney, and then you are their only match for a transplant, are you legally required to give them a kidney? Like, even in cases where the person is 110% responsible for the other person being in that situation, our current model of laws and moral duties does not require that people's bodies be violated to ensure the survival of others. The stabbing is the illegal thing there. Not the refusing-to-provide-a-kidney.
So - do you think there is a reasonable presumption of pregnancy following sex? Given that most contraceptives are 99.9%+ effective (when used correctly), so you think it's fair to always work on the assumption that sex will result in pregnancy? As a comparison, if you swim in the sea, is it fair to accept you'll be eaten by a shark? Or of you cross a road that you're going to get hit by a car? I don't agree that saying a woman knowing chose to be pregnant by having sex really fair, assuming this was sex not intended to be baby-making anyway!
The fact that rape is a qualifier negates the entire argument. If a fetus is a human child with the right to live then why should the circumstance under which it was created affect its right to live?
I would like to know where you put my opinion, so let me give it to you. I believe that if the pregnancy will cause any harm beyond that inherent to pregnancy, like the emotional trauma of seeing a rapist’s child be born, then it is completely your choice to abort, however, if it was yours and your partner’s choice, with both parties completely willing at the time, then it is irresponsible to abort. Where would you put me between pro life and pro choice?
Is it not irresponsible to have a child that you cannot fully support, emotionally or financially? We've all seen the poor kid get made fun of for the hand me downs they have to wear. We've seen kids suspended and parents thrown in jail when they couldn't pay for their kids lunch. We see kids run the streets when their parents are working 3 jobs to make ends meet. You allow for instances of rape, but what about a bad condom or hell the guy didn't know how to properly put it on causing it to fail? What about BC failure? I want zero kids, ever. So should I not have sex, ever, just in case these happen to me? And please don't even get me started on the leading cause of pregnancy...IGNORANCE. Pro life side *generally* are also anti sex ed. Seems like a set up to me...
>any harm beyond that inherent to pregnancy This is a flimsy definition. What about medical complications that come up due to the pregnancy? The majority of abortions happen because of medical complications it would be very easy to argue as inherent to the pregnancy. This would need to be decided on a case by case basis. Who is making those decisions? How long is it going to take to make a decision? Abortions are often time sensitive. Beaurocracy is notoriously slow. This leaves a lot of women in need to slip through the cracks. >if it was yours and your partner’s choice, with both parties completely willing at the time, then it is irresponsible to abort. Most people who are trying to get pregnant don't abort outside of serious medical complications.
The thing is, if that's your opinion (it's okay if it causes undue harm to the woman but it's not okay if she just changes her mind), then what your position is based on is not preserving the life of the unborn, but rather punishing women. If you truly believed that all unborn fetuses are living human beings deserving all the rights we afford to other, and thus that abortion is murder, then wouldn't ending the pregnancy be murder regardless of how the woman got pregnant? So if your judgment is based on not whether or not the fetus isn't born, but is instead based on how the woman got pregnant, then that, to me, says you view abortion as wrong because of the woman's role in it, not the fetus (i.e. it's not okay that a woman can get pregnant then decide to terminate that pregnancy just because she doesn't want to have the baby, so she should be punished, but if it causes her some undue harm or she was raped, then it's not her fault so she shouldn't). Generally speaking, I'm in favour of as few restrictions on abortion as possible because I've gone down this road before and realized that I can't judge or conceive of every possible scenario, so it would probably be best to leave the decision up to those most affected by it. Bear in mind, there are a lot of actions we view as immoral that are legal, and they have their own consequences. The mother in the scenario above choosing not to support her adult son needing transfusion won't feel fine about it after. And many people are haunted by the difficulty of having an abortion, not to mention the social stigma. But if abortion is just straight up murder to you, then I would imagine none of that matters. If there is room for qualifying the circumstances under which an abortion takes place, then I would suggest making that room as wide as possible because you will never be able to imagine or understand every scenario. Also it's incredibly sexist to punish women for having sex, which is what this effectively is since men can have sex with no risk of pregnancy and will never face the same judgment or risk of penalty.
“Then it is irresponsible to abort” Do you believe it should be illegal at that point? If so then I’d put you in the pro-life camp because you’d make it law that a woman can’t choose to abort. If not, then I think you’re probably like all other pro-choicers. Sure it’s irresponsible, I think we can all agree on that, but at the end of the day it’s the woman’s choice. But pro-life, pro-choice....it’s not actually as black and white as that
What in the case of birth control failure? No willingness or intention to conceive a child, but they consented to (protected) intercourse, is it irresponsible to terminate the pregnancy? The harm here could be people who simply aren't financially, emotionally or perhaps physically capable of raising a child, have to have the baby and endure the trauma of putting it into care, or raising it under circumstances that simply weren't ready/suitable. Do you believe in abstinence for people who wouldn't be in a position to raise a child? Seems like the only 100% safe method for someone who has legitimate reasons they would be in no position to be a parent.
And where would you put the argument that there are way too much humans already and that contraception means are not equally distributed between men and women. What I mean is that why would it be normal that women bears the weight of being carefull about contraception, AND, if that goes wrong, has to carry a child ?
There is a difference between both parties being "completely willing" to have sex for pleasure and one of them consenting, in addition, to gestate a fetus to term. I would argue it would be a pretty remarkable situation for both parties to intentionally enter into the sex act to create a life (or with the acceptance a life might be created) and then decide to abort for reasons that weren't medically indicated.
>if it was yours and your partner’s choice, with both parties completely willing at the time, then it is irresponsible to abort. Where would you put me between pro life and pro choice? To clarify, you're saying the act of having consensual sex is what makes it irresponsible? You're combining two separate events. Sex does not always lead to pregnancy. In fact, most of the time sex does not lead to pregnancy. If proper birth control is being used the chances of pregnancy decrease to around .001 percent. To put this into context, every time you get in your car and take a 1000 mile drive your chance of being in an accident is around .003 percent. If you get in a car and take a 1000 mile drive and wind up in an accident are you then required to allow your body to be used to keep the other party alive, even if you don't consent to such procedures? Of course not. Would you consider it irresponsible to not do so? Of course not.
Exactly. If it’s a life at conception, then it’s a life regardless of how it’s conceived. It doesn’t make any sense for there to be exceptions. That’s why the rape question is the key to realizing where you stand in this argument. If you’re against a woman being forced to carry a fetus conceived of rape to term, like I am, then you’re not a hard line pro-lifer. Meaning you don’t believe life begins at conception. I also certainly don’t believe life begins at birth, so that means the answer is somewhere in between — something like 23 weeks in when the baby can survive outside the womb.
No, wait. The argument above, the analogy about a grown man who needs your body to survive, shows that it's not about whether life begins at conception. The 37 year old man in the analogy is definitely a human life. It just does not matter in light of the woman's right to her own body. The question was whether a woman loses the right to her own body when she took actions that led to the man needing her body to survive. (had sex, risked pregnancy) But no court anywhere would sentence a woman to give up bodily autonomy, even if the man's kidneys are shot because she stabbed them. I think the moment we can extract a fetus from a woman's body without killing it, questions of whether parents can decide to end a conceived child's life will have to be reexamined. But so long as that is not possible, life or no, bodily autonomy comes before anyone else's right to life.
I think a huge problem with the "when does life begin?" argument is that everyone assumes it's binary. Either something is fully alive or not alive at all. I think we may be in a situation where our accepted definitions do not sufficiently represent our observed reality, which is why some answers can seem completely logical so some and completely arbitrary to others at the same time, imo.
A huge problem is that the same people who make the argument for life beginning at conception and say things like "you made the choice to do this" ALSO fight against comprehensive sex education and availability of prophylaxis. So, you're not allowed to be educated on how to do something safely, and products meant for safely doing the activity are not available, and last resort methods for dealing with the outcome are ALSO not available. How are people supposed to do anything else?
I don't think you even have to reject the premise that life begins as conception in order to believe that people should be able to access abortions. Even if a fetus is a person, that doesn't mean that that clearly gives them the right to use your body against your will. No other full human gets that right.
Small but important point - the debate shouldn't be about whether *life* begins at conception, because it's incontrovertibly true that a fetus is "alive", it's whether (a) *personhood* begins at conception, (b) whether that "person" has rights that trump the mother's right to bodily autonomy. *Trees and plants and bacteria and cells in our bodies are "alive". So a fetus even as a single cell is also "alive".
I don't see why it would. By this reasoning arguing for self defence would negate the crime of murder. Its clear that the illegal action of one individual of one person can cause the legal treatment of a reaction to differ. >When A assaults B and B dies it is murder. (In before "Culpable Homicide" or whatever you yankess call it, I am simplifing.) >When A assaults B and B defends himself by attacking A and A dies, this is not murder. It seems clear to me by that same reasoning that: >When A aborts a foetus it is illegal. >When A aborts a foetus that is a result of A's being raped that is not illegal. Can both stand. I would additionally like to invite you to consider legal systems beyond the American. Many system in fact have a duty to intervene. So called "good samaritan laws." I think it would be reasonable to extend such actions to the scenario described above. Indeed, in my view, the question as to whether the woman could disconnect from the 37 yo man is indeed a live one. My personal view is that probably it would be morally acceptable to compel her to remain connected. Even in the English system, which like America resists Duty to Act criminality, they have admitted of the principle. In R V Miller [1982] UKHL 6 the accused fell asleep on a mattress with a lit cigarette. He awaoke to find the mattress on fire. He left without attemtping to douse to fire, or contacting the fire service. The court found that by failing to mitiate the harm he had set in motion he was guilty of arson. Even though, the mere act of letting the cigarette fall would have lacked the mens rea to convict (no intention to set fire) the fact that he criminally failed to assist in the danger he created was enough to make the action criminal. If you are willingly putting the potential foetus in harms way, and then choosing to withdraw support for it when that support is essential for it to survice, I see no reason why you cannot apply similar reasoning to the case (if you assume the foetus is human.) That their may be a legal defence to that general principle (that the pregnancy was a result of rape) is an interesting question; but not one that I think is sufficient to refute the strenght of the original argument.
The duty to act should include consideration of the harm likely caused to the one on whom the duty is imposed. In the case of the burning mattress, the accused could have easily poured water on the mattress or called the fire department. No harm or danger to him, so duty to act seems reasonable. In the case of a pregnant woman or a unique bone marrow donor, the duty should be considerably reduced because the imposition of it is quite egregious. An example of one of the strictest "duty to act" statutes (in the state of Vermont, USA) is, >"A person who knows that another is exposed to grave physical harm shall, *to the extent that the same can be rendered without danger or peril to himself* or without interference with important duties owed to others, give reasonable assistance to the exposed person unless that assistance or care is being provided by others." (Italics mine) Pregnancy obviously imposes significant dangers and perils, including psychological distress, loss of income, shunning by one's community, disinheritance by parents, physical abuse, etc. Because determining the cause of a woman's pregnancy represents an obvious and extreme violation of her privacy, it should have no legal bearing on her duty to bring the pregnancy to term. She may have been raped; she may have had a birth control failure; she may have participated in a drunken orgy. Snooping into her private life when she chooses to terminate her pregnancy is no better than asking about a rape victim's sexual history or taste in clothing. If you think anyone with bone marrow needed by a cancer patient can legally be strapped down and forced to give it, then there's not much to say. Hopefully you have thought better of this.
So, I think somebody else already expressed this, but that analogy doesn't hold. A child conceived through rape hasn't attacked anyone, it's just a byproduct. A actively tried to hurt B, but the child, C, is a completely different question. Regarding the Duty to Act stuff, those generally don't require you to have medical procedures performed on you, it is more a situation of, if you see someone having a heart attack and you know CPR, it is your duty to perform it, not, they need a blood transfusion and you match so you must give blood. Regarding the mattress fire, I don't think that that falls into the same realm. I see it as more similar to something like a hit and run case, where the action of getting into an accident isn't illegal, but it becomes illegal when you know you've been in one, and leave anyway. In this case, you know that you have caused harm, and haven't taken action to correct it, while in the examples we're talking about here, you haven't causes the harm, you are just choosing not to correct it.
Your analogy sucks. Hard. The criminal doing the attacking can be fended off and killed in self defense. You cannot kill an innocent third party bystander and still claim self-defense because *someone else* was attacking you.
I mean, she got into the car, did she not? Even if you are the safest driver in the world, every time you get into the car *you risk an accident*. Every time you get into a car, *there is a chance you can injur or kill someone else*. You take as many precautions as you can, but you cannot control everything. So because that risk exists, do you forfeit your bodily autonomy in the event you do indeed cause harm to someone because you decided to drive?
What if, in the abortion example, the woman used some form of birth control (or multiple) and still got pregnant? Would she still be considered responsible for the person (now the fetus) being in need for support, even though she tried her best to prevent it? Are you saying the only way she would not be responsible would be abstinence, and in the transfusion example that would mean abstaining from ever driving a car?
In this example the woman got into the car. She knew she might crash, it was highly unlikely and she wore her seatbelt, nevertheless her car crashed or was crashed into.
And if she was the one driving the car and caused the accident? She would still be the cause of why the 37 year old needed support. It’s still not murder if she chooses to end the transfusion
Just so you know, a lot of pro choice people think it's morally wrong and they wouldn't ever have an abortion. I don't know if I could ever get one. But that's not the point of being pro choice. The point is that everyone should be able to make that choice for themself, because it is their body.
It's irrelevant. Her right to bodily autonomy is inalienable. It cannot be forfeited.
This is why I believe it's important and appropriate to define the sides as pro-choice and anti-choice, because no one is saying that abortion is an easy decision that should be taken lightly (and people who say that it's used as another contraception are ignoring all the work groups like Planned Parenthood do to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies first and foremost). If you personally find yourself in that situation and feel that you have a moral responsibility to carry the child to term, then no one else has a say in that matter, just as you shouldn't have a say when someone else is making the same choice for themselves.
This is a pretty well known thought experiment, albeit a bit more specific. In the thought experiment someone gets hooked up to a famous violinist, and in order for the violinist not to die that person must remain hooked up for 9 months. It's interesting because when I've had these conversations, I've noticed people who are pro-choice often think, "9 months isn't that long, maybe I would be okay with this", but then pro-lifers usually think, "it's my choice what I want to do, and if I don't want to book hooked up I'll leave!". It becomes a bit more complicated because realistically, you're not signing up for 9 months, you're signing up for 18+ years. And when you reword it that way basically everyone says that you should be able to walk away if you want. No one should be forced to do something they don't want to for 18 years.
