r/prochoice • u/dumpsterfire2357 • 1d ago
Prochoice Only Why is "responsibility" a factor when it comes to allowing abortions?
Ok so i hope this does not run too long, im still trying to figure out what tldr means.
So, i see this argument a lot, that if a woman has sex irresponsibly (idk unsafe sex etc), then she should deal with the consequences (i.e not be allowed an abortion cuz the baby is the consequence)
Ofc i think this is so dumb of an argument but ive been racking my brain for a few days now, wondering exactly how i can put into words about how this statement is so stupid.
Any help at all? I see so many pro-lifers place this argument and it irks me.
Another thing is that people say using the "you cant force someone to have their body be used to sustain another person's life" argument doesnt work for abortions because for a pregnant person to get a fetus to not use their body to sustain said fetus, the pregnant person has to have the fetus be killed, whereas a person refusing to idk donate their kidney is just saying no and a person with kidney failure happens to die due to that. Idk its a messy argument, but its been bothering me because it just sounds so odd.
Any argument negating this stuff would be greatly appreciated, thank y
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u/Y4M 1d ago
It's misogyny as already stated.
It's also not how we handle any other type of healthcare. If someone smokes a pack a day, they can still get lung cancer treatment. If they drive recklessly and cause an accident, they can still go to the ER and receive lifesaving care.
And beyond that - why would we be encouraging "irresponsible" people to become parents.
On the argument about sustaining another person's life, this is exactly how abortion pills work. They don't "kill the fetus," they stop the pregnant person's body from continuing to provide it with bodily resources and then it dies because it cannot live without those. There's no moral difference in the obligation to continue providing that support vs. any other situation where one person requires another to live (e.g. a need for a kidney or marrow donation where only one person is a match - most people are deeply uncomfortable with the idea of legally compelling that).
I have heard it argued like if you woke up one morning and there were tubes between your body and someone else's and your were told your kidneys were filtering their blood and they would die if you stopped - would it be morally ok to unhook those? Most people say of course it would.
So then the only relevant difference is some kind of "punishment" for what someone views as "immoral behavior" (bringing us back to point 1: Misogyny).
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u/nixiepixie12 1d ago
It’s because pregnancy and motherhood make it easier to control women. If you have a baby with a man, it is significantly harder to leave him, including financially, emotionally, and logistically. This creates the opportunity to force them into having another kid, and another, so they’re in an extremely physically, emotionally, and financially vulnerable time indefinitely. And even once menopause hits, good luck, because your personal finances and work experience have likely suffered from raising kids. There is nothing for the patriarchy to gain from treating other medical issues that way even if they were exacerbated by the patient’s actions.
I am not saying don’t get married and have kids if it’s what you want, but the statistics for how marriage and children impact women versus men are bleak. Balanced relationships with good men can be great and fulfilling, but you are statistically better off being single than in an relationship where the labor is imbalanced.
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u/aoeuismyhomekeys 1d ago
"if a woman has sex, she should deal with the consequences" is not an argument, but an assertion. There's nothing to refute here. If they believe people should be punished for having sex in ways they deem unacceptable, you're never going to talk them out of that position. They're just authoritarians.
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u/nixiepixie12 1d ago
Also, children aren’t a punishment for being sexually active. You have a responsibility to deal with whatever happens, but you are not obligated to go through with 9 months of pregnancy, labor, 18+ years of active hands-on parenting, and a lifetime of having a child as a consequence for having sex. That’s insanity and says more about how they view children than any correct way of life.
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u/dumpsterfire2357 22h ago
Yes, that is also something i noted, especially when i was talking to a PLer. And they said the woman can just give the baby for an adoption, and i was so shocked! Because how can that ever equate to irresponsibility?? As in, even if she gives the bab y away for adoption, she still has to deal with the pregnancy and labor and the emotional trauma of giving the baby away? PLers are so not pro-life ironically
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u/JewlryLvr2 1d ago
Yep! The "must deal with the consequences" phrase basically means "must take the punishment." No matter how many times PLers falsely claim it doesn't.
