How is the object not relevant? Suppose that fetuses were born on the outside, but the placenta connected them by a very painful needle into my genitals. Are you saying that I should not be allowed to remove this needle from my genitals?
When the object is to evict an unwelcome user of my body, it’s absolutely relevant.
And that’s my entire position on abortion – women absolutely must have total control over their bodies, under any circumstances whatsoever. If someone or something is inside them and they want it/them out, then they have the right to use force if it/they won’t comply with leaving. It’s almost the simplest principle imaginable – no one has the right to any part of your body without your permission, and this right trumps any and all others. This doesn’t necessarily mean the right to kill, since there are often ways to forcefully evict an unwelcome visitor/user without killing them. But sometimes there’s not such a way.
They don’t have to abstain at all – they are free to engage in consensual adult sex. And the vast majority of the time, consensual adult sex doesn’t harm anyone. That there’s a chance it might doesn’t mean that people should somehow not be free to engage in this normal and even necessary behavior.
I’m not arguing that. I’m arguing that through the course of normal human behavior, sometimes people get pregnant. It’s even possible to get pregnant while abstaining from sex (if one is raped, for example, or other and weirder possibilities). This right to control one’s body isn’t changed because someone was raped, or someone engaged in normal behavior beforehand.
I’ll certainly agree that it’s morally wrong (if fetuses are people) to engage in unprotected sex on purpose with the intention of aborting the fetus. But “morally wrong” doesn’t mean necessarily criminal, to me, and making this particular thing criminal (in this fantasy world with fetus-people) would be both impossible to enforce (since it’s purely about intent) and result in the right of bodily control being taken away from women, and I’m not okay with that. I’d rather trust women, even knowing that some small number of them may make a morally wrong choice.
My position is that a fetus is not an ‘unwelcome user of your body.’ At least not in the same way that another, sentient human might be who makes a choice to inhabit you. Which is why all the talk of the rights of the mother vs. the rights of the fetus are, to me, far off the mark.
A fetus isn’t a human, with the rights of a human, who happens to be invading your body. I don’t see how one could construct a set of laws or social rules based on that assumption that makes any kind of sense, or holds any kind of internal logic.
How do you hold a fetus accountable for its actions? You say “If someone or something is inside them and they want it/them out, then they have the right to use force if it/they won’t comply with leaving,” when you know that it is impossible for a fetus to “comply” with anything; it lacks the physical and mental capacity to do so.
“I will not use force against you unless you [do something it is impossible for you to do]” is the same thing as saying “I will use force against you.” “I am not for killing fetuses, I just support killing fetuses in the pursuit of getting them out of women’s bodies if they don’t leave on their own” is the same thing as saying “I support killing fetuses.”
Ultimately, to me, the idea that a fetus can infringe upon the rights or autonomy of a woman is a bizarre notion that, if we really believed it, would lead to all sorts of off-the-wall legal situations. I think that she has the right to have an abortion, but not because the right of a human to live is less than the right to ‘control over one’s body’ in some kind of absolute moral calculus.
Which makes as much sense as saying : “homosexuals can freely marry…they just need to marry someone of the opposite sex”.
Either sex is necessary, or it isn’t. It can’t be necessary for you (to extend of allowing the killing of other people to preserve your sex life) and not necessary for others. So, is there a “right to have sex even if it results in very bad consequences for other people” or is there no such right (from a moral point of view).
And the vast majority of the time, people who drive drunk don’t cause the death of anybody, either. Still, when they do, they get sentenced.
Again, not necessary. You can not have sex. Plenty of people don’t have sex.
And yes, if there’s a serious chance it might seriously harm someone, you abstain from whatever behaviour you happen to enjoy. You don’t, say, discharge weapons willy-nilly to celebrate something even though most of the time nobody will be harmed or killed by the bullet falling down. If you do, pretty much everybody will tell you that you’re an irresponsible idiot, and if it so happens that you do harm someone you will be held criminally liable.
You can argue that. But I’m arguing that even if we grant you the right to abort, you should still face criminal charges for your reckless behaviour that resulted in a wrongful death.
There’s hardly anything considered worst than killing someone. If this isn’t wrong enough to justify criminal charges, then, what is?
Intent is necessary for most crimes, and criminal laws are enforced just fine. And anyway, it’s easy to determine the intent here : “did you ask for an abortion?” “did you have sex willingly” (the reasonnable person standard allowing us to assume that you knew sex could result in pregnancy).
Trust women about what exactly? And we’re not talking about a small number, here. Essentially all women who currently have an abortion would be culpable.
I think the woman decides whether someone or something inside them is welcome or unwelcome.
Seems like we just disagree here.
Then we only disagree in this sci-fi scenario, in which fetuses are people. In the real world, we have the same conclusion – abortion must be allowed – but the reason I feel this must be so is because women must be allowed to make decisions about their bodies, and you have a different reason.