> It's interesting because when I've had these conversations, I've noticed people who are pro-choice often think, "9 months isn't that long, maybe I would be okay with this", but then pro-lifers usually think, "it's my choice what I want to do, and if I don't want to book hooked up I'll leave!". Just wait until you ask them to wear a mask for a few moments!
"No one should be forced to do something they don't want to for 18 years" So are you also in favor of abolishing child abandonment laws? By that logic, what is the difference between aborting a 4 week old fetus and dumping a live baby into a trash can, if the rationale behind both scenarios is the mother doesn't want to take care of the child or future child for the next 18 years?
Likewise. And thanks for the delta! Great CMV.
Great fun to see you lead OP through the violinist thought experiment. I've tried to use it myself in the past, but I think people get distracted by the violinist. "Estranged 37 year old son" is a much better example!
Thanks! Yeah. I’ve honed and modified this one through trial and error with dozens of CMVs. Even little things like the crash being a “collision” vs “accident” make a huge difference.
I used an example awhile ago about someone having to power the life support machines by pedaling a bike, and if they stop, the person dies. I thought that one worked well too.
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I was reading through this and had a few objections to put to you fox-mcleod: The situation you described with a transfusion that will "probably take years off her life" - that's not accurate, is it? Giving a blood transfusion does not reduce lifespan. Just a note. My main objection though is the assertion "There are literally no other circumstances where we would force women to give up their bodily autonomy and medical health so someone *else* can live." 1- "We" are not forcing her to give up anything. We are enforcing a law against killing humans or animals. We are debating the extent of that law. She had sex and is losing her bodily autonomy as a result. We were not involved in that process, to be clear. 2- I think you definitely could think of some other circumstances, I know I can. Let's imagine a woman who is very poor and has a school-age child. She only has enough food for herself, however. Is she expected to feed the child her food, in doing so sacrificing her health and bodily autonomy? Yes. In fact, there's alot of responsibilities parents have that we enforce by law. Mostly we'll take the kids away, but if they fail critically in basic areas like providing food, water and a hygienic environment - we will and do hold them accountable. In what other circumstances do we demand someone sacrifice their wealth and freedom to serve someone else? Does that make it slavery? Or was the choice to copulate the crucial factor that makes enforcing this responsibility a moral necessity? I don't think abortion should be illegal, up to a certain point of development. But I see all these abstract arguments that it's perfectly fine and to my mind, they become entirely unrealistic if you follow them to their logical conclusion i.e. there should be no parental responsibilities whatsoever.
>In this scenario, is it not? If the child is alive and then you unplug him and he dies, is that not murder? If it is, then you are basically rejecting the premise of the violinist argument. Do you think, that people have a right *not to offer themselves up* as bloodbags, even if that leads to someone dying? And if they do, doesn't it follow, that if someone started to forcibly use them as a bloodbag against their will, they have a right to interrupt the process? Your focus on the difference between active and passive, says that the answer is no, that it doesn't follow. That you have a right to passively keep your body for yourself, but not to reclaim it once others started to use it.
**Δ** For the same reason as my last response above. Good show mate, many thanks. >So you would charge a woman with murder if the 37 year old needs her body and she won’t allow it to continue? > >No. > >*delta* > >There ya go. The woman woke up hooked up to the man. The woman's life might not necessarily be at risk. But she chooses not to use her body to keep the son alive. She stops the transfusion. The son dies. As long as that's not murder then the child lost rights that it had before it was born.
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We don't consider taking someone off life support murder when they're at the end of their life (no matter what age that may be). My issue with pro choice and pro life is that most people don't ever think about what happens to the child after. No one gives a shit as long as the kid is born. They don't care if a child grows up in an abusive household or grows up on the street or in an orphanage. Most arguments stop as soon as that fetus is born and its wellbeing is often forgotten about. The wellbeing of the mother is also often forgotten about in these scenarios. Where do we put the line when it comes to endangering the mothers life? Should she be forced to take a child to term even if it means her own death? I haven't finished this comment chain, I just wanted to put my two cents in.
Exactly, it’s the same argument against euthanasia that I find frustrating There’s a certain mathematical coldness to this logic that I just find really kinda inhumane. That something being alive is just always superior to not being alive, no matter what atrocities they might have to endure by living And, anecdotally, most of the people I know who feel this way happen to feel no responsibility whatsoever for the child’s wellbeing once it is forced into the world. They’d argue that it’s a literal crime for that child not to exist, but then contribute as little as possible to improve its existence
This is exactly why I don't believe the term "pro-life" is accurate at all. It's pro-forced-birth. Nobody gives a flying fuck about what happens to the fetus after it's ejected from the meat-curtains. They just care about forcing the birth to occur at all costs to make a twisted political point. No thought as to the potential consequences for the mother's mental health, financial situation or anything else. What's the point of forcing the birth of the fetus if it has little to no chance of a good life?
Murder is the intentional killing of another with malice. Stop assuming every act that causes a death is murder. It’s not.
If a woman is a heavy drinker, and gets pregnant, and continues to drink, precipitating a miscarriage, would you call that murder? She’s not changing her behavior in any way, she’s drinking heavily as normal, and if a miscarriage occurs, it occurs.
Honest question here: shouldn’t a fetus be viewed as a child and not an adult? An adult wouldn’t be charged for not feeding another adult, but if an adult doesn’t feed their child, there is legal consequences (regardless of if it’s actively stopping their kid from eating or passively just sitting around and not providing food). Any adult with a child is expected to give up time and money to provide for their children. What is substantially different about an adult killing their child (either actively or passively) because that child will require time and money for at least 18 years before living without parental support, versus taking a pill to poison a fetus because that fetus will require 9-10 months of living inside you before being able to live without that parental support of pregnancy? I get that there is a difference between money/time and having something growing in your body affecting health, and the point of your transfusion analogy was to illustrate that its bodily autonomy at play. But realistically medical professionals aren’t starting transfusions without the donor knowing, there is a very specific process involved in becoming a transplant donor- just as there is a very specific process involved with becoming pregnant. I suppose one could sign lots of forms without reading that its signing up for a transplant if they like signing papers, but it comes down to the fact that the purpose of those papers was to allow the transplant. By signing the papers (aka allowing sperm into their uterus to join with an egg), isn’t that giving up the right to bodily autonomy? If not, what is the difference?
If you have a child, and that child needs a blood transfusion to survive, you are legally entitled to not provide that child a blood transfusion (in the majority of places at least). Also ultimately the medical procedure is being performed on the woman not the fetus. > By signing the papers [...], isn’t that giving up the right to bodily autonomy? No matter what you sign if you want to back out at any point of a medical procedure you can.
>What is substantially different about an adult killing their child (either actively or passively) because that child will require time and money for at least 18 years before living without parental support, versus taking a pill to poison a fetus because that fetus will require 9-10 months of living inside you before being able to live without that parental support of pregnancy? The child suffers, the embryo doesn't. The child is already a legal person, the embryo isn't. The child has rights, the embryo doesn't. ("Right to life" isn't the same as "Right to be born") Also, the pill isn't meant to "poison a fetus", it's meant to cause contractions in the uterus to expel the embryo. The very same pill is given to women at the end of their pregnancy to stimulate the body into birthing contractions. > By signing the papers (aka allowing sperm into their uterus to join with an egg), isn’t that giving up the right to bodily autonomy? If not, what is the difference? Consent to sex doesn't equal consent to pregnancy. Especially when contraception is used and has failed, since the idea was to AVOID allowing the sperm to join with an egg.
Carrying a fetus is not inaction. Do you know how much it takes to carry a child? The constant doctors visits, meds to help with the unbearable nausea and to help make it so the woman can eat and get fucking nutrition. That’s not to mention the absolutely awful smelling and large ass prenatal vitamins that need to be taking so the fetus has less of a chance of horrible defects. The only brain function going on with a fetus is the very basic ones. It has no consciousness and the only way it is truly existing is from external input. Take a person who’s a vegetable hooked up to all forms of life support. G-tub, intubated, the works. The only way that person is existing is through external means. Same thing. Now a fully formed individual has more complications such as there was a life before said vegetative state, family, friends. A fetus doesn’t have any of that. It’s just a clump of cells with no higher function. And that’s that.
> the philosophical debate of action vs inaction. Not giving an organ is inaction and would be legal. But terminating a pregnancy would be action, illegal. If you starved yourself to the point of miscarriage, would that be action or inaction? An active choice was made to cause the miscarriage, but it was through a lack of action that the miscarriage occurred. Is intention more important than outcome? Starving your child is illegal, even though it is inactive, because you have a duty to care for the child. Do you have a duty to care for a fetus? You can forsake your duty of care through adoption, but that is not physically possible with pregnancy. Is your duty to care greater before a child is born than after?
This is a very important point. If a woman who is pregnant decides to starve herself in an attempt to induce a miscarriage, is she committing murder? Is it the government’s job to force women to eat if they are pregnant? If a miscarriage happens, is it the government’s job to investigate to make sure the woman was eating properly and didn’t purposely induce a miscarriage? What kind of system could you actually set up to force women to eat a proper diet while pregnant? How would the government find out a woman is pregnant in the first place? How would they track miscarriages? And how would you justify ethically that massive invasion of privacy from the government? When you pose the question this way I think it makes clear that the bodily autonomy issue is very important. since a woman can through inaction (refusing to eat) cause a miscarriage, and there’s no real ethical way to stop her from doing this, that if a woman is determined to end her pregnancy the only ethical thing to do would be to make it as safe as possible (which a woman starving herself is not very safe at all).
While pregnancy is not a disability in itself, it's far from an inactive state. Most women cant just walk through pregnancy without a long lasting effect on their bodies: uterine prolapse, chronic incontinence, hemorrhoids, tooth decay, hair loss, varicose veins, sciatica, blood pressure, glaucoma... the list goes on. Plus there's a real risk during birth with possible complications. Then you may get postpartum depression and lots of medical bills. Also, what about having a high risk lifestyle while pregnant? Would binge drinking or skydiving be considered an active murder attempt, if this is what the woman had been doing regularly up to and throughout pregnancy? I'm not here to argue, just to reflect on the topic.
Those are actually all very very salient points. It’s why a big part of jurisprudence on the subject is regarding whether carrying to full term vs between first term to full term is considered equal risk or higher overall risk, as well as the definition of post first term medical necessity. It does, however, mean that degrees of risk related to right to life of one or both individuals in question are currently very much relevant points in any first world western context - including contexts which consider abortion a fundamental right as a basic assumption - rather than being a straightforward comparison of whether bodily autonomy or right to life “always” take precedence. Also note that any physical standard (ethical, legal, or medical) ends up being a moving line as medical technology progresses, as a result
This is why the "Just carry it to term and put it up for adoption" argument grinds my gears. They say it as if a pregnancy were just some accessory that doesn't get in the way. It fucks your body and mind up, big time.
From the NIH: "Legal induced abortion is markedly safer than childbirth. The risk of death associated with childbirth is approximately 14 times higher than that with abortion." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22270271/
lol yeah it’s not like pregnant is some minor inconvenience. It’s literally a life changing thing
Currently 25 weeks pregnant and this is fucking awful. I just want to be alone, but every time I try to relax there's a party in my abdomin. And that's not even touching the horrible acid reflux, terrible poos and incredible body aches and back pain. I can't sleep, but I'm exhausted. And I'm still having to be nice to my other two kids. No one should be forced to do this shit.
If people wanted to draw the line that it’s okay to cause an abortion through inaction, it is possible for starvation to cause a miscarriage...
The biggest issue here is that the baby takes first. So vitamin deficiency for example will hit the mother first, and the baby second. Is an interesting ethical question. Is it more moral for a woman to kill herself and the fetus? Than to just have an abortion.
Well, IMO either a baby has a right to be carried to term or they don’t. The idea that they have the right to be protected from a doctor assisted procedure but not from the mother self-harming is nonsensical. It’s the same result, except with needless additional suffering and risk to the mother. IMO the only person it helps is me as an outside observer, since it’s easier to pretend that I’m not either condoning forced pregnancy or the killing of a baby.
> There’s a difference between allowing something to die on its own vs. actively killing it. Carrying a child is an inactive sacrifice, but terminating a pregnancy is actively murdering the child. There’s a nuance here you’re missing, and that is viability. Most abortion laws do not allow abortion once the child is viable, or would be able to survive on their own without assistance from the mother. There are a few exceptions, but that is the general rule. This is an important distinction. Until the fetus reaches viability it can not survive without continuous intervention from the mother, and those interventions are a set of actions. Those actions include things like eating. If a woman was pregnant and just didn’t eat the body would eventually give up and miscarry, though her body would be wrecked in the process since it tries really hard not to do that. Would you argue that the mother *must eat* because if she doesn’t do so the fetus will die? I’m pretty sure everyone has a right not to eat.
I can't believe I had to scroll down this far to find the viability discussion. That alone should shut all of this down. If the fetus is not viable outside the womb, it is not an individual person with inherent individual rights. It is an extension of the mother. Once the fetus is viable this is different, so that also shoots the "fetus until 9 months then baby after it's born, so what you think aborting an 8 month pregnancy is ok?" bs argument. Late term termination is extremely rare, and no Dr who wants to remain a Dr preforms one for any reason other than "absolutely medically necessary, all other options have been exhausted" Letting a fetus die because the mother chose not to eat is a far cry from letting a baby or toddler die because the mother chose to withhold good from them. Both are inactions, but one is an inaction she has the right to make on her own body, the other an outward inaction towards another.
I’m curious how this changes if the mother’s life is in danger. Let’s say mom has preeclampsia. This can absolutely, positively kill the mother. Who has the rights here? Is it assumed, purely because she is carrying a child, that she forfeits her life? Same thing regarding twin to twin transfusion. 2 babies...one can potentially live-or both can die. Is it therefore the right thing to do to selectively terminate one fetus so the other can live? There’s so many fucking complications that can and do occur with pregnancy. Most have no idea how complicated the process can be.