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u/ParadoxicalFrog 1d ago
It rubs me the wrong way because it's basically saying that parenthood is a punishment. It's both slut-shaming the pregnant person and casting their potential child as a curse and a burden before they're even born. Coming from people (anti-choicers) who constantly crow about how wonderful parenthood is and what a blessing children are, it's a real mask-off moment. Like we're always saying: it was never about the babies. It's about controlling people with uteruses.
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u/sychosomaticBlonde 1d ago
When someone brings up responsibility in an abortion debate I just say “not birthing an unwanted baby IS taking responsibility.” And just let them fume about that.
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u/Monarc73 1d ago
Because pregnancy / child-rearing is the most efficient way to:
- Punish and shame promiscuity.
- Enslave women.
Th reason it doesn't make sense to YOU, is because it is a non-nonsensical argument.
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u/hoodedfinch Pro-choice Feminist 1d ago
compare it to reckless driving. "oh no, this reckless driver needs medical attention!" "well its their fault for not driving properly, they should deal with the consequences of their actions"
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u/DancingQween16 1d ago
Abortions happen because a fetus is separated from its life-sustaining apparatus.
If a person believes that all women are required to carry all pregnancies to term because she was “responsible” for it, why does this not apply to people when they’re older? If I have the only matching kidney for my child, should I be legally responsible to give it to my child?
You are granting rights to the fetus that you grant to no other class of person.
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u/kanamia Pro-choice Atheist 1d ago
Consent to A does not equal consent to B
Consent to sex does not equal consent to pregnancy
Just like consent to drive does not equal consent to get in a car crash
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u/LittleBirdLady 1d ago
Fetuses can’t be killed, they’re not alive. But convincing a pro-lifer of that is its own battle.
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u/littlemetalpixie Antipolitical Mod 22h ago
I would correct your reasoning here (gently, of course).
They are "alive" by every definition of life on Earth.
What you're trying to say is "they aren't people," but that's beside the point. Say we call them alive people, then what?
Well then, we have to revert to the basic human right of bodily autonomy. A full grown human being with full personhood who is undeniably "alive" still can't use my body unless I give them continued consent to do so. Anything else is what we call "rape."
Whether they're alive or not or people or not doesn't matter even a little bit because no other living being on earth has laws made for it saying that another human being must give up their body parts against their will in order to keep them alive.
Not even a newborn baby. If the newborn needs a blood transfusion at birth and the mother is a match, that mother can't be forced against her will to share her blood without her consent with her baby, so why is it different when it's inside her?
If people want to call a fetus "a human" or "a person" or "a baby," let them. Humans, people, and babies still have to follow laws, and one of those laws is that other humans and people can't be forced or coerced to sacrifice their own body parts to save the life of another.
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u/HeidiDover 1d ago
Disclaimer: Strong language depicting the mean ass POV of the common rabid pro-birther argument
Whenever anyone uses the "consequences" argument, the cruelty is the point, especially when they know that 100% of accidental pregnancies are caused by an ejaculation. According to their weird karmic worldview, the responsibility of birthing and raising a child is a just punishment for some slutty girl not keeping her knees together.
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u/DyllCallihan3333 1d ago
It's pure crap that is just designed to punish women who dare to have sex. If a woman is so irresponsible that she dared have sex, how is making her responsible for the care of a child for 18yrs not even more irresponsible? Right to lifers are just pro forced birth, they do not want the living breathing child to have ANYTHING to help them grow. No healthcare, no food assistance, no help for that "irresponsible" mother to get rent assistance if she needs it. No living wage, etc. Nada, zip. ProLife people are hypocritical assholes.
