I may be misunderstanding or misremembering, but I thought there were folks who’d argued in favor of unlimited bodily autonomy here before, at least as far as abortion was concerned. Does anyone else remember this, or holds this view?
Limited bodily autonomy makes a ton of sense to me: you have to have really, really good reasons to violate bodily autonomy. Requiring a moderately unpleasant experience in order to save the lives of other people qualifies as a really, really good reason. But I thought we had folks who’d argued that it didn’t–that you just don’t get to violate someone’s bodily autonomy.
If I’m wrong, I’m misunderstanding some folks’ views on abortion.
I’m in favor of absolute bodily autonomy in nearly every situation wrt abortion. Yet mandatory vaccination is something that makes sense, though it hurts a bit to argue for it. I’d almost rather say people do not have to accept vaccination, but if they choose that road they are then sent off to live on an island somewhere.
That, I don’t know. I think there were people arguing that the bodily autonomy argument applies all the way through term, but I don’t know whether they were trying to argue for unlimited bodily autonomy in all senses, or whether they were arguing that the pregnant person’s overwhelms even a late-term fetus’ in all cases: which isn’t the same argument, though it may look like it at first glance.
I mean, I’m not arguing that the bodily autonomy argument vanishes as soon as the fetus has enough mind to have desires; I’m only saying that it needs to be balanced. Somebody else might think that the balance is overwhelming all the way until birth.
But maybe someone else will come in who remembers such arguments more clearly; or, better yet, someone who made them.
I’m all for bodily autonomy but I think it gets superseded when it infringes upon the unwritten social contract we all enter upon being members of a society. That is your freedoms and rights are all well and good until they harm or pose a DIRECT threat to society.
You may not be forced to comply, but society in it’s self interest has a right to remove or ban you from that society.
I would say bodily autonomy applies through an entire pregnancy. A pregnant person has the right to end their pregnancy at any time and for any reason. The tricky part is “how”. The pregnant person does not have the right to destroy a fetus within them, but if that is the only way to end the pregnancy, so be it. However, if there is a way to end a pregnancy that is non-destructive to the fetus (and no more medically risky than destructive methods), then we are obliged to use it.
While I don’t agree with compulsory vaccination, I am fine with requiring vaccine passports for all sorts of activities. How many of you remember that before around 1970 you could not enter the US without proof of smallpox vaccination? And depending on where you came from yellow fever and perhaps other vaccinations were also required.
I just read about an outbreak of Covid on a cruise ship that had stopped in Texas and was forbidden by state law from requiring vaccinations. And Texas and other states are fighting with school boards over compulsory masks for under 13 year olds.
Although my wife swears that she personally would never have gotten an abortion, she and I are both strongly pro-life. A fertilized egg is not a human being and a pregnant woman is not the tool of the state. Once the fetus is viable, my feelings change.
Here is a not entirely serious question for all those people who obsess about fertilized eggs, what about all those unfertilized eggs who are destined to die as a result of the abstinence education many religions insist on?
Basically me. I think you should be able to do what you want with your body. I’m ok with the mother removing the fetus from her body at any stage. The only debate for me is it is worth the time to cut the fetus up into pieces prior to vacuuming it out or if it’s better to push it out whole to have a chance at a life.
I don’t see why a mother who carried a baby for 8 months must carry it for 1 more if she doesn’t want to.
I believe in 100% bodily autonomy when there’s no possible material affect on anyone else (i.e. pregnancy).
When it can affect others in a quantifiable, physical way, then it’s a special case and deserves special consideration. With this in mind, I think mandating vaccines for schools, travel, and other circumstances is appropriate.
Yeah, abortion isn’t a contagious disease. If a woman terminates her fetus, that isn’t going to cause pregnant women around her to spontaneously start suffering miscarriages. Whereas a Covid-infected person can transmit Covid to surrounding people and harm/kill them.
There are still pro-life arguments one could make against abortion, but they would fall into a separate category.
And what if that isn’t possible? Too far from convenient empty spaces, too much risk.
Now a cop could accidentally discharge a firearm into the guys head and then cut him open.
But you might want to interrogate the perp after removing the bomb.
I’m worried the “bomber with a gut of nuke” hypothetical is gonna get a little too “Hitler’s kneecaps melted down into glue” bazonkers here. Perhaps it can be stripped of arguable bits (viz: you have an attempted murderer whose murders can only be stopped by violating their bodily autonomy, do you do it?), or branch it off into another thread?