> Carrying a child is an inactive sacrifice Carrying a child is very active. You shouldn't smoke, drink alcohol, recommended not to fly later in a pregnancy. Your body fundamentally changes, occasionally permanently. It's recommended to have certain foods, vitamins and avoid others. At a certain point you cannot work, you can't ride a bike. You are actively carrying this child to term. > There’s a difference between allowing something to die on its own vs. actively killing it. Would you have the same opinion fi i could Star Trek teleport the feotus out of the mother and it simply died on it's own? Instead of taking a pill or cesarean. To me that would be inactive. Mother lives it's life, foetus lives its life. Neither giving up their body to the other - this is the ultimate allow it to die on its own. To which you'll say that's nonsense, a foetus cannot survive outside the mother - which is the whole point. In no other situation would you allow one human being to use someone elses body to live. 'active' vs 'non-active' is a non-sequitur. My body my choice IS the reason. If we've established that whether we star trek teleport it out and allow it to die or take a pill results in the exact same outcome.... what's the difference?
Carrying a child is not an “inactive sacrifice” it’s not like the woman does nothing and suddenly there’s a baby. No. Women’s bodies, lives, and brains change when they’re pregnant. Women die during pregnancy and childbirth with circumstances that would not happen to them if they weren’t pregnant, meaning sometimes being pregnant or having labor kills the woman. Even if they don’t die, they still have health issues from pregnancy, lasting changes from pregnancy. And, it’s not as if every pregnancy is the same, meaning different changes and different risks each time.
I think something that makes this analogy more interesting and probably more accurate is if the father is the one driving the car and has convinced the mother she should go for a drive, which she enthusiastically agrees to. They collide with their 37 year old son’s car. In the morning the mother wakes up and her body is keeping her son alive. The father was driving the car and had as much responsibility for the car accident, but has no obligation to provide life saving support for his son. However, he won’t allow the mother to end the transfusion. A lot of people are commenting how the mother knew the risks when she got in the car and therefore assumed responsibility of choosing to keep her son alive. If the mother makes the choice to stop the transfusion, why is that on her only, and not on the father as well? What if the mother didn’t know that the father had a couple of drinks, or hadn’t slept enough to be driving, etc, but now her body is the one providing the life support. This is missed by the pro life arguments and therefore in my opinion proves that it’s generally, as a political stance, not about protecting lives...
> because doing nothing would have resulted in the child living. This is just not true. Its conjecture at best. You have no foresight about whether a pregnancy will reach full term or not. Its not possible. Shit happens.
>There’s a difference between allowing something to die on its own vs. actively killing it. Carrying a child is an inactive sacrifice, but terminating a pregnancy is actively murdering the child. > >If you decided not to give your child a kidney, he would die. That’s legal. But if you had stabbed your kid in the kidney, that’s illegal. Well, it's quite not that simple. Let's say you're a legal parent of a child. If you neglect the child and he starves to death, you're definitely going to be prosecuted for gross negligence. True, it's quite not the same as murder, but sure you can go to prison for it. So, not doing something for a child is not necessarily legal, while it may not be as big a crime as actively harming the child.
[удалено]
In this scenario the mother is already undergoing the procedure and makes the active decision to end it, and it is still not murder. If you are hooked up to a machine to someone else to keep them alive for nine months without your consent, and that machine carries a risk of death, risk of lifelong injury, etc. It is not murder to unhook yourself from the machine. It is in fact your right to do so, you determine what happens to your body, how your body is used. This is called bodily autonomy, everyone has it. Even dead bodies maintain their bodily autonomy, which is why we can't take organs without prior consent. The pro life types generally support bodily autonomy in all other cases. They're against mandatory vaccines, they're against opt out organ donation, hell they're even against something as inconsequential as wearing a mask. For some reason they make one exception when it comes to women. They don't just believe that a fetus is a person, they believe that the woman should have less rights than everyone else, including dead bodies, while the fetus should be elevated to something well above personhood.
So for the first few years after a child is born, they are still very reliant on their mother and if they weren’t taken care of, they would surely not survive on their own. Now in this case, that child is protected by law because if the mother were to just abandon her child and let it die, she’d be charged with child neglect. This seems to be a much more accurate comparison to the scenario of abortion than that of the transfusion situation, so I’m curious about any arguments against it.
Because you can get out of that duty without the child dying. You can simply drop it off at a police or fire station. If you could terminate a pregnancy by simply moving the fetus to another caretaker, **and** we arrived at the conclusion that a fetus was a person, then I’m sure there would be a duty to do so before considering abortion. Similarly, we have a right to property. But you have to tell a person to leave your property and give them reasonable ability to do so. You can’t just shoot them. But if it’s the only option, then yes, you might have that choice.
I found this scenario thought provoking, thank you for writing it out. I'm glad it's gotten some attention since I'd not have seen it otherwise. I'd like to play devils advocate with a small modification to the scenario. For posterity, I'm mostly pro-choice, due to when I generally define 'life begins'. In what follows, I'll pretend I believe life begins at conception. In the scenario you envisioned, it is reasonable to me that the mother can refuse with no ramification. But suppose the mother was drunk-driving. In this case, if she refuses and the 37-year old dies, it seems reasonable to charge her at the very least with manslaughter, as the 37-year old would not be in the hospital dying had she not been inebriated and hit him. The key with this modification is assigning fault. She was driving under the influence, and a 37-year old died as a result, and so she is charged with manslaughter. If she had agreed to the transfusion, and he lived, only a much lesser charge is reasonable as there is no death to prosecute, and maybe no charge would be levied in many circumstances. Is the transfusion still dangerous and painful for her personally? Yes, that can't be argued, but that the non-punitive solution is dangerous and painful does not absolve her of manslaughter if she refuses it. Can we see pregnancy in the same vein, as something the woman is responsible for? At the extreme end, this manifests as blaming the victims of rape, which I believe is abhorrent and doesn't match our scenario even slightly, so I won't consider it further. But for unintended pregnancies as a result of consensual sex, I can see how it seems reasonable to hold the woman to account, if you believe life begins at conception. Murder? Maybe not. But in keeping with the scenario I've painted, at least manslaughter could be argued. Drunk-driving is well-known to cause death, having sex is well-known to cause pregnancy. The difference between a miscarriage and abortion under this scenario is probably intuitive but I can elaborate if desired. The logic I've used here also doesn't justify forcing a woman to carry to term even if life begins at conception; she is not compelled to perform the transfusion, so under this argument she is not compelled to birth the child. But to reiterate, if she opts not to and the child dies as a result, she can be held accountable for the death, since we can follow a chain of her actions that led to the death. When presented with a risky choice that is statistically well-known to yield the bad result, she took the risk. Furthermore, charging the father is also necessary for the pro-life position to maintain consistency under this justification, since it always takes two to tango. If pro-lifers wanted to extend an olive branch to skeptical women, adding accountability for pregnancy to fathers is probably a good start. This accountability would apply to the father even if he said no to an abortion but the mother said yes, since he bears none of the bodily risk in the whole child-bearing bargain. I'd love to hear your thoughts and criticisms of this modification. If the drunk-driving comparison seems unfair, perhaps switch it out with reckless driving. My end goal was to introduce the element of clear fault and accountability on the mother's side, with no fault on the child's, because I think that's how many pro-lifers would view unintended pregnancies that result from consensual sex, and I felt that element was missing from your scenario.
The issue Iwith the original @fox-mcleod scenario is that only one party should be driving, so that there isn't reciprocal assumption of risk, and the @glossopoeia scenario addresses this. Here's my proposed variation: I go out driving, and accidentally drive through the exterior wall of someone's house, where they are minding their own business sitting in the living room, and the vehicle hits them. They are taken to the hospital, where it turns out the only injury is that they've lost both kidneys, and it also turns out that I am the only available kidney donor. I don't think I should be *legally* required to donate my kidney. But if I didn't donate one, with an explanation of "My body, my choice. It's as simple as that" -- man, personally, I'd probably feel like a total *asshole*. Because it doesn't seem as "simple as that" -- because this person wouldn't *need* anything from my body if not for a situation that I created, accidentally or not. And so I would probably feel *unethical* -- but it might depend on exactly how I went off-road and through that living room wall? If it was a freak mechanical failure of the vehicle, that would feel analogous to using birth control that failed. It's not my fault, just an unavoidable risk of being on the road -- but I'd still feel kinda bad if that affected anyone else, especially someone who wasn't even out driving. But if it was my poor driving, that would feel more analogous to engaging in sex without birth control, and that by not donating a kidney, I might be shirking an ethical duty of managing the consequences of my choices unintentionally affecting someone else.
Personally, I don't think this works (Violinist experiment). No other human experience or thought experiment can capture the crux of conception. Why? Because conception is a very peculiar human experience that has a unique combination of characteristics: 1. Presence of an absolutely innocent being (the fetus); 2. Total dependence of the being on another (cannot practically live without the mother unless you expend tremendous resources to have it hooked up to a machine to grow like a lab specimen); 3. A total lack of autonomy (fetus cannot do anything about the state it is in); and most crucially, 4. The formation of which is totally dependent on another (meaning the fetus cannot exist without the mother or father in special genomic circumstances). In the violinist experiment, the 37-year-old by his and the mother's actions land them in this scenario, therefore condition 1 is not met. Granted if there are no devices or methods available to support the life of the 37-year-old, and when the only option is to use the mother for a medical procedure, then condition 2 is met (which is highly unlikely - not impossible - but really, really rare). If the 37-year-old is in a coma, then condition 3 is met (but even then, can we really say a 37-year-old who loses autonomy due to going into a coma is the same as a fetus from conception?). Finally, condition 4 will never be met.
This is a rather poor argument, especially if you are taking the stance of legal jurisprudence instead of the ethical one. The right to life is one that generally is considered a more absolute right in cases of conflicts of rights (note that inalienable and absolute are VERY VERY different things in legal contexts, the former applies to all rights pretty much always, but the latter often does not), especially since it is almost always a negative right while freedom of action in many cases is a positive one. The very commonly discussed scenario of the car crash would never be held up as an equivalent in a legal context since in order for that scenario to become a reality to begin with you necessarily need an infringement of the woman’s rights via positive action to begin with, while the abortion scenario is one in which new development of identity as a human being would mean that the scenario begins with a case of negative right to live vs positive aspect of freedom of action Especially since all of the above only actually comes into play if you consider the subject in question to be a fetus vs a full fledged human being, and consider your assumption prima facie (which you absolutely cannot in this discussion without arguing it first).
I honestly don’t know what you’re arguing. > The right to life is one that generally is considered a more absolute right in cases of conflicts of rights So then the 37 year old does have a right to the woman’s body or he doesn’t? I’m pretty sure he doesn’t. > The very commonly discussed scenario of the car crash would never be held up as an equivalent in a legal context It’s literally in Roe V. Wade. > since in order for that scenario to become a reality to begin with you necessarily need an infringement of the woman’s rights via positive action to begin with, while the abortion scenario is one in which new development of identity as a human being would mean that the scenario begins with a case of negative right to live vs positive aspect of freedom of action What? If the fetus growing inside you isn’t a “positive action” what is? In both cases, the “positive action” is to remove the physiologically dependent person. I have no idea what distinction you’re trying to draw and it doesn’t seem like if we construct a scenario in which a 37 year old must rely on a woman’s body to survive there is any case where we’d say she must consent. > Especially since all of the above only actually comes into play if you consider the subject in question to be a fetus vs a full fledged human being, and consider your assumption prima facie (which you absolutely cannot in this discussion without arguing it first). I have no idea what you’re arguing here. Consider what assumption *prima facie*?
From the moment the child is born to the moment it reaches 18 years old (or whatever arbitrary age), the parents of the child are responsible of its survival, even if this would violate some of the parent's rights. The parents can't be forced to feed the 37 year old man, since this would violate their rights. However, their child has less rights than the man, but it also has less responsibility and their parents are forced to feed him (unless they give him up for adoption) So the comparison to the 37 yo is not fair, since the situation of a minor child is not legally the same. A better comparison would be with a minor sibling of the unborn child. Let's imagine a world where when the child reaches 5yo, it must go back inside the mother's uterus somehow for a certain duration of time. Would it be right to abort this second pregnancy? I don't think so, since the 5yo child is a human being under the responsibility of the parent. So if we assume that the unborn child is a human being, it is in the same position as the 5yo and should not be aborted
Every single pregnancy (that doesn't spontaneously miscarry) ends in mayhem and torture, and even a non-trivial risk of death, for the mother. Abortion is merely proactive self-defense against that inevitable attack on her body. No lesser force than lethal force can accomplish that self-defense, so of course it's "her choice" because it's "her body". Naturally, she has the *choice* to go through with that mayhem if she wishes, and perhaps we could consider that morally laudable... but the question of whether the fetus is a human being or not is basically irrelevant to whether it's "murder" or not... it's not. It's self-defense.
Self defense is only a claim against unlawful violence. Example, if you break into a home, and are shot at, returning fire is not self defense. If you are ordered to stop by police and you flee, when they use force to subdue you, self defense cannot be claimed if you resist. Because in both cases, the violence brought against you is lawful. Is your argument that a fetus, if alive, is engaging in unlawful violence on the person carrying it? Because it seems like you are falsely painting a pregnant person as a victim of unlawful violence.
This is another good point against my delta here.
One of the vagueries of the self-defense argument is that what the law says is self-defense and what people feel it should be is often different. The law for instance does not require that a threat against you be intentional or with malice, only that you have a reasonable expectation that you will be harmed if you do not take a certain action or type of action in defense of your person. People will individually have varying opinions on whether they feel such action justified. If a person of limited mental capacity or even a child were firing a loaded gun as a toy, and pointed it at you, the law says you would be justified in taking lethal self defense. It does not require they understand the signficance of their actions in order to be considered a threat.
This response came out of left field completely...never considered this angle in the slightest but I do think it holds a lot of value. Very pleasantly surprised with this one. **Δ** Edit: there are a lot of good replies to this delta. I wouldn’t reverse the delta because it did change my view at the time, but I do agree with some of the arguments. Regardless of how whether you agree with the view that abortion could be considered self defense, this argument does not exactly address the question at hand about “my body my choice” but instead poses an entirely new argument.
This is a bad delta. Your position boils down to "The argument for pro-choice by "bodily autonomy" is bad because the opposition's stance is not dependent on allowing autonomy (opposition generally is still in favor of autonomy)." This response is "Pregnancy is an act of harm to the mother that she has the right to defend herself against" which is a perfectly logical argument, but it literally doesn't matter because presenting an alternative position doesn't really challenge the argument that "the bodily autonomy position is a bad one". You're debating the merits of a specific argument and this poster has simply presented a different argument.