No. Consenting adults really is different. Just like how gay marriage is not comparable to pedophilia or child-marriage. Consent makes it different.
It’s necessary in general. There might be some people in which it’s not necessary, but for humanity in general, adult consensual sex is necessary and normal.
Further, whether or not it’s necessary, it will happen no matter what. There’s no restricting consensual adult sex, and there never has been. It’s never worked and it never will. So talk about whether or not people will or should have sex is moot – they will, no matter what.
I think there’s a big difference, for many reasons. Sex (consenting adults) is normal/necessary; sex can’t be restricted; sex doesn’t harm bystanders (the only possible harm would be in this sci-fi scenario when a fetus-person is conceived).
Good luck with this. Restricting consensual adult sex has never worked and never will. Pointless to even try.
That’s a separate argument, and one I hadn’t really considered. I’ll think about it. My initial response is that this is functionally sanctioning individual choice about one’s body, and that is unacceptable to me – even more unacceptable then possibly resulting in a death.
I consider restricting people from making choices about their bodies worse than killing someone, when the two conflict.
Did you maybe change your mind? Did you use birth control?
Intent is not necessary for most crimes – killing someone in broad daylight for no reason is still murder. Intent is sometimes necessary to prove a crime occurred, but that’s different. You’re arguing that the intent is what makes it a crime, and that seems ludicrous to me. No other crime is like that (I’m pretty sure, at least – IANAL) – it’s the action that’s criminal, not the intent.
Trust that women will decide what’s best for their bodies. That’s the entire issue (for me), and this right and trust is even more important, IMO, then preventing the possibility that hypothetical fetus-people would be killed.
It’s a red line that no scenario can cross, for me. Bodily autonomy rights must be respected under any circumstance or possible scenario. Everyone (aside from the mentally ill trying to harm themselves), always, under any circumstances, should get to decide at any and every moment whether someone or something inside or otherwise utilizing their body is allowed to continue. There are no exceptions, aside from restraining mentally ill people to keep them from harming themselves. I understand you feel differently.
I agree with that totally. What I don’t agree with is that the rules about decision-making humans and fetuses fall under the same umbrella, because it doesn’t follow to me that a person’s right to not gestate another person is absolutely more significant than another human’s life. I dislike using analogy, but consider this wild and unreal situation:
[ul]
[li]A woman is pregnant[/li][li]She doesn’t want to be[/li][li]The only method of ending the pregnancy results in killing someone who isn’t the fetus (this is the weird part)[/li][/ul]
I don’t think that you or I or anyone would be ok with abortions whenever a woman wanted. We are ok with killing the fetus because it matters less than an actual person.
If an adult had to die in order to end a pregnancy, I doubt you or I or anyone else would be so eager to ensure that abortions remained legal. We’re ok with it on a fundamental level not because a woman’s right to choose is more important than human life, but because a woman’s right to choose is more important than a life deemed less valuable than other lives (that of a fetus compared to that of the born).
I don’t think that the OP lays out a sci-fi scenario, as the ‘point of personhood’ is, while semi-scientific, mainly a philosophical opinion, based on the whims of the philosopher. I don’t know that it’s true in any real sense that a fetus is not a person before the 3rd trimester, and is one afterwards (or pick any other point in pregnancy).
Yep, we reach the same conclusion, and our difference is amiable (hopefully) and academic.
However, I think that while the ‘right to choose’ is very important, the reason why it will never be a compelling argument is that pro-life people (most of them) are sincerely treating abortions like my strange scenario above. To them, an innocent human, with all rights and privliges, gets killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time in order that a woman not have to spend 9 months going through a common human activity.
If we accept the proposition that a fetus is equal to any other human, then there are major moral issues with abortion.
The way to avoid those issues is to classify a fetus as ‘less important,’ regardless of whether it senses pain, has personality, sentience, or whatever. To me, none of these things elevate a fetus to the level of you or I.
tl;dr:
“Fetuses are by definition less important than already born people, so killing them is not a huge deal” reflects general human behavior and attitudes towards abortion throughout history, and is a much more straight-forward and defensible position than “Fetuses reach equal personhood during gestation, after which it’s ok to kill that person to end a pregnancy, even though that person bears no responsibility in that pregnancy.”
Intent is absolutely necessary for most crimes. I think you are mixing up " intent" and “motive”. Killing you in broad daylight for no reason might be murder - or it might be manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide or no crime at all depending upon my intent.
This doesn’t change my view. Let’s assume the scenario is this – some mad scientist attaches some device to both the fetus and a random bystander, such that when the fetus’s heart stops it kills the bystander.
This would be terrible – and I would strongly encourage the woman to choose not to abort. But it would still be her choice. It’s still her body, and I would strongly oppose government stepping in by force to prevent her from choosing what to do with her body, even in this weird scenario.
Now if the device was attached to 100 or 1000 or a million people, then I might be persuaded to change my mind, thinking about it for a second. I place bodily autonomy above the right to life when they conflict, but perhaps not above the right to existence for all of humanity.