This is interesting. For me, “mandatory vaccination” doesn’t mean you get held down; rather, it means that you suffer real penalties if you refuse to do it. To make it parallel, let’s say that failure to be vaccinated would carry the same civil/criminal penalties as deliberately aborting a fetus.
I’m 100% in opposition to punishing a person who aborts a fetus inside of them. I’m 90% in favor of punishments for someone who refuses a vaccine and in doing so risks the lives of those around them.
For me it hinges on personhood. I don’t consider the fetus to be a person, so bodily autonomy doesn’t have a right to balance against it. I do consider those folks surrounding you to be people, so bodily autonomy gets balanced.
It sounds to me like most people here adopt a similar approach. Kayaker, I’m not so sure about: what is the difference, for you?
What are your feelings on having consequences for failure to vaccinate?
I’m pro vaccine but very much against mandatory vaccinations. I have no problem with restricting rights of the unvaccinated to travel or work at a particular business if it is done for safety reasons.
Forcing people to take medications or injections of any kind makes me very uncomfortable, and is not the direction I want to see the United States headed in. The exception would be those judged to be mentally incompetent.
This is interesting, and may be a failure to define terms. I don’t believe I’ve heard of anyone in favor of literally forcing vaccines on people. What i’ve heard is restricting folks’ freedoms if they refuse a vaccine. Any “vaccine mandate” I’ve heard of works that way.
Is there a sufficiently significant number of people calling for, I dunno, loading tranq guns with Cominerty and infiltrating the Natural News building, that we need to include them in the discussion?
Or should we define “mandatory vaccinations” as “restricting the freedoms of those who refuse vaccines”?
Punching peoples’ noses and spreading contagious diseases should be crimes, and criminals should be punished. Similarly, brandishing unloaded firearms and engaging in behaviors likely to be contagious if one were infected should be regulated and/or criminalized.
Also, I’d like to comment on this:
Non-persons have some rights, but these rights are abridged compared to the rights of persons. For example, animal cruelty laws are reasonable. In the same manner, I think we, as a society, should give some amount of protection to fetuses. But that protection must be secondary to the rights of the pregnant person.
At the risk of sounding like a low-rent Chidi (which I guess is this whole thread), I like the distinction Tom Reagan makes in The Case for Animal Rights between moral agents and moral subjects. All existing moral agents are moral subjects: we’re talking entities with sel-fawareness and the awareness of others who are capable of making moral decisions. But not all moral subjects are moral agents: we’re talking entities whose rights should be considered when making moral decisions.
From my perspective, a fetus before a certain point of development is not a moral agent or a moral subject. It has fewer rights than a pig, and a pregnant person may abort the fetus for any reason without earning any moral demerits.
So “person” is probably not the right term for me to use; I was being imprecise.
If that’s your approach, then it seems that your “bodily autonomy . . . through an entire pregnancy” hinges on not regarding fetuses as moral subjects–otherwise, an abortion is a pretty serious punch to the fetus’s nose. Is that right?
A fetus is not a person. If the only way to end a pregnancy is through the destruction of the fetus, then there’s no ambiguity about whether it’s acceptable if the pregnant person chooses to end the pregnancy. The nuance enters if there is a way to maintain the viability of the fetus while ending the pregnancy. Then we have to balance the risks to the person while destroying fetus vs while not. If there is no additional risk by not destroying the fetus, then we shouldn’t destroy it.
(I don’t use the terms moral subjects or moral agents, so I’ll let you decide how to label things using those terms.)
That’s what I remembered, too - this lengthy thread from a few years ago had quite a few people using bodily autonomy as the overriding principle for abortion. However, I expect that many people hold that position specifically within the confines of the abortion debate - eg. compare this post by iiandyiiii vs his post in this thread.
I too saw that position being somewhat inconsistent - I am 100% in your camp where bodily autonomy is balanced against impact against other people. So IMO the logically consistent position is that a fetus is not a person, therefore a woman exercising her bodily autonomy is not harming another person, vs. the position that a fetus IS a person but the woman’s right to bodily autonomy overrides that person’s right to life.
I think it’s wrong to use force to force vaccinations under any circumstances, though I don’t think requiring vaccinations for school, travel, or similar circumstances is a violation of bodily autonomy rights. The former would be.