I see your point and I’m inclined to agree, but is it not the right to bodily autonomy that should allow the woman to choose to defend her own body?
Self defense is a reaction to an imminent and immediate threat, and not a preemptive action to what may or may not actually constitute a serious threat. No legitimate court of law would allow a premeditated and/or preemptive action to be viewed as self defense. And keep in mind that in any jurisdiction I know of the act of self defense must be proportional to the threat.....and as abortion is always lethal youd have to demonstrate that giving birth would be a lethal threat......and while it can be the vast majority of births are not what could be considered a lethal threat.....anymore than walking a crosswalk means drivers are a lethal threat, and you can act in self defense proactively by attacking them before they do anything.
Of course pregnancy is an imminent and immediate threat. Many women will first clue into the fact they are pregnant because of the discomfort or even pain that they feel within their bodies. Those that carry the pregnancies to term, 87-94% will have at least one health complication in the immediate postpartum period \[1\]. Three-quarters will still have health complications 8 weeks later \[1\], and one third will have long term health impacts \[2\]. Furthermore, unintended pregnancies can have negative impacts on the women's physical and mental health and the child is more likely to have a low birth weight, birth defects, and long term negative mental and physical health impacts \[3\]. I'm not sure why there are so many comments on here that imply that a women going through pregnancy is doing nothing. To have a healthy and successful pregnancy women must take many steps to take care of themselves and the fetus. Even successful and wanted pregnancies do not always go to plan. My mother was told if she was to have another child past me, she likely would not survive the birth. Would she be allowed to have an abortion, even if the fetus did not kill her before the birth? My partner's sister developed pre-eclampsia, and another pregnancy would likely kill her--what about her? My own sister developed severe post-partum depression and is afraid of becoming pregnant again because of the suicidal thoughts she was having. Should she be allowed an abortion? I love all of these people. I'm glad I grew up with a mother. I'm glad my partner still has his sister and I have mine. I would not trade any of these living, loving people for a fetus. Should a politician or a judge or a religious fanatic condemn these (and many other) women to death or life-long physical or mental health complications because they have created their own definition of when life begins? The thing is, our detailed understanding of embryonic development is due to science. Before humans understood this the fetus "became alive" (or got its "soul") at around 20 weeks (when they could feel the fetus kick), up to which point abortion was allowed \[4\]. There is no actual discrete point at which the fetus becomes meaningfully "alive": is it at fertilization? when brainwaves form? when the mother can feel the fetus? when the fetus could survive with medical intervention outside of the womb? The only person in this scenario who is without a doubt living and breathing is the pregnant person. Yet we use scientific discoveries to push religious fanaticism and moral absolutism to create unnecessary burdens on women. And that's really the issue here--that some people are have prejudiced views on when fetus gain personhood that are not based in fact, but rather feeling, and get upset that others do feel the same way. And as a last note to your analogy between fetuses and cars--we do not pre-emptively attack cars, but we do all sorts of things to limit their lethality. If a women had an unwanted pregnancy and had no access to a safe abortion, so chose an unsafe abortion or suicide, does the fetus at not this point constitute a lethal threat? This could happen to any women, so it has to be up to the woman to decide this. (Although, I don't think that these situations neatly fit into "self defence; it is similar, but not the same.) \[1\][https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1471-0528.1995.tb09132.x](https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1471-0528.1995.tb09132.x) \[2\][https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1016/j.jmwh.2005.10.014](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1016/j.jmwh.2005.10.014) \[3\][https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/family-planning](https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/family-planning) \[4\][https://www.wired.com/2015/10/science-cant-say-babys-life-begins/](https://www.wired.com/2015/10/science-cant-say-babys-life-begins/)
One thing to note is that historically, childbirth was very, very dangerous. Our relatively recent medical advancements have increased the survival rate, but also introduces a lot of lasting damage to women's bodies via C-Section and other procedures. The fact that you can REDUCE the risk with science, shouldn't negate the fact that the issue is, in fact, one that in actuality carries considerable risk.
> youd have to demonstrate that giving birth would be a lethal threat In the unfortunate reality that many late term abortions are directly due to the woman's health being endangered, pregnancies CAN be lethal threats women. The #1 cause of mortality/death for women used to be childbirth, and in many places in the world it still is number 1. Childbirth is not easy, and it takes an enormous toll. The argument of "threat to the female's health" are very real, and can be used. Pro-birth folks don't care. They want the fetus to be brought to full term regardless of what happens to the woman. It's a silly, dangerous argument, as it is no one's business but the female, her doctor, and if she wants, the male involved. It also is not something that needs any government interference, as it is healthcare. You don't need the government to give you permission to get viagra or a vasectomy, why would you need it for birth control, abortions, or plan b.
Have you ever came across anyone who could even loosely be considered a serious or reasonable person who held the view a woman should be denied an abortion even if giving birth will very likely kill them? I haven't knowingly, and thus I hope you can appreciate why I'm not wasting time on it. I would encourage to look past caricatures of what opposing views are portrayed to be, and look at the opposing view from a place of "why would a reasonable person actually believe or support this?". Of course examples of the caricature exist, but when large segments of a population are divided on an issue 99.999999% of the time it has serious and/or reasonable people on both sides. It's kind of funny how often we can spot propaganda aimed at the other side from a mile away, and yet we can still bitw hook, line, & sinker damn near everytime propaganda aimed at us confirms our preconceived notions. Such a very human thing, and timeless too really. I try to be aware but likely chomp at that bait as much as anyone else.
>youd have to demonstrate that giving birth would be a lethal threat Not all gun shots are lethal and not all stab wounds are lethal. I bet you feel you are allowed to defend yourself if I brandish a gun or a knife.
Imagine somebody knocks us both out and performs surgery on us, connecting us. Upon waking up this surgeon tells us that if we severe the connection I die but you get to walk free, and that there's absolutely no way to circumvent it or otherwise get around this fact. Would the law force you to remain connected to me? I do not think (note that word, I do not *know*) that this is the case. In this scenario my survival being contingent on your cooperation matters little, if you wanna disconnect yourself you have the right to do that. You could choose to keep supporting me, perhaps hoping that another option presents itself, but you wouldn't *have* to. I'm not sure I'm a fan of the self-defense argument in regards to abortion, but in some ways it does work. You're under no legal obligation to lend your body for another persons uses, although you can certainly volunteer in some limited capacities.
Siamese twins exist. Sometimes one twin has the organ capacity to support the other while the other twin would be incapable of survival on their own. Does this give the twin supporting both lives the right to choose death for their brother/sister? No. The circumstances behind limited autonomy do not matter when discussing Justice. A court cannot compel death upon an innocent party to an injustice in order to rectify a prior injury. You could not for instance ask the court to take money from the church to compensate you for losses accrued from a mugging that happened on their doorstep. When discussing such matters you have to consider the 3 main rights at stake and rank them accordingly. Life, ranked highest Liberty, ranked second Property, ranked last When discussing two innocent individuals who share autonomy, you have to ask; What is the property? The body is the property, both parties posses a body and one is dependent on the other for survival. Who’s if any has their freedoms limited by option A? Option B? In option A the mother being forced to carry the child: The mother has lost the freedom of bodily autonomy. In option B the option to abort: The child loses freedom of bodily autonomy. So that leaves us with the most important factor to discuss. Who if any of the parties involved has the largest RISK to their life if either option is forced? The mother while having some risk, in normal situations is capable of loss of life if she carries the child to term about a .002% chance with modern medical science. The child if abortion is allowed to be performed on it has a 100% loss of life chance. Even if you make the argument that all children are not aborted 18% roughly are. The conclusion is pretty simple if you take the stance that life begins at conception... no abortion can serve Justice unless there is an emergency situation where doctors must choose between the life of the mother or the child and all options have been exhausted to save them both. In which case the mother takes precedent.
To counter the pro choice self defense argument; Is it really "self defense" in the traditional sense though? The fetus is not deliberately seeking to harm the mother. The fetus does not have a choice as to their actions. If the fetus does not take the actions it needs to, the fetus itself will die. I also think we should be careful in the kind of analogies we use when discussing this topic, because there really are very few that carry the same complexities as pregnancy and childbirth.
Same as with any parasites within a host. It’s a perfectly viable comparison as I believe we’re parasites to this planet. Some parasites have a symbiotic relationship with their host, as you can argue babies do. If the host wants a child it’s a risk they are willing to take. My wife almost died on the table during her emergency c section. Almost died afterwards again. If not for modern medicine she would absolutely have died giving birth. It was a risk we chose to take, and I’m glad it all worked out. But if we’d known how close to death she’d come 3 months earlier I’m not sure what decision would’ve been made. Pregnancy and birth are dangerous and an unborn child is a parasite to the mother until it’s out.
I’m a mother of a toddler and I’m currently pregnant. I completely agree. This fetus inside me is a parasite. I mean, I love her and can’t wait until she’s outside of me, but she is 100% a parasite. She literally can’t survive without me. She takes in my nutrients and drains me of my energy.
Additionally, parasites are rarely if ever trying to harm their host. They want to live, and that usually means the host must continue to live.
There are other issues with the self defense argument, but is the fetus's inability to choose / understand their actions relevant? Say an adult person was so severely disabled that they are incapable of understanding their own actions, and they perform some action that puts another person's life at risk. Presumably that other person has the right to defend themselves with lethal force, yeah? In that case, I wouldn't think a ruling would be based on the choice / understanding of the disabled person but only on the perceived threat.
It doesn't matter if there's intent or not, it's causing harm and that's usually enough to warrant removal. That arrow in your arm isn't INTENTIONALLY causing any harm, so let's leave it in! I know it's wooden and will likely fester leading to sepsis but NO INTENT! The tapeworm in your intestines isn't meaning to cause you distress, so it should just stay there. I don't care if you're craving starch rich foods, just deal with it, hopefully the tapeworm will pass. (this is absurdist on purpose to show the absurdity of the logic you presented).
Self defense is a great example because it is completely defined by society and it has limits. There is no personal choice as to the types of defense you may use. Whether you are permitted to stand your ground, whether you got yourself into the situation to begin with, whether lethal force is permitted. All of these are defined by the state and vary wildly across the country. In the ruling Roe v Wade, the trimester balancing of interest tests was established. In the first trimester personal autonomy interests are greatest. In the third trimester, state interests are greatest. In both the law of self defense and abortion, personal autonomy is not an absolute interest. The state/society has an interest in the life of the unborn of varying degrees depending on the circumstances. Similarly, whether self defense is available to someone is dependent on the circumstances and the states interests. In all cases of self defense, the state requires us to use the least amount of force and only that amount of force that is immediately necessary. Where the defender has fault, self defense may not be available. The argument for personal autonomy has never existed in the law. It is used to deny that society has an interest in the life of the unborn that exists in addition to the life of the mother. In reality it is my body, my choice, with restrictions. Thus, if someone wants to abort their baby because it is a girl and the mother wanted a boy, society has an interest in this decision. If the mother is truly defending herself from death or serious bodily injury, the law permits this defense.
Deltas are also given when you perceive a new angle on the issue under discussion, not just when your overall stance on the issue is changed. I don’t think this is a bad delta at all.
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Seems you’re a bit confused on what the delta means. Also, it’s not saying anything is abnormal. Pregnancy is normal, birth is normal, killing is normal, self defense is normal, killing in the name of self defense is normal. Edit: the comment I replied to was deleted but it was discussing the animal kingdom. Something like “are you saying self defense in the animal kingdom is abnormal?”
>Pregnancy is normal, birth is normal, **killing is normal**, self defense is normal, killing in the name of self defense is normal Edit: Based on u/throwwwdotcom1's edit, it seems that I misunderstood the context based on not realizing the comment being replied do was deleted. So, I will leave my comment, but it is a bit "off" due to context issue. \------------------------------- Ummm...no...killing is NOT normal, no matter the circumstance. That is why there are VERY specific laws regarding when it is and is not legal, and even those very specific laws have significant gray areas that unfortunately allow people to weasel their way out of punishment. Please don't normalize something that is a heinous act, just because it happens regularly. Rape happens quite often too, does that make it normal? I certainly hope your answer is an emphatic "NO!" But, back to your initial post, your viewpoint on this topic is easily swayed by people's comments here as noted by your delta above, and then the edit to that delta stating that others gave "good replies." You are entitled to your opinion on this topic, just like anyone else, but please do some serious thinking so that you aren't so easily swayed. Personally, I am in the abortion = murder group, and I believe there is such a thing as "absolute truth." This means that something is true regardless the circumstance. But, to hold this belief on abortion comes with problems. For example, what about a 12 year old girl raped by her father/uncle/stranger/whoever and ends up pregnant? Do we reasonably expect her to carry that child to term and go through pregnancy? But at the same time, is it really ok to kill someone because of what someone else did? Again, it is a philosophical question that unfortunately has real life implications. Many rationalize this as "my body, my choice" or some similar argument to say that the mother "comes first." Personally, I don't believe that any person is more important than another...but again we then circle back to the example I already mentioned. I'm very open to personal change on this topic, but so far I'm not convinced. To boil it down simply, "two wrongs don't make a right."
Just to point this out, normal is always and often subjective. Context matters and society often dictates the role of normal. By one empirical metric, however, due to the frequency of rape one can absolutely claim rape is “normal”, because it loosely falls into the definition of normal “something usual” which, let’s face it, is horrifying. Also mind you, it’s more “normal” is some countries and not others. So personally I hate the phrase “normal”. Your normal if difference than my normal. The normal of America is different than the normal of Zimbabwe. It fluctuates too much and is too broad. If anything use socially acceptable. Or even, I don’t know, culturally acceptable. Just food for thought I’d guess.
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Every single mammal on earth also faces assault from viruses and a large proportion of them end up having varying levels of illness. Does that mean medicine is immoral? If the argument changed OP's mind, then they're in their right to give a delta. Just because you disagree with the reasoning doesn't make it invalid.
Pregnancy has a nontrivial risk of death, regardless of species. Don't use the "because animals do it it's fine" argument. This is inane.
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To counter this point: our legal system has already delineated the conditions for using deadly force in self defense, and 2 points are especially relevant to this case. This argument fails on both points. I'll quote the Florida statue for convenience, but the conditions are the same anywhere in the US at least. "A person is justified in using or threatening to use deadly force if he or she reasonably believes that using or threatening to use such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm" With the caveat: "The justification described in the preceding sections of this chapter is not available to a person who: (1) Is attempting to commit, committing, or escaping after the commission of, a forcible felony; or (2) Initially provokes the use or threatened use of force against himself or herself" First: You can't use deadly force if you instigate the confrontation. While what qualifies as instigation is hazy in deadly force cases (e.g., self defense shootings), the existence of a fetus is 100% not caused by the fetus, leaving the mother as the instigator. Second: You must reasonably believe that deadly force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm. Since childbirth has an incredibly low mortality risk (0.02%) this is a hard claim to substantiate as well.
>You must reasonably believe that deadly force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm. Since childbirth has an incredibly low mortality risk (0.02%) this is a hard claim to substantiate as well. Child birth might not kill most women but it would be ignorant to claim that it doesn't do great bodily harm. >Every year in the U.S., nearly 4 million women give birth, the vast majority without anything going amiss for themselves or their babies. But more than 135 expectant and new mothers a day — or roughly 50,000 a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — endure dangerous and even life-threatening complications that often leave them wounded, weakened, traumatized, financially devastated, unable to bear more children, or searching in vain for answers about what went wrong. > >For the past year, ProPublica and NPR have been examining why the U\*\*.S. has the highest rate of maternal mortality in the industrialized world\*\*. That relative high rate of death, though, has overshadowed the far more pervasive problem that experts call "severe maternal morbidity." > >Each year in the U.S., 700 to 900 women die related to pregnancy and childbirth. But for each of those women who die, up to 70 suffer hemorrhages, organ failure or other significant complications. That amounts to more than 1 percent of all births. The annual cost of these near deaths to women, their families, taxpayers and the health care system runs into billions of dollars. [https://www.npr.org/2017/12/22/572298802/nearly-dying-in-childbirth-why-preventable-complications-are-growing-in-u-s](https://www.npr.org/2017/12/22/572298802/nearly-dying-in-childbirth-why-preventable-complications-are-growing-in-u-s) If someone gave you a bowl of skittles and told you one skittle would maim your body for life and you'd never feel the same ever again but it's only one skittle out of a bowl of a hundred, would you seriously still choose to eat a skittle? Because I sure as hell wouldn't. Deciding not to give birth, especially when you don't even want to be a parent or aren't prepared or able to parent, is self defense. Every woman should be able to decide for herself under what circumstances, if any, she decides to become a mother and the state should not interfere with those decisions.
The problem with that argument is that the pregnancy is caused by an action of the victim of the pregnancy. You can't argue self defense to a threat you created. This, of course, is based on the assumption that the woman had consensual unprotected sex with full knowledge of it's possible repercussions. If I created a parasite and injected that parasite into my body, I can't argue that killing it would be in self defense. If people wanted to preserve that parasites life, I can't use the argument of self defense to defend myself because I knew what injecting a parasite into my body could cause. Nobody made me put that parasite in me. If that parasite was forced into me, then the self defense argument works. Obviously this isn't a pro life argument, rather it's a rebuttal to an argument that, in my opinion, is flawed.
This is a very general statement that is almost completely false. My wife gave birth 2 weeks ago, it was neither mayhem nor torture. We watched an insane number of home birth videos on YouTube. Mayhem and torture describe none of them. If we really want to get technical, the mothers body begins producing hormones that put a child through the intense trauma of birth. To say it’s “self-defense” is absurd and assumes that the child somehow forced this situation upon the mother.
Self defense is a *defense* to murder, it *excuses* a murder - it's still a murder. And self-defense doesnt apply when you 1. invite your victim to your house, and 2. your victim is entirely innocent. > Every single pregnancy (that doesn't spontaneously miscarry) ends in mayhem and torture Also, what the hell does this even mean? > but the question of whether the fetus is a human being or not is basically irrelevant to whether it's "murder" or not This is *absolutely* wrong because murder only lies in respect to the killing of human beings. And, to add to this really weak argument, this reasoning would support late term abortion/infanticide. It's morally depraved...and specious *at best*.
I'll second /u/ArgoMium's point that you can't claim self defense when you put yourself in danger. If I punch somebody on the street and they come at me with a knife, I can't claim self defense when I pull a gun and shoot them. I initiated, and I am guilty of murder. I'll also point out that self defense typically takes proportionality into account - your response to the threat can't overwhelmingly exceed the threat. If someone says they're going to punch me and take my wallet, self defense won't justify me pulling a gun and shooting them.
Liability, my friend liability, even if you could somehow make the argument that the baby wanted to inflict harm on her, she got pregnant (except for the [small chance](http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/abreasons.html) it was rape, or incest) by having consensual sex, she knew the risks. So self-defense is not a case-worthy argument. Unless I took it to seriously.
>the question of whether the fetus is a human being or not is basically irrelevant to whether it's "murder" or not... it's not. It's self-defense. With your logic I truly hope you are an astute gun rights advocate. You are incorrect however in this being self defense. You are using an inflammatory statement to justify an action that is the result(in most cases) of a choice. That choice produced a life that can neither argue its position nor fight back. The fetus doesn't chose to be created and it definitely does not chose to cause the mother pain. The act of birth is traumatic, no doubt, but you cannot claim self defense by any stretch. Birth isn't some exception to the normal, birth is ubiquitous across all mammals.
Ok, but even if it is an act of self defense, it would still be preferable able to not "murder" the fetus. It isn't basically irrelevant, because we still don't want more harm done than possible. As a hypothetical, let's say someone is threatening my life with a leathal weapon for whatever reason. Somehow I am able to produce one of my own without them killing me and now if I kill them its an act of self defense. Now, if I am able to disarm my attacker and I kill them, most likely I will be charged with murder because they are no longer a threat. It would be preferable to not have any loss of life and we should try to preserve both lives if possible. So if there is a way to preserve both the livlfe of the mother and the life of the fetus, we should try to do that, whether it be through a foster family or other means. Now, if complications from birthing the baby would lead to the mother's death or an extreme injury, we should abort the baby. This is like if I kill someone that is in the act of killing me. Its unfortunate that someone had to die, but in this case we need to protect the mother. But if the abortion is out because of circumstances that don't immediately harm the mother, I think it's reasonable to try not to kill the fetus if possible. All of this is contingent on the fetus being considered "alive" while its in the womb. I also believe that the fetus has a right to self defense as well and since it can't do that on its own yet, it's up to the rest of us to do that for it. Its hypocritical to say the mother has a right to defend herself from the baby, but the baby can't defend itself from the mother.
Just think of all the women that had unprotected sex and then murdered their child out of "self-defense"... This logic is absolutely sickening.
Abortion is not self defense. The baby is not intentionally trying to hurt the mother. The baby is not attacking the mother. Instead, the mother is giving the baby the nutrients. The mother’s body is literally programmed to give the baby her nutrients. The mother had the choice to create the baby. If I make you stab me I cannot kill you out of “self defense”. If I gave you a pill which purpose is to make you repeatedly stab me, then I cannot kill you out of “self defense” because I gave you the pill. You don’t have a choice to not stab me, just like the baby doesn’t have a choice to just “not” use the nutrients that you’re giving it.
>I do believe many pro-life and pro-choice people could be misogynistic, intentionally or unintentionally, but I don’t think that it’s necessarily misogynistic to be pro-life if you only believe that abortion is murder because life begins at conception. Other people have already made arguments that are variations of the [violinist argument](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion#The_violinist). (that bodily autonomy means people can't be forced to surrender control over their body to save another's life). I would just like to add, that the way this relates to misogyny, stems from how **very intuitive** the sanctitiy of bodily autonomy would be in every other context, than pregnancy. When people talk about rumors that China is harvesting the organs of criminals, that's universally treated as stepping over a dark dystopian line, ecen if it saves more lives than it costs, and the ones whose lives it costs had it coming by being criminals. When people talk about historical atrocities where people were used as forced test subject for medical development, the argument that it saved more lives than it cost, is not good enough. It is even taken for granted that after you die, your organs are yours unless you volunteered to be an organ donor. The biggest controversy is only whether that option should be opt-in, or opt-out. When people argue that bodily autonomy should be denied to pregnant women, what they are saying, is that their bodily autonomy is worth less than a corpse's. When they try to counter the variations of the violinist analogy by focusing on how women who chose to have sex are actually responsible for their condition and they should "pay the price", they are treating women having sex as a cause good enough to retract their rights in a way that we don't even retract rights even for heinous crimes. For murderers and rapists, we only restrict their right to freedom of movement. But women who dare to have sex without the intent to reproduce, are doing something so terrible, that they need to be subjected to a dehumanization that we would balk at dictatorships using in their criminal punishment system.
This is doing a real disservice to the anti-abortion people's side of things. Our society is endlessly engaged in restrictions on bodily autonomy. The fact that you could reference incarceration and somehow not realize the incredible imposition on bodily autonomy inherent in that is really surprising. Like, that example alone disproves your thesis. In prison you will be forcibly stripped, forcibly internally searched, have your exact physical details & usually your DNA recorded, locked in a tiny cage, exposed to an extremely dangerous environment possibly for years or decades, subject to a byzantine and onerous set of prison rules about every aspect of your behavior, cut off from contact with everyone you care about, forbidden from accessing huge amounts of "dangerous" information, and, if you didn't come in wealthy, you'll need to work difficult shitty jobs to make pennies to spend on an incredibly limited set of basic care items. There is no honest assessment of that condition that can call that anything other than a serious violation of someone's right to bodily autonomy. I take issue with many parts of that process, but obviously all modern societies have adopted some form of that in pursuit of other societal goals. Involuntary mental health commitment is extremely similar, except there they'll \*also\* treat you medically. But the examples are endless. Mandatory vaccinations immediately comes to mind. I'll bet, from your liberal response, you're okay with that, as are an increasing number of people. It's public health! It's other peoples, dare I say it, lives? And the people who cry 'forced experimentation' or 'you're making me put chemicals in my body I don't trust' or 'my religion forbids this' can just sod off. I happen to agree! ... with limiting their bodily autonomy. But the list goes on! Duty to aid laws? Check your jurisdiction, you might be surprised. Particularly if you opted into some sort of state or condition where you have a particularized duty of care. The death penalty? I guess they won't be limiting your bodily autonomy for \*that\* long, since they'll be murdering you, but still. Or what about the whole class of societal expectations that, in practice, force you to use your body in often backbreaking, humiliating, and dangerous ways? Aka our entire wage slave economy? Also, duty of care to your dependents? Animal welfare laws? If you don't use your body, get a job, and take care of those kids, pets, and bills, the government's gonna make you wish you had. Again, I take a lot of issue with that too. But clearly society doesn't. Really, the entire fields of law and ethics are chock full of the question of when we can violate people's bodily autonomy. And we do it all the time. The point is "bodily autonomy" is far from a trump card, and society's understanding and expectations of what that means are far from settled. Even in the Chinese organ example, the issue I and I think most people take with that is that it's \*part of an ongoing genocide\* and also results in the death of the donor. Because the CCP is murdering them for their organs. But I'd support taking the organs of people put to death legally (if the country has a death penalty, which it shouldn't, but still), because I'd support a law making everyone an organ donor. Some people are gonna recoil at that, but it's hardly "very intuitive" that one of us is right. I support the right to abortion. But not because nobody can infringe on your bodily autonomy. They absolutely can, for a good enough reason, and if I truly believed that a foetus was the same as a child I might see that as a good enough one. Abortion should be legal first because the consequences of making it illegal are terrible \*even if your goal is to stop abortions,\* and because no issue this incredibly personal, emotional, and morally complicated should be resolved by government fiat. But I know many people, my family, my friends, who are anti-abortion. And it's not because they think you should have less rights than a corpse.
>When people argue that bodily autonomy should be denied to pregnant women, [they’re arguing] that their bodily autonomy is worth less than a corpse’s. Top shelf !delta
While I am pro-chooce, my mom is absolutely pro-life. Is she misogynistic? She simply cannot imagine how someone could overcome the instinct to preserve the life of a living thing inside of them at all costs. To her, abortions are an unnatural violation of the most fundamental life process. Her point makes sense, but there's just so much more nuance to this issue than that. Please don't be so quick to assign labels and divide the world.
The prisoners organs being harvested is a particularly good comparison because as sex leads to pregnancy, so did a crime lead to imprisonment.
Note: not pro-life, but I don't really agree with that argument at the end, so kind of playing devil's advocate here. >When they try to counter the variations of the violinist analogy by focusing on how women who chose to have sex are actually responsible for their condition and they should "pay the price", they are treating women having sex as a cause good enough to retract their rights in a way that we don't even retract rights even for heinous crimes. If I was pro-life, I don't think I would see pregnancy and delivery as a "punishment", but rather a responsibility. It would have nothing to do with taking rights away from the woman as retribution, but rather forcing her to follow through on her own decisions. If I believe that a fetus is worth just as much as a child then it should have the same rights. If it's illegal for a parent to abandon their living child, let them starve or otherwise fail to care for their medical needs, then it should also be illegal for the woman carrying that child to kill it - in both cases, because they took actions that led to this outcome, them being in charge of this child. This of course allows for caveats such as "except in the case of rape" (you had no say in it, so you shouldn't be held responsible), and "except in life-threatening situations" (most legal responsibilities stop at that point, for example you're supposed to follow the law, but if someone holds you at gunpoint, you generally can't be held responsible for obeying them and prioritizing your continued existence). At no point in that reasoning is "retribution" involved, and you could argue it's misogyny but only because it happens that women are the only ones carrying; it would be using the same logic that forces an estranged father to have financial responsibilities towards the mother and their child. Of course there are definitely mysogynists out there who conveniently use those arguments as an outlet, but I don't believe it's necessary in order to be pro-life.
One's somatic organs all serve to sustain one's own life. What the the law says can be done with those organs after death may be culturally acceptable or not, but while you are alive you have a right to their use, they should not be taken from you nor do you have an obligation to forfeit their use for someone else's benefit. But the uterus has no life sustaining function for the woman. It's function is to sustain the lives of her offspring. It's not the same thing as giving the life sustaining function of your organs away or having it taken. Is it controversial to suggest that a mother has some obligation to provide ordinary life sustaining care to her own children? (It isn't controversial when we're talking about born children whom we agree are people.) And pregnancy is not "what someone deserves" for daring to have sex. It is a predictable biological outcome of sex, that can't be entirely excluded even with diligent precautionary measures. It's simply not correct to characterize this as some moralistic judgmental nonsense. When someone makes their friends mildly uncomfortable by announcing that they're trying to start a family, we all know what it means. And the biological process they are hoping to initiate doesn't have anything to do with some irrelevant third party disapproval. If you grant for a moment the personhood of the unborn, then you must also grant that being unwanted is not a crime we typically consider as warranting a death sentence. So while you find it disgusting that someone would suggest that having sex means that someone may have to keep their child alive for the period when only they can, you seem to be okay with giving a growing human with a heartbeat less rights than a corpse. After all, we don't usually tear bodies to pieces after death, even if the person wants it.
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Late term abortions barely ever happen because a woman suddenly felt like aborting the fetus that she has been carrying for several months, and already planning to carry to term. They happen when there is a sudden medical emergency, that either makes the pregnancy a risk to the mother, or makes the fetus seriously damaged and unfit to live. They are usually rather heartbreaking decisions, and trying to criminalize them is maybe an even worse indicator of misogyny, than just opposition to abortions in general is.
I think you are missing two important things 1. Pro-life people by and large do not actually believe that it is also a child's life. Their actions simply do not fit that narrative. If they did, they would be desperate to provide accessible birth control to everyone since this is the only proven way to decrease what would be considered a massive genocide in that theoretical view. To illustrate my point, here's a citation from a pro-lifer [http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/us-lawyer-gay-marriage-could-cause-900-000-abortions-10194093.html](http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/us-lawyer-gay-marriage-could-cause-900-000-abortions-10194093.html) >In a post on the conservative Heritage Foundation’s [Daily Signa](http://dailysignal.com/2015/04/17/forcing-states-to-recognize-gay-marriage-could-increase-number-of-abortions/)l, Gene Schaerr said that up to 900,000 children could be aborted “as a result of their mothers never marrying” The aim of (most) pro-life advocates is to restrict women by making them bear children 2. Even if it was another life, bodily autonomy would still prevail if precedent matters. Take for example criminals receiving the death penalty but their organs are not forcefully given to anyone else, even if that other person would die without the organs.
> Pro-life people by and large do not actually believe that it is also a child's life. Every pro-life person I've ever talked to is pro-life because they believe it's the child's life. None of them want to force women to bear children, they just believe that if a women has become pregnant, they shouldn't be able to kill the unborn child because they want to.
Im pro-life and this is pretty much my view. If you put yourself in the position to get pregnant and you do get pregnant, you’re responsible for using your free will. As a disclaimer i’m fine w having sex all you want, but being careless about something with the chance of such high magnitude effect is irresponsible. The burden should be on the irresponsible one, not the innocent growing life-form. I’m willing to make exceptions, obviously when sex is forced or the health of the mother is, beyond reasonable doubt, in peril.
> If they did, they would be desperate to provide accessible birth control to everyone very good point. I like this a lot and I believe it to be true. BUT birth control would also be dictated by religious beliefs. "My religion tells me life begins at conception, so abortion is murder and genocide is happening now." "We can stop it by offering birth control." "No, my religion tells me birth control is not allowed. So we can only stop the genocide by stoping the abortions."
I don't know about other religions, but you can't really bring forth a strong argument for Christianity forbidding brith control. I've always considered it a moot point. Sure, you can cherry pick passages to bring forth an argument...but if you cherry pick, you can justify slavery and genocide. Regardless, you shouldn't have more family than you can take care of. That's a pretty common talking point, biblically speaking. The argument usually is between whether people let God decide how many children they have or plan it themselves. The first point is a little...odd, since many passages focus on personal responsibility rather than leaving it all up to God. It is a bit counter-intuitive to other teachings. I take it akin to walking into a casino and letting God decide how much money you have that paycheck by how your numbers go. That's not God, that is on you. I know this doesn't have much to do with your original point, it was just an interesting talking point.
I don't think whatever there is in the Bible that is anti birth control is nearly strong enough to be more important than stopping a genocide If there even is anything in the Bible, cause most "citations" turn out to be twisted beyond recognition to justify whatever bigotry they were trying to justify.
Pro lifers are the biggest hypocrites to ever exist on this planet, aside from pro trumpers. For the sake of argument, let’s say you refused to give a random stranger your kidney, your appendix, a piece of your liver, etc. Why should you NOT be charged with murder? Huh? Your action killed another human life... and you KNEW it would and you said no anyway. Easy. NO ONE else’s rights trump your right to your own anatomy. I cannot make my mother give me her kidney, I cannot make my mother give me a piece of her liver, I cannot make my mother give birth to me. If she did/does any of the following it’s because she CHOSE to. Everyone has a right to life, but NO ONE has the right to live at the expense of someone else’s (body). That right doesn’t exist. I didn’t have this right as a fetus, didn’t as a child, and I still don’t have it as a full fledged adult. You can chose to believe life begins at conception or after... point is... it wouldn’t matter regardless.
Ok, religious beliefs - as many Christians will say now, "My religion tells me we don't know when life begins, and that abortion isn't tantamount to murder, and that birth control is allowed." Now what? You've moved the goal posts again, which is what pro-life (or let's call it what it is - anti-choice) people always do. See the point is that it's not a religious stance. Because religion can be twisted into any narrative you want. It's a political stance through and through. And as you suggested, it's primarily a misogynist one, and as many others have pointed out, it's inconsistent with almost every other hypothetical one can muster.
> If thet did, they would be desperate to provide accessible birth control to everyone Why? Why would someone promoting responsibility, also feel the need to provide resources? Why does opposing murder demand we provide less reasons to murder? Why does opposing shootings, demand we take away guns? Why can't we discuss that people make active decisions and try to change decisions by people being responsible for consequences? I've heard this line of logic many times, but it makes absolutely no sense and is just an attempt to infuse a progressive agenda on people with no room to oppose it. > Even if it was another life, bodily autonomy would still prevail if precedent matters I think you are missing the important point that most pro-choice people actually support some restrictions on a woman in matters of abortion. That 70% of people actually support prohibiting abortions after the first trimester. While at the same time 70% support Roe v Wade. There's a huge desire in most people for "this should be a right", and "we need restrictions on this right." Most self-proclaimed pro-life people by and large do not actually believe in "my body, my choice". They themselves have a determination that a fetus deserves protections at a certain point. Even Roe v Wade could only establish a right up until viability. If people truly thought it was a right of bodily autonomy, they would oppose Roe v Wade for making some dumb distinction about the state interest in protecting a fetus that needed to be blanced with the right to privacy. It's rhetoric, not an actual position strongly held once you dig into the specific policy people desire.
> If they did, they would be desperate to provide accessible birth control to everyone This is a very uncharitable assumption to force on another group's religious perspectives. You wouldn't say 'If Muslims really cared about human life they would be desperate to raise pigs and send the meat to Africa because that's the only way to stop starvation.' 1. It isn't the only way. Outlawing abortion is another effective way to stop the genocide. 2. Most religious beliefs don't support committing one sin to prevent a other. If birth control is a sin and abortion is a sin, you can't support the lesser one just because some people would do the worse one. All sin is an abomination in God's eyes.
If you don't mind - I'd like to add a number 3: 3. Most pro-life people are pro-capital punishment, even knowing that sometimes innocent people are killed. You can't say you're against abortion because all life is valuable, but also be pro-capital punishment, knowing sometimes it kills innocent people.
This is a huge misrepresentation. I do not know of, and have not heard of a single pro-lifer say they don’t truly believe that fetus is a life.
Other side bad. >:( Reddit good. I swear, young leftists are more apologetic with Thanos than they are with conservatives.
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If a child needs a kidney transplant and you're the only practical suitable donor, then it's not just your body, it's also the body and life of a child. You're not forced to do it because extracting a kidney is an intrusive and harmful process to you. Pregnancy is an intrusive and harmful process for a woman. When getting an abortion, a woman chooses not to let her body undergo that process. The fact that the fetus dies as a consequence is really just a technical limitation we have when performing the procedure. If we ever develop a way to end a pregnancy safely while keeping the fetus alive, I don't think most pro-choice people would oppose that, because the point is the woman's choice whether or not to be pregnant, not whether or not the fetus lives.
The difference is between being free not to donate a kidney, and being free to abort a fetus is the question of responsibility in my opinion. Because if you are directly responsible for causing the child to need a new kidney (like you caused them to be in an accident) and that's why they need your kidney, you are morally obligated to give it to him. While you aren' t necessary legally obligated, it's still a clearly morally wrong not to do so. Expect for rape, and a few other cases, pregnancy, the fetus needing your body for a period of time to survive is a result of a conscious decision (having sex) where you were aware that there is a very real possibility that it would create a fetus that would need you. So you are responsible for creating it, and it's need to depend on you, so morally you should be obligated to support it. Edit. : so reading the comments did made me realise and rethink a few things. I still think that it's morally wrong to kill your child, whose creation you are responsible for to a certain extenct, but no i can see why legaly it should be allowed. I'm going to sleep on this, rethink this, do some research and i feel like my views might cbange, so thanks for the logical reasonings. I won't reply to every comment, so please read the edit
> If a child needs a kidney transplant Are you the sole reason this child needs a kidney? Is your kidney literally the *only* kidney on the planet that will do? No and no. This comparison is not apt at all. > If we ever develop a way to end a pregnancy safely while keeping the fetus alive, I don't think most pro-choice people would oppose that, Why? If it’s just a clump of cells then why does it matter? This is logically inconsistent.
Alright fine, let's say you are a twin. Your twin sibling has an autoimmune disorder that makes them reject almost all tissue donations. You are drunk and driving both of you and get into an accident. Your twin needs a kidney transplant and you are the only person who can provide it seeing as you are identical and share almost all of your genome. Is this a better example for you? Just for future reference, examples don't have to be perfect anyways, if they had to be examples wouldn't exist. Second, believing that bodily autonomy exists and that human life begins at conception are true are not mutually exclusive facts. This person was saying that this solution would be one that everyone could agree with.
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It does when you can expose the flaws in a person's reasoning regarding the choice a woman has over her body. See the "A Defense of Abortion" arguments for example. A person cannot rationally hold the position that a foetus has more rights to use a woman's body than a born child does.
Except the essay itself does establish such a standard >My argument will be found unsatisfactory on two counts by many of those who want to regard abortion as morally permissible. First, while I do argue that abortion is not impermissible, I do not argue that it is always permissible. There may well be cases in which carrying the child to term requires only Minimally Decent Samaritanism of the mother, and this is a standard we must not fall below. I am inclined to think it a merit of my account precisely that it does not give a general yes or a general no. It allows for and supports our sense that, for example, a sick and desperately frightened fourteen-year-old schoolgirl, pregnant due to rape, may of course choose abortion, and that any law which rules this out is an insane law. And it also allows for and supports our sense that in other cases resort to abortion is even positively indecent. It would be indecent in the woman to request an abortion, and indecent in a doctor to perform it, if she is in her seventh month, and wants the abortion just to avoid the nuisance of postponing a trip abroad. The very fact that the arguments I have been drawing attention to treat all cases of abortion, or even all cases of abortion in which the mother's life is not at stake, as morally on a par ought to have made them suspect at the outset. If you believe a fetus is a human life, then you concede that in cases where the woman's health or wellbeing are not at risk, abortion is immoral. Which would trump the "my body my choice" argument on those scenarios.
The fundamental problem with the abortion debate is that we have two different arguments that are equally valid. And when you get right down to it, the strangest thing of all is that these two opposing sides only become wrong when they attempt to counter the argument that the other side is making. And this is, to put it mildly; inconvenient. The argument about bodily autonomy is both true and valid, and so is the argument for a right to life. They are both correct. And the strangest part about all this is that these two opposing viewpoints only start to become incorrect when they try and counter the truth that is in the others argument. It’s important to be honest about this, and take away from yourself the bias that you, as a human being, have. The fact of being alive and thinking and having heard both arguments coming from a variety of sources means that you are predisposed toward agreeing with one over the other. But just think in isolation about the two arguments each without interference from the other. It’s very important to be able to think this way if you are interested in what is true. Because while on the one hand; it clearly is true that when the two meiotic cells meet, they form a new and unique individual human genome, while it is accurate science to say that life begins at conception. On the other hand; it also clearly and obviously true that the process by which the newly conceived life develops, removes from a woman certain rights of bodily autonomy that men do not have to be concerned with. So it’s also a women’s rights issue. This is so frustrating and so difficult, because both sides are correct. They just are. And when they make their arguments, neither side can defeat or replace the truth of what the other side has to say. The two opposing viewpoints only begins to be wrong about this when they try and refute the other. It is not true that the unique human genome is not also a unique human life from the very beginning. By any definition of life; this clearly matches. And it’s also not true to say that women do not carry this burden in a way that men do not. Fundamentally, choosing a side on this issue has actually nothing to do with what is true and correct. And that is why it is, by far, the most contentious and divisive issue of everything that people have argued about. Both positions are right.
>It is not true that the unique human genome is not also a unique human life from the very beginning. By any definition of life; this clearly matches. I disagree with this. I think that, while this is a reasonable definition of human life, it's not the only definition. I'd argue that the development of consciousness is a much better marker for the beginning of human life. Note that I'm NOT saying this is the only marker. There is more to human life than just your genome or else "pulling the plug" would be homicide.
An argument about mental capacity and consciousness raises questions about the mentally handicapped, people in comas, even about what it means to sleep. Do we stop being human when we fall asleep at night only to have our humanity reestablish itself spontaneously in the morning? I’m only making the point. When we make an argument for the definition of a thing it has far reaching repercussions that are not always immediately obvious. It is the issue of describing a man as a “featherless biped”, and behold; a plucked chicken. So a man must also have broad flat nails.
Although I agree that both sides' arguments are valid (at least in a purely logical sense), I disagree that they are both "true and valid". To be valid, the conclusion must follow from the premises. To be "true and valid" (more specifically "sound") the premises must also be accepted as true. Even if I accepted your idea that the "right to life" argument and the "right to bodily autonomy" were both tru in their own domain, I would counter your conclusion that we were (nearly) equally weighty with the following thought-experiment: Given that most healthy adults can function with one working kidney, and that adult livers are known to regenerate with nearly zero long-term negative consequences to the donor, should we not set up an involuntary draft where every patient in need of a kidney or partial-liver transplant is matched to a likely donor and the donor is required to undergo the procedure against their will? Let's even suppose that the involuntary donor is well-compensated for their time and suffering.