This is certainly very likely – I recognize that tons of people don’t see it the way I do, and my reasoning is only persuasive to folks who place bodily autonomy as important of a right as I do.
We already face something rather like this with organ donation. If I prefer that my body be buried or cremated whole, taking with it a liver and two kidneys that might very well save someone else’s life…by law I have that privilege. I have control over my organs, even after I’m through using them. To the nice teenage kid with deadly liver or kidney disease…sorry, kid.
(FTR I’m on the organ donation program, and am also registered to be a bone marrow donor if anyone ever matches.)
You say won’t like it’s a conscious choice, when letting go is literally a death sentence.
It’s like a guy who can’t swim holding onto your arm for safety when you’re sitting in a boat. Your arm is the only thing preventing him from drowning, and a rescue team is virtually certain to arrive before either of you are in danger. Yes, you might have the “right” to pry his hand off of your arm and let him drown, but I think I’d be justified in considering it a despicable act.
One problem: with a pregnancy, the rescue won’t arrive “before either of you are in danger.” There isn’t any rescue! We have no way to rescue the fetus; there aren’t procedures for transplantation to a surrogate or to an incubator. So your analogy is flawed in that way.
And, yes, I would agree that not holding on to a drowning person would be despicable. But I won’t mandate it by law. If you aren’t willing or able to do this, and feel the need to shake the guy off your arm, well, that’s your right. It’s your arm. Being a “Good Samaritan” is not required by law. If I see you drowning, and am unwilling to throw you a ring buoy, shame to hell on me for being such a rotter…but it isn’t mandatory under the law.
(A great many people feel that abortion is morally wrong…but are still pro-choice, because they see the compulsory involvement of a woman’s body as wrong also.)
People can be pro-choice for a variety of reasons -
1)They might believe that a fetus is not a person until it is born.
2)They might believe a fetus is a person from the moment of conception, but not want to impose that view on others.
3) They might believe that a fetus becomes a entity deserving of some rights at some point between conception and birth , and believe that society should err in favor of the woman’s freedom at either all or some points of the pregnancy.
4) They might believe that abortion should be legal only because the fetus is not (or may not be) a person and and that society shouldn’t force a woman to go through a pregnancy for the sake of an entity that has no rights , but would be anti-abortion if either of those were not true (that is if the fetus were a person or if the fetus could be removed and placed in an incubator with no more risk or pain than an abortion)
And there are probably a hundred more variations that I haven’t thought of. This question
can’t be answered without some idea of how the reasons for being pro-choice break down. Because in a society where there is a consensus that a fetus is a person , numbers 2,3,and 4 might not be pro-choice.
Reasonable points, both. Trinopus, by ‘rescue’ I mean the natural end of the pregnancy where after a forseeable amount of time, the fetus is no longer dependent on the woman for survival.
The only argument I have left to add is that this situation, a person being dependent on you for survival, is a direct result of the woman’s personal choice, and not at all the result of choices made by the fetus. The woman doesn’t stumble over a person in distress, and isn’t the victim of a mad scientist’s plot, she’s freely* chosen to engage in activities for which this result is a natural consequence.
*Note, this changes significantly if she didn’t choose to have sex, provisions must be available under those circumstances.
Tricky. Getting pregnant is not a universal consequence of sex, and if the people in question took measures to prevent pregnancy, then it is most definitely not “chosen.” It’s an accident.
If you go skiing and break your leg, it’s valid to say, “You took a chance.” It is not valid to say, “You accepted having your leg broken.” No the same!
Also, if someone breaks their leg skiing, they get to employ reparative/restorative measures, such as a splint, having pins put in, traction, a cast, etc. Ditto if someone gets pregnant and doesn’t want to be: they get to take responsible care to fix the problem.
Compelling the woman to continue an unwanted pregnancy is (in the opinion of some) about as silly as compelling the skiier to go around without a splint or cast.
No one should use abortion as their only form of pregnancy avoidance – but even if they do that, how is that, by itself, a valid argument for denying access to an abortion?
The only possible valid reason to oppose abortion is if you think the unborn is a “person” in a legal sense* – and since that isn’t agreed upon, but is the central defining disagreement, we’re stuck with no way to go forward. The consensus necessary for that to be the basis for law does not exist.
*(Okay, there are one or two other valid reasons, such as the opinion held by some that an abortion is harmful to the mother. Most of these are false, and easily shown to be false. No serious harm comes to the vast majority of women who have abortions, whereas significant harm comes to many who are pregnant and give birth – even those who very much want to have a baby. There are a few other arguments put forward, but they, too, are highly debatable and of such small relevance as to be pointless to bring up.)
What I don’t agree with is that the rules about decision-making humans and fetuses fall under the same umbrella, because it doesn’t follow to me that a person’s right to not gestate another person is absolutely more significant than another human’s life. I dislike using analogy, but consider this wild and unreal situation: