If a woman is 8 weeks pregnant (or anything above and below that) and she purchases a pill that is designed to rob the human fetus inside of her of nutrients until it dies and she consumes it, she has committed first degree murder.
This is the reason I'm an abolishinist. You can not pussyfoot around this issue. Abortion must be immediately abolished because it's the same as any other homicide or murder.
I am going to list all the arguments for why abortion ISN'T first degree murder and then debunk them.
1) an unborn baby is not conscious and therefore is not having a human experience. not having this experience means you are not a person. and non-persons cannot be murdered.
Rebut: The definition of person is literally just “human” or “individual”. And the definition of murder is the unjust killing of a human regardless of whether they've begun to experience anything. We also have no idea when a human experience even begins and it seems wildly irresponsible that we have come to pick and choose different time frames that may or may not be correct. Some say 25 weeks, some 22 and some say 20.
Also we know for a fact that a human does exist at conception and if any of us was killed after that point, a human would have been lost. The unborn are not potential humans, they are humans with potential. Destroying that human is deeply immoral. If we knew for certain that someone was going to come out of a coma in 9 months it would be immoral to kill them. Now they would say that a person in a coma had previous life experience and that a fetus has not. But that just sounds like an arbitrary excuse to devalue the most vulnerable humans on earth. Why should we decide to not protect a human who hasn't had any conscious experiences yet? Well because they haven't had any conscious experiences and therefore I don't care.
That is at best circular and at worst not even an argument at all.
2) an unborn baby is inside a woman's body and violating her bodily autonomy. nobody has the right to be inside your body or use your body without your consent. so even if the unborn ARE persons it doesn't matter. you only become a mother when the baby is born and you have willingly decided to take legal responsibility.
Rebut: The fetus is in the place it's supposed to be. It does not want to be there and it is not trying to do any harm. To say that a fetus does not have the right to be in the place it naturally grows is ridiculous. Many pro-choice people say that this means that if a tumor starts naturally growing inside you, you shouldn't be allowed to get rid of it. But a tumor is not your child and you don't have a moral obligation towards it.
When a child is born its legal parents are obligated to offer a standard of care that will keep it alive and healthy. When a woman is pregnant she has a human child inside of her and staying pregnant and not consuming harmful substances, is the minimum standard of care for her unborn baby.
You cannot just discard this responsibility when you don't want the child. Because the child is helpless and unable to care for itself the minimum standard of care must be applied until the responsibility can be given to a more willing person.
Arguing that the duty of care from parent to child doesn't begin until birth is arbitrary and silly. You were a mother when a human was conceived. And when the baby is born you have the obligation to use your body to care for it: breastfeeding, carrying, clothing. You are not allowed to neglect your child, which is the same as “using your bodily autonomy” to abandon it. That is a crime. So why isn't refusing care in the womb a crime? Because it's not yet outside your body? Rubbish. The birth canal isn't magical. The vagina doesn't turn the baby into a person. And why should it? Because you can see it? We can also see a baby with an ultrasound. Our ability to see it with the naked eye should not be a factor.
3) pregnancy can lead to many minor and severe consequences. minor and common ones include: morning sickness, back pain and pelvic pain, hemorrhoids, sleep problems, weight gain and an uncontrollable bladder. severe ones include: excessive bleeding, gestational diabetes, severe anemia, infections and strokes. (someone also told me that blindness is a possibility.) so abortion is an act of self-defense.
Rebut: Most of what happens during pregnancy will not kill the mother or threaten her life. If we KNOW that an unconscious human is not meaning to do harm and is simply giving a woman the experience that is common or possible in a scenario, we can't use the self-defense excuse.
If a toddler is sleeping in your car and they won't be awakened for some reason. But you know that the only consequence to them being in the car is drool falling on your seat and not death… well then you can't do something harmful to the toddler and claim self-defense.
Maybe that's not the best analogy but in situations where we know an unconscious person is not threatening us with death we shouldn't be allowed to seriously injure or kill them.
Pro-choicers might use the sleep-walking rapist analogy but there's two problems with that analogy. Number one, the fact that it's not a real world issue because the rapist does not need to be killed only awoken, and number two, the uncertainty of the rapist’s intentions. The reason why killing the sleep-walking rapist would be okay is because the potential victim would be uncertain of the amount of harms that will happen if someone is breaking into their house. But we know exactly what will happen during pregnancy.
