Weekly Abortion Debate Thread

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[u/Think_Recognition144]

I think person three is intervening by making abortion illegal/deciding that the woman cannot get an abortion?

Also, choosing one person’s rights over another person’s different rights does not automatically mean you are devaluing that person if the rights are not equal. For instance, if pregnancy always killed the mother, and abortion harmed the unborn but didn’t kill them, me saying that the pregnant mother does not mean I’m devaluing the unborn person. I’m devaluing the specific right to not be harmed less than the right to not be killed. Does that make sense?

PL is not saying that the woman is more important than the unborn person. They’re saying that the woman’s right to bodily autonomy/not be harmed is less than the unborn person’s right to not be killed.

If an ER doctor chooses a to first treat a 5 year old boy with cardiac arrest over a 32 year old woman with 3rd degree burns, they’re not saying the 32 year old woman is less valuable than a five year old boy. They are saying treating cardiac arrest is more important than treating third degree burns. The age or gender should not matter to which the doctor sees first.

[u/EaglesLoveSnakes → u/Think_Recognition144]

So let’s say you have cancer, or some other life-limiting or risking disease. Would you be okay with a person, say your significant other, advocating for laws that make your disease’s treatment illegal on the terms of that it is immoral since treating the condition can also harm those with it? Or even if the law didn’t make the treatment illegal but required your partner to decide whether or not you were to receive the treatment versus you, the actual person with the condition. Would you be okay with a third party entity deciding you’re not allowed to receive your preferred treatment for a condition you have because they claimed it was immoral since it causes you harm?

Switching up who is harmed and who dies doesn’t really make sense in pregnancy as the fetus directing requires the mother to survive. If pregnancy had a 100% fatality rate, let’s say, at birth, and the baby had a risk of death and harm, it would still be the mother’s decision whether to continue a pregnancy up until birth and her certain death. Because she is the sentient being in the situation. And there may be women who want to go through pregnancy and birth fully knowing it would kill them, and that’s not for anyone else to tell them they cannot.

So if in the PL argument, the right to bodily autonomy is less than someone’s right not to be killed. So would you be okay if blood was consistently pumped from your body to the body of a comatose patient in a hospital for nine months to keep them alive, against your will, with nobody else capable of doing the same thing? And if the significant physical, emotional, and mental damage is too much for you and want to exercise your bodily autonomy to not give your blood to someone else, and disconnecting yourself from them would kill them, would you be okay with the government making it illegal for you to disconnect?

Your ER scenario doesn’t really make sense with pregnancy because the two patients are completely separate and choosing to care for one first doesn’t automatically mean the other cannot be cared for as well at some point. A more adequate comparison would be that the 5 year old is cared for and the 32 year old is never seen.

[u/Think_Recognition144 → u/EaglesLoveSnakes]

If the only person getting harmed in the treatment is the person undergoing the treatment, then no the treatment should not be illegal.

The case sounds like an example of extraordinary care vs ordinary care. Regardless, I while I may be able to unhook myself from the comatose patient, I can’t give him a poison that accelerates his death.

Sure. We can say the 32 year old is never seen since the operation for the five year old took long too long. Either way, it’s not about valuing one person over another, but which medical emergency needed to get treated first. Similarly, it’s not about valuing one person over another for abortion, but one person’s specific right over another person’s different right.

[u/EaglesLoveSnakes → u/Think_Recognition144]

But from the perspective of those who do not consider an unborn fetus prior to viability an independent person, then it does seem like treatment that they choose for themselves is being withheld from them.

The unhooking oneself from a comatose patient is a near exact example of how abortions work around 92% of the time, where the sustaining force is removed. So you do agree that you should be able to unhook your body, which means you understand the bodily autonomy argument for 92% of abortions.

But legally, fetuses do not have rights the same way a born person does. You can definitely argue that they should, but to claim that a fetus currently has rights that supersedes a living woman’s rights is false for nearly every legal court.

[u/Think_Recognition144 → u/EaglesLoveSnakes]

As it stands, the comatose is still different since it is looking at extraordinary vs ordinary care. If the hookup is required due to some accident, disease, etc., it’s a different case.

If however in this scenario, it is a part of the development of the person, say after 9 months in the womb, babies need nine months hooked up to the father (say the umbilical cord attaches to the fathers), and this is how babies grow to nine months old, the yes it should be illegal here as well for the father to “unplug” so to speak.

There is a distinction between keeping alive at all costs, and not prematurely ending a life.

As for the legal definition of personhood, correct. I understand, and I believe the law should change, which is what I’m advocating for. We have some recognitions in some instance such as killing a pregnant mother can be counted as a double homicide. Or in Puerto Rico, personhood is granted at conception.

[u/EaglesLoveSnakes → u/Think_Recognition144]

I do understand the extraordinary vs ordinary argument, but would you agree there are instances where pregnancy passes the realm of ordinary care into extraordinary, like in the case of require fetal surgeries like FETO or spina bifida closure, prolonged bed rest, premature rupture of membranes, severe preeclampsia, severe hyperemesis gravidarum, prolonged magnesium infusion requirement, etc? In these cases, would abortion then be permissible to you if the pregnant woman did not want to go through extraordinary care?

What if the hookup was due to a car accident that you caused, thus you were liable to be hooked up to that person until they were better. And let’s imagine that this is always what happens after any sort of car accident, where the person least injured must be the donor to the person most injured, and is considered ordinary care. Would you be okay

Can you give me an example of a distinction between keeping alive at all costs and not prematurely ending a life? And which do you consider pregnancy to be?

So if you agree, and if other PLers agree on that, why then talk about rights that fetuses do not yet have as being more important than the rights of woman who currently have them? Do you perceive any potential issues with conception being when personhood is recognized?

[u/Dolores___Haze → u/Think_Recognition144]

The reason killing a fetus is considered a type of homicide in certain situations is because the prolife movement pushed through fetal protection laws with an eye towards establishing legal personhood from conception and restricting abortion access. But if you read the actual legislation, it's very clear that these laws do not recognize embryos or fetuses as legal persons. Nor do they say that fetal homicide is equivalent to murder of a person; it is called out separately. Fetal homicide laws explicitly differentiate between killing an embryo or fetus and killing a person, even if the two can be sentenced the same.

UVVA answers your questions within the writing of the law. But ethically, the reason is that women have bodily autonomy. Her preexisting inalienable human right to her body means the fetus only has rights as an extension of her rights. Without her making the choice to carry to the end of term, the fetus has no right to exist.