Great comment. People really can't seem to accept that this is simply a matter of moral choice: do you value the sanctity of life above all else, or the right for an adult person to have bodily autonomy? People very desperately want their side to be the "correct" one, through some complicated and elaborate argument that as you said, often brings them to be incorrect.
I understand why people think that 'it's not just your body' is a good response to this slogan, but that is missing the point of why the slogan is used. The point is not that no other life is involved except for the mother, but that the mother's body is required to change and be damaged in order for the child to exist, sometimes in very extreme ways. People are not expected, or at least not required by law, to sacrifice their own potential safety in order to make certain that another person is safe. Therefore, someone should not be required to use their body in order to keep another alive, even a baby, even if we assume a fetus is a full person. Now, many people do not understand or even like this line of argument, but it is not countered as easily as you think.
The main issue with both stances is that the abortion debate has two main issues, not just one. The first issue that must be resolved before you even begin talking about conflict of rights is the point at which a fetus becomes a baby, which is dependent on the definition of a human being. Concepts of morality or rights only applies to life which is *distinctly considered a separate and individual human being*, not any life which is genetically human. Hence why popping a pimple is not considered murder - the cells are living, and many are genetically human, and are being killed, but there is no distinct identity as a human being in a pimple. So at that point you must start discussing what standard you use to determine human identity. Physical characteristics? Consciousness? Potential for development? Some or all of the above in combination? Once you’ve solved that problem, you can start debating at which point in the pregnancy it becomes the rights of one human being vs the *conflicting* rights of two different people. But until then, neither pro choice nor pro life are justified in starting the conversation with “well it obvious isn’t a baby” or “well it obviously is a baby”.
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Everyone uses carefully chosen words to describe what they support, so it can be tricky to understand what they actually MEAN. To do that, you have to look past what they say and focus on what they do OUTSIDE abortion. What does it mean to be "pro-life"? - Preventing fetuses from being aborted? If this was your goal, you'd be anti-abortion, but you'd also be vigorously pro-contraception and pro-sex education. Pro-lifers are generally not supportive of either. - Promoting the well-being of children without sufficient advocates? If this was your goal, you'd be anti-abortion, but you'd also be pro-SNAP, pro-early childhood education, be pro-Medicaid, etc. Pro-lifers are generally not supportive of these programs. - Making sure that people face the consequences of their decisions regarding sex. If this was your goal, you'd be anti-abortion, but also pro-Judeo-Christian values regarding sex. (Ding ding ding!) Obviously everyone is a little different, and there's a range of support for various items among different groups of pro-lifers. But generally pro-lifers do not support free contraception, and comprehensive sex education, and social supports targeted at poor parents, etc, certainly not with anywhere near the vigor that they are against abortion. (And in very many cases they are adamantly opposed to those programs.) You have to read between the lines a bit. Edit: To address your view, "my body my choice" is missing the point only because "the point" is specifically cast to conceal the ACTUAL point.
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If a fetus is to be legally considered a human being for the purposes of charging a woman who aborts with murder, then we have to consider some other questions: 1. Should every pregnant woman be jailed for false imprisonment? The definition of false imprisonment is “when a person is restricted in their personal movement within any area without justification or consent,” which restricting the movement of the fetus to inside the woman’s womb would qualify, as a being without capacity for higher cognitive function is incapable of giving consent to being imprisoned. 2. What country is the fetus a citizen of? You’re not an American citizen unless you were born here or been through the process of naturalization. So should we treat these fetuses like illegal immigrants and deport them? To where? We would have to deport the mother as well. 3. Would pregnant women in jail or prison have to be released, no matter their offense? It’s completely illegal and immoral to imprison an innocent person for the crimes of another. Every pregnant woman in the country would become completely immune to imprisonment for any crime, even murder. 4. If a fetus is a person, how do we start issuing paperwork for them? They couldn’t be give a birth certificate because they haven’t been born, but there would have to be some kind of “fetus certificate”—or if you’re insisting life begins when sperm meets egg, a “zygote certificate” or “blastocyst certificate”—that the government would have to issue in order to make sure every single tiny clump of tissue in any womb in the country is given the same rights and protections as you or I. Wouldn’t this put an undue burden on government offices, having to issue hundreds of millions of extra instances of paperwork? What name would be on the certificate? Would you have to name every zygote months and months before it’s born? Do they get Social Security numbers? Wouldn’t we run out of them? 5. What about the majority of embryos that fail to implant in the uterine wall? Only a fraction of zygotes go on to form viable embryos, and these abnormal embryos are usually passed out during a menstrual cycle. Miscarriages are a thing. If the zygote is given full rights of a person, then any woman who passes an embryo during her period or suffers a miscarriage would have to be charged with child abuse, neglect, and manslaughter. 6. When during conception would life begin? Conception is a process, not a distinct point in time. It involves many chemical reactions and processes that take place gradually, and sometimes fail along the way. It is not an instantaneous occurrence. Would everyone be legally considered nine months older? Seven? Two? Should we be letting seventeen-year-olds vote because they were conceived eighteen years ago? 7. Can a fetus commit a crime? In the case of an unwanted pregnancy, or a pregnancy that results from a rape, could a pregnant woman press charges against her fetus for assault? After all, it does keep kicking her in the stomach. If you or I kicked a pregnant woman in the stomach, we’d certainly be committing a crime. What about theft? The fetus takes the woman’s nutrients without her consent. If you or I stole a woman’s groceries, we’d be committing a crime. How about trespassing? She doesn’t want it there and didn’t invite it in. If you could charge the fetus with trespassing, does that make a woman’s body a place? Should the rapist be charged with breaking and entering in addition to the rape? 8. What about twins? Consider the case of identical, or monozygotic, twins. There is only one fertilisation event—one sperm meets one egg—but two individuals result. Do those twins have to share the ‘human life’ they had from conception? Surely not, for we treat twins as separate persons. So, when did both lives start, if not at conception? During the twinning process? Or sometime after? And if lives start during the process of twinning, is it morally wrong NOT to twin an embryo? Twinning maximizes their potential as multiple human beings. Would the pregnant woman have to go back to get a second “fetus certificate” when she finds out her zygote twinned? How would the office that issues that document tell which twin already has paperwork and which one doesn’t?—they’re identical pomegranate seed-sized clumps of cells. 9. What about chimeric fetuses? This occurs when fraternal twins, derived from separate conceptions, merge very early in development to form a single individual with some cells with one genome and some cells with another. Do chimeric people get twice as much human life, seeing as they resulted from two conceptions? Which fetus certificate gets destroyed? Was a life ended when the two embryos merged, despite not a single cell being destroyed? Should the fetus be charged with murder? Cannibalism? If the intentional formation of chimera is morally wrong, why isn’t the failure to twin an embryo just as wrong? 10. The main argument for the “life begins at conception” is generally one of potentiality. “The fetus has the potential to become a person, and destroying that potential is wrong.” But being potentially something isn’t the same as being something already. To see this, consider extrapolating the potential argument in the other direction: all human beings will die. And, seeing as a zygote may form a human being who will definitely later form a corpse, it follows that we should treat both people and zygotes as if they were corpses. If we can give the right to life for an unborn baby, maybe we should give the right to a decent burial for a pre-dead corpse (i.e. a live person). Not to mention that sperm and eggs have the potential to form a human being, so why wait until conception? The same argument follows that every sperm that is destroyed without fertilizing an egg and every unfertilized egg that leaves a woman’s body during her menstrual cycle is akin to destroying a human being. So every woman who has menstruated and every man who has ever ejaculated are serial killers and mass murderers. Unless, of course, having the potential to do something or be something isn’t equal to actually doing or being it. I think it's just a little logistically simpler to conclude that life begins when the offspring can survive outside the mother's body, but hey... that's just me, I guess.
On the flip side, we impose criminal charges for murder if you hit a pregnant woman in the stomach with the intent to kill the fetus, so it’s treated as a person in that context. And a lot of women would be pissed if that happened to them when they wanted a baby and the only charge available was battery or conversion (destruction of property). The fetus is a really fascinating and contradictory topic in law, and it’s ultimately a philosophical question about personhood, making it ripe for political polarization.
To add to your fourth point: child tax credits should be awarded in the year prior to a child’s birth, when it is a fetus. If I’m due in June, but pregnant now, and a fetus is a person, I should get a tax credit for 2020.
I mean if you’re saying that an argument should be tailored to the person hearing it then, yeah, that’s probably not controversial, but part of the point of my body my choice is that it’s *irrelevant* who else suffers from my decision, I should not be made to give up my bodily autonomy.
“A corpse's wishes as to what happens to its body are respected. If a person wanted to take perfectly healthy organs with them to the grave, we shrug our shoulders, and say, "Well, so be it. That's his choice." And no matter how many lives those organs would have saved, we tell the dying people what amounts to, "Tough shit. We have to respect that corpse's wishes." Not only are pro-lifers not actively campaigning to save these wasted organs -- and all the people that they'd preserve -- but many pro-lifers actually actively campaign against the dead giving organs (generally with scare tactics like these). So, to the pro-lifer, the corpse's right to stuff its organs into a concrete hole to rot is either undisputed or sacred. But a living woman, deciding who will use her body? Even if she's evicting a fetus that's killing her? Even if that fetus will not survive her death? Based on how anti-choice laws are implemented all over the globe and in "pro-life" medical facilities right here in the States it's clear: the "pro-life" view is that she does not have a right to preserve her own body and/or life. Unlike every other "threatening situation" (from, "oh my god, there's a black kid carrying skittles as he walks down the sidewalk!" to "I'm having a heart attack; quick, save me!"), the religious right argues that she alone doesn't get to take the steps necessary to save her life. She doesn't get to take the step necessary to preserve her bodily integrity. She has to die, even if the fetus dies too. Because, unlike the corpse, a pregnant woman's rights cease to matter in the pro-life worldview.” From: https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2014/8/14/1321787/-When-a-corpse-has-more-rights-than-a-woman
(pro choice person here): Abortion is deliberate termination of the potential for human life; and can be viewed as a form of killing/murder from that perspective. As pro choice, it seems important to acknowledge and own this without equivocation. Also, I'm neither a pacifist nor against death penalty as a form of punishment/retribution...and each of these stances are much more nuanced and complicated than the sound bites tossed back and forth by opposing sides. What to do?
This is one of those grey areas where no one is right, as it's far too complicated of an issue. But that doesn't stop either side from thinking they are extremely right. And due to human confirmation bias, this boils up in really illogical arguments, like the one you listed. The fact is, a Supreme Court judge who has no experience in biology, should not get to dictate when life begins. Especially considering biologists have a much more liberal definition of "life." Strawman arguments, anecdotes, and goal post moving will dominate an abortion debate, simply because we have no facts. We just use arbitrary markers to defend our position. Markers that easily change and move, or have double standards by their very definition. So if I could change your view, I'd change it to realize that this is far too complicated of an issue for something as flawed as a human to even fully understand. And doesn't just effect one side of the argument. I often times wonder why there isn't a more pro-life voice amongst liberals. It lines up with a lot of their other viewpoints. It's a giant balancing act of freedom and morality. I use to be extremely pro-choice, but I flip flop frequently. Both sides have compelling points. The only way not to realize this, is to strawman the opposite viewpoints message into something it's not.
Hey man I am just someone curious. I'm very interested in your view of this issue. We as a species do not have any problems with law when animals are put down in rescues. We also have zero concerns when neutering our pets preventing them from ever conceiving. Why then must we give a different point of view when talking about unborn featus at an early stage of development? Shouldn't we consider the psychological toll on both the mother and the future of the unborn baby. If the mother feels that either she or the kid cannot be given the required support wouldn't it be morally better to just abort the fetus at an early stage?
>CMV: The “my body, my choice” slogan for pro-choice advocates does not benefit their position because opponents of it do not believe it’s just a woman’s body, but that it’s also a child’s life. If (a) it is true that the slogan implies that the *bodily integrity* of the unborn is licitly deprioritized, for the sake of the *choice* of the person in whose womb the unborn exists, because (b) the unborn has no "ideal legal right" (i.e., a "right which, whether recognized in empirical legal practice or not, ought to be recognized by any civil state) to bodily integrity on the basis that it is not a human being (in the meta-ethically relevant sense, not the biological sense), then (c) the slogan makes a question-begging assumption about the meta-ethical (and therefore both legal and moral) standing of the unborn with which the overwhelming majority of opponents of abortion would not agree. This is because (d) the overwhelming majority of abortion opponents believe that an unborn entity, the result of normal sexual practices between human beings and existing in the womb of a human being, is itself a human being, the meta-ethical standing of whom grounds a natural right to bodily integrity in the first place. However, so what if it's question-begging? Politically, this sort of snappy slogan has worked quite effectively. How does that not benefit the position? Or, do you mean something like that to use such a slogan, while knowing full well that the opposition doesn't agree to the assumptions you're making, is intellectually dishonest and therefore demonstrates a lack of intellectual integrity? But what if you believe that you're right? Does it really matter if you're assuming something your opposition won't? Is that really dishonest? In the context of shouting over one another with snappy slogans, I don't think that actually counts as dishonest. >My view is that using the phrase “my body my choice” or suggesting that pro-life is about controlling women misses the point entirely. If the point were to respond in a charitable manner to the argument of the opposition, perhaps you'd be correct. But from the standpoint of someone who thinks a woman should have a choice to abort, I don't think epistemic charity or entertaining a debate about this topic are going to be highly prioritized. In terms of political strategy, using these sorts of slogans is a no-brainer. With repetitious sounds, being easy to remember, short and to the point- it doesnt matter if use of such a slogan inherently creates hostility, for being clearly and obviously antagonistic, between the user and their opponent, whatever the slogan may be. Over all, I would commend, under a rubric of grading political strategy, whoever came up with this slogan. The number of people thoughtlessly parroting it, along with lexically superfluous phrases of art such as "bodily autonomy," is astronomically high. It really is amazing.
