AFAIK there are no rules about trying to argue hypothetically for something you don’t actually believe. I think your hypothetical “atheist” arguments are unconvincing because they’re flavored with a fair amount of Catholic assumptions, but there’s no reason you can’t make them anyway.
This is the oddest interpretation of bodily autonomy I’ve ever encountered. How is punching another person an example of one’s own bodily autonomy? Bodily autonomy is not about being able to do anything with your body; it’s about being able to make choices about what happens to your body. IOW, bodily autonomy means I can give you permission to punch me if I choose to, but you can’t just take that choice from me without violating my bodily autonomy. *You *punching *me *in the nose has nothing to do with *your *bodily autonomy.
That’s so ba kward. How about your right to eat stops when you start extracting nutrients out of my blood?
And, for many of us, even if we did, abortion would still be permissible, because it relieves a situation of unwanted physical bodily occupation.
This leads to the thought-experiment of one of us finding ourselves connected to someone in a hospital, giving them life-support from our bodies. Many of us would choose to disconnect ourselves from a fully-grown, adult, legal person, committing them to death, rather than to be enslaved to them in that way.
Or even more plausibly (and this was the original premise of the thread), would it be permissible for the state to compel people to donate blood when their are lives at stake? What if it’s the lives of their children?
Right now, we don’t even feel like it’s appropriate to compel dead bodies to give up so much as a fingernail to save a life–but people argue it’s acceptable to compel women to undergo pregnancy.
We recognize limits to bodily autonomy, though, don’t we? The police can strip search you, they can take blood without your consent. You can’t smoke Meg. You can’t commit suicide. You have to wear a helmet if you ride a motorcycle and a seat belt if you drive a car. The government can stay you and force you to go places and fight a war without your consent. The law recognizes a bunch of limits in what you’re allowed to do with your body.
Also, just a thought. Does a person have an increased responsibility to their fetus because they were partly responsible for its creation? We recognize parents have a special obligation to their children. I mean, the fetus doesn’t get in the womb by magic. It takes a woman’s egg and a man’s sperm and usually, the same woman who supplies the egg supplies the womb.
Not that there isn’t a case to be made for that position (and it seems to be involved in rape-and-incest exceptions to abortion bans, for example), but it pretty much destroys the full-human-personhood-at-conception claim.
If a fetus has an inherent and absolute right to life then it can’t make a difference, morally speaking, whether the impregnated woman voluntarily participated in its creation or not.
Well, it can, like the aforementioned organ transplant thing. You have an inherent right to life, but if your kidney fails, not everyone would agree I have a moral obligation to give you mine, even if you might die without it.
I agree with whoever said that the crux of the debate is when does a fetus become a person. I am conflicted myself as to when this occurs, and I would bet that debate could rage on its own.
I do not consider myself atheist, and although I would consider myself pro-life, I do not think religion or theism plays a role into my judgement of the morality of abortion. Therefore, I am going to a take a stab at this. I am also only speaking of elective abortion, not in cases of medical necessity or rape.
So, very simply, I think the argument goes something like this: A person is responsible for their actions and the consequences thereof. If a sane person chooses to engage in activity which knowingly could result in pregnancy, they are morally obligated to care for the person they created, regardless of whether they intended to create a person or not.
This is why, to me, the question of when a fetus attains person-hood is so important. I would be willing to grant there are shades of gray along that path. But once we grant a fetus person-hood, the parents have the same obligation to that person whether they are inside or outside the womb.But that raises the question of the obligations of a person who did not choose to engage in the activity that resulted in pregnancy: namely, somebody pregnant as a result of rape.
Such a pregnancy, if not terminated before the point when a fetus is considered a fully human person (wherever we as a society decide to locate that point), unavoidably involves requiring the pregnant rape victim “to care for the person they created” even if they did not voluntarily engage in the activity that caused the pregnancy.
So, again, I don’t think we can really base a morally coherent and consistent case for restriction of abortion on the notion of parental responsibility. Whether or not the carrier of the fetus voluntarily chose to engage in the activity that led to the pregnancy should not determine the resulting fetus’s personhood status and rights.
If an early-term fetus is a fully human person, then the person who’s carrying it is morally obligated to carry the pregnancy to term regardless of whether or not they had sex voluntarily. If the fetus is not a fully human person, then ISTM that the person who’s carrying it should be able to freely choose to terminate or continue the pregnancy for whatever reason they wish, and moral obligations of parenthood don’t enter into it.
A very large number of abortions result from failure of contraceptive protections. Using this as a new principle of law would require every prospective abortion to be investigated thoroughly to determine if protections had been employed. You’d only create a vast new investigative arm of the government, solely to look into whether condoms, spermicides, IUDs, etc. were used.
In regard to purely abstract reasoning, I also do not agree with your moral declaration here, but that’s a matter of personal belief. That’s the problem with the abortion issue, alas: it necessarily involves a deep and significant conflict in people’s personal moral beliefs.
I disagree. Everyone knows, or should know, that contraceptive protections are not perfect, and are not used perfectly. They knowingly take a risk, however small, and should bear the responsibility of the outcome. Therefore, no investigative effort required.
I appreciate that you disagree.
I do agree with your statement about a deep and significant conflict in one's person moral beliefs. It is a complicated issue that I do not always see as black and white.
One thing I like about the Dope, despite it occasionally raising my blood pressure, is that it often challenges me, forces me to think deeply about why I think certain ways.
I had excluded rape, but I am still processing what you wrote, and I think I agree with you. While I do believe people are responsible for their decisions, your last paragraph is the better argument. I hope this doesn't come across as insincere, but thanks for that.
No prob pyromyte, and thank you.
Therefore you define all pregnancies as “invited,” making the term absurdly meaningless. Sophistry is not the way to solve the abortion debate.
Invited isn’t a good term. Even if you have sex with a contraceptive, you’re still behaving in a way that pregnancy can occur., and if it does occur, you still have a genetic link to the fetus.
:dubious:You're accusing me of sophistry? I never defined all pregnancies as "invited." It is perfectly reasonable there are unintended consequences to one's actions. Just because an outcome is unintended does not absolve one from responsibility.
I like how this version of responsibility includes no authority, i.e. the right to decide to resolve the situation, by terminating the pregnancy.
Well, that depends on what you mean by terminating the pregnancy. Are we terminating a human life or a clump a cells. When does that transition occur? at birth? at conception? somewhere in between?
I’m very uncomfortable with the idea that you can even voluntarily give away your bodily autonomy. Like, if I agree to give you an organ, or have sex with you, or even donate blood to you (all things that I’m not allowed to do in most places, because even allowing people to give up parts of their body makes us uncomfortable) and I back out the deal, you might be able to sue me for damages, but you can’t have a court compel me to donate. We won’t mandate parents donate blood to their children, because that seems oppressive, but people want to compel me to go through a dangerous and painful medical event for the better part of a year–and ending in surgery.
We don’t let people sell themselves into slavery or even indenture themselves. We don’t let people sign away their freedom of speech–we can sign a NDA, but the penalties are civil. Even a POA can’t be permanent: as long as you’re competent, you can take it back and you can’t stop yourself from taking it back. Hell, a couple years ago people here suggested an option for people to self-surrender their 2nd amendment rights, and people worried that would be to ripe for coercion and it shouldn’t be allowed. Consent to sex can be withdrawn instantly.
No where else do we ask someone to unilaterally utterly surrender their very body, and I cannot reconcile that that consent is irrevocable.