The problem with this line of reasoning, is by this point you already have donated your uterus to the fetus. You can’t donate a kidney to a child, then 3 months later decide you want it back and kill the child to get it.
And, of course, by the classic line of reasoning, the woman has done no such thing: the fetus has seized the uterus without her consent.
(And, yes, by the classic line of reasoning, she has “consented” implicitly, by having sex. And the rebuttal to that is that if she used contraception – and contraceptive failure is the reason for very many abortions – then the implicit consent does not exist.)
It’s a game of chess, and the moves have all been mapped out far in advance.
Nobosy is ever legally obligated to give a person a body part. If I destroy both your kidneys, and my kidneys are a perfect match for you, I cannot be legally compelled to donate a kidney.
Not really. No form of birth control is 100% effective.
A spiritual look at abortion, different from most.
Well, that was my point: using contraception removes (or undermines) the “you consented” argument. No, she didn’t; she tried to prevent pregnancy. It happened anyway, but it was not with her consent.
You could say, “Yes, but she knew there was a risk.” That doesn’t constitute consent. I go driving every day on California freeways, and I know there’s a risk, but I’m not consenting to being involved in an accident. The heavy smoker isn’t consenting to lung cancer. (Some people have gotten pregnant even using three forms of birth-control!)
It’s just one small exchange in the big chess-game. It would have been nifty if DrCube had discovered a new opening, or new gambit, but, alas, the whole game has been played so many times, we’re all familiar with pretty much all the exchanges.
The law presumes that if you drive a car on the public highway you implicitly consent to reimburse any person who suffers damage or injury through your use of same, though. That’s why you have insurance. In this analogy, contraception is like driver’s ed: something any sane person will do to minimise the risk to themselves and others, but in no way voiding your duty of care to the person you just crippled with your car.
It’s all just blowing smoke, though. You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into, and I fear this issue is one on which most people say “Here’s my conclusion; now what reasoning is there to support it?”.
Since we are using analogies, how about this:
During the snowstorm of the century, a guy stumbles through your front door (you locked the door, but the lock malfunctioned) and falls to the floor almost frozen to death.
He has the defense to trespass known as private necessity. You can’t drag his ass right back out the front door and let him freeze to death, even though you didn’t consent to his entry in the first place.
Is your house on an island?
I know that you are having fun with this, but I thought that I responded pretty rationally. Yes, extreme survival analogies should be used because if a fetus is a person, then staying in the mother’s womb is a necessary condition for his survival.
To analogize to this situation, we have to use snowstorms and desert islands because the obligation, if there is one, can’t be passed off to someone else like it would in the middle of Times Square.
Actually, mine was a rational question - are we assuming the house is on an island and options are starkly limited? Because if it isn’t, the homeowner does not have to suffer the presence of the trespasser - the homeowner can call the cops and have the trespasser taken away. That the trespasser might die in the process (i.e. he fights the cops, gets tased, has a heart attack) is not the responsibility of the homeowner.
The analogy assumes that the trespasser is the fetus (who is considered a person under the rules of the OP). To have the analogy make sense, the trespasser cannot be relocated by the police or survive elsewhere just like the fetus cannot survive elsewhere. Hence the need for a snowstorm or an island.
And this is why analogies are illustrations and not evidence.
And I have to feed him… I have to feed him from my own veins… Wait a bit… The analogy is getting a bit strained…
Too much of where you end up in the abortion debate has to do with your values. Its hard to argue someone out of their values.
You are attaching rights to the child in the first place. The argument above is meant to illustrate an argument that could be made EVEN IF we assumed full personhood for the embryo. The question is sometimes better phrased as “when does an embryo attain personhood” Rick Santorum thinks its when the sperm fertilizes the egg, others think its when the baby takes its first breath. The only problem is that while noone really takes the latter seriously, the former makes credible runs for the Republican nomination.
Frankly, I’ve started to think that a lot of pro-choice arguments miss the point (at least as far as trying to argue against their opponents go).
To explain, I don’t see how arguments like “a woman has the right to control her own body” or even the one in the OP has any hope of convincing the other side, no matter how true they are. As far as the pro-life side is concerned, abortion is the equivalent of stabbing your fully grown and conscious Siamese twin in the head because you’re tired of dragging him around everywhere.
IMO, fetal personhood (and perhaps even the idea that an immortal soul exists) is the lynchpin of most (if not all) of a pro-lifer’s belief and arguments. I don’t think anything that doesn’t directly attack that has a prayer (pun unintended, but welcomed) of succeeding, and I’m a little surprised that the pro-choicers are expending effort preaching to the choir by arguing anything else.
They’re not trying to engage the enemy or change minds, they’re trying to win elections. Preaching to the choir wins elections. Have a long enough string of Presidents in your column and you get a large majority on the supreme court. If Hillary succeeds Obama, we are going to see the 5-4 balance of the supreme court swing the other way and maybe even go 6-3.
Then why is a “novel” argument needed to begin with?
It would have been nifty! The debate is as ritualized as Noh drama. Something new would have been an incredible relief!
Life began eons ago. Even in a conception many human lives are lost. It should be up to the couple of what method of birth control they use. A woman is not just a person for breeding. I know of many coupes in my generation who through fear or guilt had children they didn’t want or couldn’t afford, Or not having sex during a woman’s fertile cycle. A woman is more interested in sex during those times.
The best way to avoid abortions is to let the woman decide if she wants to conceive or not. One can look to countries that did not or could not have just the children they could afford to care for, physically ,mentally, financially, It seems the ones who want every conception to produce a child they cannot afford in anyway are the ones who complain about people on welfare etc… One need just look to Haiti etc. and see the poverty, and even in some cases here in the USA the problems it brings to a couple.