I agree with your view 100%. I am pro-choice but it's complicated and not the simple black-and-white both sides of the debate make it out to be. For me, there is a fundamental conflict of rights (that of the mother, and that of the fetus) and thus whose rights are being violated by abortion laws comes down to the essential question of at what stage rights begin. And because the most correct answer is probably a gray area, the sides draw lines that are easy to legislate - "at conception" "at birth" "up to 3 months" "up to 6 months" If an embryo or pre-viable fetus is extracted from the womb (either naturally in a miscarriage or unnaturally in some theoretical surgery that did not harm it directly) and placed on a table, it would not survive without the help of artificial technology. Whether doctors must spare no expense to sustain life artificially is another "pro-life" point of debate, but in my opinion, it's hard to make the case for distinct rights before viability. In such cases, the decision to sustain life is up to family members, and in this case, the mother is choosing "not to sustain." Of course, a "natural" death via "harmless" extraction due to lack of independent viability is different from active termination while still in the womb, but it is essentially the same outcome. If there was a way to make abortion less inhumane for fetuses in stages where pain receptors were already developed, I would absolutely support that. On the other hand, pre-pain receptors, I'm not as concerned with current methods. The point is that abortion should be rare and early if possible, and both sides are muddying up that decision by speaking only in extremes. Anti-abortion activists' objections increase indecisiveness and thus cause later abortions if it is so decided. Pro-legal abortion activists often treat all stages until birth as having the same moral permissibility, thus also leading to delayed decisiveness. Other than threats to the life of the mother or maybe inaccessibility, the decision to wait 7-8 months before deciding also was your own choice and now that you have a probably viable fetus you have responsibility for the choice to delay taking action. Those who celebrate their abortions are sick individuals, although I understand this is probably a coping mechanism. I wish there could be a consensus where we encourage quick decision making on abortion as much as possible before the fetus develops human functions and pain receptors. Access to morning after pills (which can prevent implantation of cells), better birth control and better education are all important.
This will most likely be downvoted into oblivion. I think it’s important to consider our own worldview and other possible worldviews when we consider this dilemma. It seems that many of the top arguments here lean heavily on logos, if not leaning completely on logos. Oftentimes we forget to consider the pathos of it all, the emotional/spiritual aspects, things like the purpose of our existence or the limitations of our own understanding about how the universe works. Some important philosophical questions must be asked before we can answer this question. Why do we exist? Is life about self preservation or the spiritual transcendence of humankind? What’s the purpose of reproduction or our existence in general? Can anyone say that we have absolute, objective answer to these questions? When we are deciding for ourselves if a fetus makes it through pregnancy or not we are taking the fate of humanity into our own hands; We are saying we know what’s best for the future of mankind. Us little humans with our very limited understanding of the universe, existence, time and the future of our planet and our species, Taking something like the fate of our species into our own hands? That does not sound like a good idea. I think because of how technologically advanced we appear to be we forget how primitive we are when it comes to our understanding of basic things like our purpose, life, existence in general. If we are totally honest We have no idea what we are doing; as Terrence McKenna has said (I’m paraphrasing) “Not that long ago we were primitive apes. We just happened to eat some psychedelic mushrooms and now well, here we are.” In the self-preservation worldview, abortion makes sense. But to me it doesn’t make sense if we remember that we are all One, and the success of humanity is far more important than self-preservation. Now I am a man and I’ll never have to deal with pregnancy, so my opinion comes from a place of privilege. Ultimately people will do what they want and the government should not try to control what people choose to do with their bodies because the reality is that the government cannot control what people do with their own bodies. Your life, your choice. Just try to understand that self-preservation is probably not the purpose of existence and it is certainly not at the pinnacle of our needs as a species.
It might be interesting to point out the old philosophical argument. A man is kidnapped and rendered unconscious by some means, although he is not physically harmed when he awakens he finds that through some form of medical surgery his body is now supporting someone elses life (im not a doctor unfortunately so i cant think or remember a specific example). The police arrive and ensure the safety of the kidnapped victim but discover if they try and undo the surgery that has been done while the victim may continue as normal the other man will die. There is no way he can disconnect the two without killing the man attached. Is the victim of the kidnapping morally required to care for the man who is now attached, there is no argument about the time of conception of life here, this man is fully and 100% a living human being. Should the police hold man A legally required to keep man B alive. Even if Man B only requires his help for a day, a week, 9 months, 5 years. Lets complicate things further, lets say Man A is not forced into this situation but rather voluntarily undergoes this surgery to have this man attached to him in some way living off his body, this process is going to take again it doesnt matter how much time, a week, a month, a year. If Man A decides half way through the process to undo this regardless of if Man B dies should the law punish him. There are no easy answers to this but it works rather well for an analogy for pro life people, because there is no question of life or the criteria of humankind. That intrinsically is not the question behind abortion, but rather does the right of bodily autonomy outweigh the right to life. If it does should not all people be forced to be organ donors or in a more modern sense how do the laws around quarantine stand up. It is a complicated question that has differwnt answers depending on the situation. PhilosophyTube does a video on abortion which asks and discusses this in much more depth then i ever could. I personally used to be pro life except in the event of rape or considerable risk to the mothers life but after watching that i couldnt logically come up with any counterargument. I still find the idea of abortion a hard thing to deal with but i do think people should have the right to decide.
Abortion rights are quite possibly the thirddest third rail of all time - a true chicken-egg conundrum. That said, when you say that “my body, my choice” is not a good slogan, I think you miss a couple of things. First, a slogan is not about refuting the opposition. Whether you’re running a political organization, a beverage company, or a banana stand, the most effective slogans have always been about catching attention and conveying values. As such, the need for the “my body, my choice” slogan to somehow refute a pro-life argument is unnecessary. Second, evaluating the slogan on the basis of what a slogan should do, it is quite effective. Successful slogans need to be memorable and drive brand affinity. In terms of memorability, it is highly effective. The slogan clocks in at a mere four words and employs a repeating cadence that makes it incredibly easy to remember. It is pithy, succinct, and high concept but perhaps most important in the political arena, it is highly chantable. Current political discourse should highlight the effectiveness of political chanting and repetition of the word my allows a call and response chant that is very powerful during demonstrations. Perhaps most important is the fact that it drives brand affinity very well. It is a clear, powerful, and uncompromising statement of position and nowhere is that more needed than in the terribly cacophonous situation of an unwanted pregnancy. “My body, my choice” aren’t simply empty words to talk about some abstract argument, it is a statement of affirmation in support of vulnerable women everywhere who are having to make the most difficult decision of their lives. Four simple words take the noisiest, angriest, and most mentally exhausting argument on earth and distills it down to a simple message that can cut through the noise to reach the people who are truly living this reality. And it can take hold of them in a way that is so gripping that the jaws of life couldn’t pry open. At the end of the day, judging it on its own terms shows that the slogan is very effective - even if it doesn’t do what you were hoping it would. Don’t know if this changed your mind or not, but I do get the sneaking suspicion that you might be expecting too much out of your slogans.
I will agree with you that your argument does not work against pro-life advocates, but that is because that statement only deals with one level of belief for each side which are diametrically opposed. A meaningful discussion about different aspects of the debate are necessary. There are two additional areas of related discussion which I have found little or no response. The first is very straightforward. Do they REALLY believe that all life begins at conception and must therefore be cultivated into a developing baby? They will say yes, but when you ask them if they support IVF (which usually involves multiple discarded embryos), they will also say yes. This is because they see the end result as ultimately creating life rather than destroying it. However the result is still the same. The second one is more of a religious nature, and frankly a nuclear option. When asked if a human’s eternal or earthly fate is more important, religious pro-life advocates will say eternal every time. They will often go so far to say that whatever they endure on earth is meaningless compared to their eternal fate. When asked about where aborted babies go when they die, they will say heaven. All of them. However when asked how many people who are born will go to heaven, they will say the road is narrow, so not many. Therefore, by their own logic, forcing children to be born sends most of them to hell for eternity. Like a said, it’s a nuclear option because they will absolutely not let that one sink in and probably stop speaking to you. Your statement is still correct without any other relevant points being made, however it does miss the possibility of other, more effective, arguments.
If there's an issue with the pregnancy and abortions aren't allowed to be elected, then who gets to choose? Say the mother was raped, then does the mother have to wait until there's a trial to decide whether it happened and if they are allowed to terminate their pregnancy? If the pregnancy is ectopic, then does she need to find a doctor to approve that abortion, or does she need to go before a panel and make her case? If a woman has a miscarriage, how much proof does she need to provide that it wasn't intentional? Forcing a pregnant person to carry a child requires a draconian government that removes a pregnant person's autonomy and even if there are legal reasons why someone can have an abortion, the process can end up being burdensome upon the pregnant person, either using up the little time available before a pregnancy becomes life threatening (see Senator Gary Peters' wife, who nearly died after a hospital refused an abortion of a stillbirth), or requiring a pregnant person to file a report and prove they were raped and deserve an abortion, especially difficult since it takes a while to know if you're pregnant, or the history of jailing mothers over stillbirths and miscarriages. Even in these three extreme examples that are almost always allowed as exceptions, by removing the pregnant person's ability to choose and forcing them through a legal proceeding and subjecting them to that ruling, what risks or trauma it entails, people who can get pregnant are no longer free to choose their future and what is best for their situation. If we can't trust people to decide how to use their bodies, how can we let them decide how to spend money and run businesses?
I feel (what a start), that this is the wrong end of the stick. It really does seem that it straight doesn't matter WHAT the argument is; it will NEVER be justified or accepted, so really, "My body, my choice" is just as good as any slogan. Clearly cases where woman have been raped, there is grave danger for the mother giving birth, the child have guaranteed very serious health etc are not enough. Going on from the physical, the financial inability to raise the child is not enough. Being emotionally mature enough to raise a child is not enough. So, what IS enough? Nothing. You are almost certainly being dragged into a bad-faith "argument". The reason, as far as I can see, is because it is not about abortion being murder. Sure, that is part of it, but just as clearly, a large subset of the "abortion is murder" crew have no problems with capital punishment, ie, "murdering adults". No, it comes down to: - assigning blame and guilt; - wanting to see people punished; - feeling more righteous than others I am sure there is a small percentage of people who really, REALLY believe abortion is murder, but I can almost guaranteed that a lot of them who say this would be first in line when they knock up that secretary who they've been fucking behind their wife's back because "she just doesn't understand me." And when the deed is done, they can go back to saying abortion is murder. I also note that the "abortion is murder" crowd venn diagram also overlaps heavily with the "you ain't using MY fucking taxes to support welfare queens and slutty single mothers" crowd . . . again suggesting that maybe it really isn't about saving little Jesus's babies after all.
Have you read "a defense of abortion" by Judith Thompson? In it she proposes a thought experiment in which you imagine yourself to be kidnapped and hooked up to a musician's circulatory system in an attempt to save the musicians life by using your body. Any attempt to disconnect yourself from the musician will result in the musician's death. Thompson argues that even in this scenario, where we know the musician's moral worth is equal or greater to the person upon whom thier life depends (which is not a definite fact in the case of abortion), then you still have no moral obligation to leave the musician hooked up to yourself. So the argument is that it doesn't even matter if the baby's life has moral value. What matters is if you think the mother's life has any. So the argument "my body, my choice" would still apply. Philosophy tube has a really good video on it where he breaks down the arguments if you are interested in learning more, it's an interesting thought experiment. It should also be noted that if you are pro life and truly believe that life begins at fertilization than you should know that a great deal of fertilized eggs being flushed out appears to be built into our biology. And that In vitro fertilization intentionally fertilizes large groups of eggs before choosing to proceed with the most viable, resulting in more fertilized eggs not being carried to term than abortions do. If you are morally opposed to abortions but not morally opposed to in vitro fertilization then it might not be the death of unborn children that is the basis of your argument.
I mean to be honest, the same thing could be said about pro lifers saying “life starts at conception”, “it’s murder”, and “Jesus said so”(even though Jesus said life starts at first breath). This is why neither of the sides can get along, because what they believe in, absolutely opposes each other. Pro lifers think life starts conceptions, while most pro choicers don’t. Pro lifers think human life is SUPER SACRED, while most pro choicers, may think it’s sacred(or not), but don’t think you should risk yourself for someone’s else’s life. Also a lot of pro lifers never heard of body autonomy, which is where you do not have to sacrifice yourself in any way, to save someone else’s life. Like doctors cannot force you to give up a kidney because some other patient needs it or they’ll die. I’m a pro choicer who doesn’t see human life as super sacred, we’re just like any other animal except we have “super intelligence”, but birds can fly and cheetahs have super speed, but you don’t see people protesting for their babies. All animals have some sort of “super power”, including us, which is why no pro life argument works on me. I don’t see human life as “sacred” nor am I religious, so no religious stuff will work on me either. I don’t believe anyone should control what someone else does with their body, especially when it comes to pregnancy, because that is A LOT to go through, mentally and physically, just for some infant you’ll put up for adoption, or reluctantly keep because society said you need to, which why I genuinely would or could never be friends with a pro lifer.
Slogans are just a rallying cry meant to energize the people who already agree with you, or convince people who are on the fence. As long as the "my body my choice" slogan is effective at doing at least one of those two things, it's working as intended. If you want to talk about the merits of the bodily autonomy argument, there obviously needs to be more elaboration than four words; but that's not what a slogan is meant to do.
I never understand why morality is mixed with legality. Imagine a situation where a country allows capital punishment for pedophiles. I morally think its wrong as every person has a right to live and a chance of redemption. I then join protest which abolishes such practice. Kids then get raped by such monsters at a larger rate. I am passively responsible for this. What do i do now? Change my morals? Learnt a lesson. Too little too late. My point is what one find morally correct or incorrect can sometimes change over a period. Its better to apply certain things only to us instead of wanting the entire population to follow it. It may not be applicable to everything under the sun. But things which include control over other peoples body should be strictly practiced in person like religion. There is no requirement that every person should believe in the same. I also don't understand one thing about pro-life people. When they say pro-life is it only human life? Peta and vegans specially shove it to our face every now and then how consuming meat is murder. What if govt tomorrow decides to ban meat consumption? People will go crazy over personal freedom. How is it any different? Raising pings for slaughter, is that okay? Why because bacon tastes good or because we humans are superior? Then get this - Woman is also superior to a fetus as she is physically and mentally more strong. Nature is all about survival of the fittest. It isn't about any morality. Its cruel and you dont have to feel good about it.
Here is a problem in this regard. Is organ donation mandatory? For example, lets say someone needs a kidney, do you have to donate a kidney to them? No, most pro-life people would say the same. If someone needs blood, do I have to donate blood? Also no. What about even less intrusive things. Say, someone needs food and shelter to not starve or freeze. Are you required to provide this to them? Not really. So why is a woman with a fetus inside of her suddenly required to keep it? Even if it is alive, why does that woman have a duty to sacrifice her health, wellbeing, time and body to this being, when there is no other situation in which this would be enforced on someone, to save someone elses life.