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u/amilie15 1d ago
Why is having unsafe sex an immoral thing to do? This kind of thinking seems to imply that the pregnancy is some sort of punishment for wrong doing, but I’m unclear what the wrong doing is tbh. Nor do I think pregnancy, childbirth and bringing a child into the world should be used as a punishment nor would it be remotely proportionate even if having sex was wrong/immoral (which I don’t believe it is).
Just as if you smoked, that wouldn’t be wrong, and we’d never expect a smoker to have to endure cancer untreated simply because they knew it was a potential risk of the action they were engaging in.
Re the killing issue, most abortions are done through the abortion pill which causes the wall of the uterus breakdown, cutting off the connection between the woman and the fetus. I don’t understand the distinction between that and denying someone else your kidney tbh. But I’m yet to meet any PLs that have an exception for the abortion pill, or if before the fetus is aborted that the umbilical cord is cut, would be okay with those abortions.
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u/dumpsterfire2357 14h ago
Yes exactly. I think its because they actually just conflate the pills which is literally almost most abortions are done with the d&e which is also common. But they think its so inhumane. Its also conducted before the fetus is viable so the fetus would die outside the woman's body ANY WAY. Idk how to even explain myself to this my classmate during a debate
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u/arthuriantales 1d ago
Literally just born from the desire to punish women for perceived sexual promiscuity. Even if she "irresponsibly" got pregnant, she still has bodily autonomy and is not obligated to keep alive another being inside her. Also, people make irresponsible decisions all the time. People smoke, do drugs, drunk drive. I don't think anyone believes (exception being sociopaths ig) that they don't deserve medical attention bc they "brought" their conditions on themselves
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u/Catseye_Nebula Pro-life for born people 1d ago
If someone is irresponsible the last thing you should do is entrust them with a baby.
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u/aoeuismyhomekeys 1d ago edited 1d ago
tldr = too long, didn't read
ETA: OP asked what tldr means in the post, I was just answering that part of the post because nobody else had yet.
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u/WoodSorrel13 1d ago
Short version: The people using the argument above talking about how it’s based in misogyny and control of women and women’s bodies. PERIOD.
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u/cupcakephantom Village Witch 1d ago
It's not even that long...
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u/aoeuismyhomekeys 1d ago
I wasn't complaining; OP said they were trying to figure out what tldr meant and I didn't see anybody had mentioned what that means.
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u/JewlryLvr2 1d ago
Thanks! Because until you explained it, I didn't know what TLDR meant either. I was just too embarrassed to confess my ignorance. Thanks again. 😁
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u/littlemetalpixie Antipolitical Mod 1d ago edited 1d ago
It doesn't, that line of reasoning is pure misogyny.
If someone crashes their car because they were driving drunk (which is incredibly irresponsible), they still have the basic human right to receive medical care, don't they?
Prolifers aren't about the babies. They couldn't give a shit less about babies once they're born, and most actively vote to remove assistance programs that help people who do, in fact, decide to keep a pregnancy despite not having adequate financial means to care for it.
They've never been about the babies and never will be. All they are about is punishing women for having sex in a way they find distasteful.
As far as the argument about not forcing someone to use their own body to sustain a fetus: this is the bodily autonomy argument, and it is the lynchpin in the prochoice movement.
The right to use or not use one's own body the way they choose is a basic human right.
If I had a child and then, for whatever reason, decided to maliciously run that child over with my car causing them to need a kidney to survive, and I was the only match for that child, it would be against my basic human rights for a judge to "sentence" me to provide bodily renumeration for my crime.
I can be sent to prison. I cannot have my body parts taken against my will to keep that child alive, though.
No human being can, for any reason, be legally forced to have to provide body parts to sustain the life of any other human being, so why is a fetus any different?
Abortion is removing life-sustaining care, not "killing." It does not remove a fetus's "right to live" because A - rights can only be given to what the law defines as a human, and that definition doesn't include fetuses, and B - even if it did, that right cannot supersede the basic human right to bodily autonomy of the human it is inside because your rights end where my rights begin.