If you push someone into the water and they drown, you just committed murder.
Maybe you don't think that the laws should work that way. But they do.
An unborn baby is dependent on it's mother because that's how biology works. You're taking action to withdraw support. According to how our laws work, that's murder. Failing to donate blood is inaction, and not a crime.
Fair point. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm curious if donating blood could fall under that rule. I'd much rather donate blood than jump into a lake and try to save someone.
Being pregnant is an active form of life support. You are actively working to keep someone alive. A better analogy would be you wake up to discover a person is drowning, and holding onto you to stay alive. Can you walk away or are you required to hold onto that person until they can safely exist without your help? Legally speaking, you are under no obligation to continue being their life raft.
Heck, even if you shoot someone and it turns out you are the only biological match, no one can compel you to give up your blood and organs to save the victims life. You are prosecuted for the shooting, not for denying use of your body. unless we want to lock people up for having sex I don’t see what you do here.
Just because biology makes one life dependent on another’s body, it does not follow that it has a right to use that body for its continued survival. If you believe that it is the parents fault for creating that life in the first place, do they give up their bodily autonomy forever? can I demand my father’s kidney if it would keep me alive? It’s his fault I exist.
Removing that "life support" is an action, I'm pro choice for other reasons but this much is clear. It's not like unflexing a bicep, you have to even have a procedure, whether a proper one or back alley one or even a pill, you can't just "unflex" or "sit back" to end an ongoing pregnancy, while being pregnant takes more effort than not, that doesn't make it an action.
Are you arguing that pregnancy is not sufficiently “an action” to take action against continuing it? I’m curious, if you found out you became someone’s life support machine would you feel you should be legally compelled to continue providing that life support? How much does their dependence on you have to affect your wellbeing before you consider your position as their life support “an action”?
Under no other circumstance would people question that you have a right to discontinue your aid, but it becomes really objectionable if a fetus is involved.
Are you arguing that pregnancy is not sufficiently “an action” to take action against continuing it?
The very fact that you have to deliberately end it means it is not an action, if it was an action you could just stop doing it, just like I cam stop flexing, singing, running, standing by stopping effort rather than applying more. However for example, being laid down isn't an action, to stop lying down I have to put effort in, no matter how much I relax effort I won't stand up.
I’m curious, if you found out you became someone’s life support machine would you feel you should be legally compelled to continue providing that life support?
Not through a body autonomy argument, through a self preservation argument sometimes. I say sometimes because in the case of a vast majority of pregnancies where an abortion is wanted it was due to negligence, and when taking into account your hypothetical conveniently forgot that in this situation it is almost always your fault/negligence that they are on life support. Your hypothetical is more akin to rape or burst condom, and in those cases, yes, the self preservation argument holds up, which is why I said sometimes.
Let me rephrase your hypothetical, if there was a relatively inexpensive action someone must take before doing activity X that causes this unwilling person to be put on your life support, but you didn't take that action, then yes, I think they should be forced to keep the person alive, they're your responsibility why should they die because you were negligent? That would be fucked up, how would you feel if a court ruled against you, if you were being kept alive by a bad driver's blood who caused the accident that left you in need of blood in the first place? Especially if the bad driver was at low risk to keep you alive as well.
However foetuses are not people, so, I can be pro choice anyway.
In your modified hypothetical, the action that is illegal is putting someone on life support because it violates their bodily autonomy. The charged individual would be prosecuted for that violation of another’s bodily autonomy, not for denying the use of their own body as a life support system. The analogous act in the abortion scenario would actually be the sex which resulted in creating the parasitic life. I very much doubt we want to prosecute people for creating life, just because that life didn’t get to say whether it wanted to be created or not.
As a side question: why do you think aborting a pregnancy conceived from rape or a broken condom is self-preservation while aborting from consensual, unprotected sex is not? A fetus made from a busted condom is no more dangerous to its host than a fetus made from unprotected sex. I have a feeling I’m not following what you mean by self preservation.
In your modified hypothetical, the action that is illegal is putting someone on life support because it violates their bodily autonomy.
Yes.
The charged individual would be prosecuted for that violation of another’s bodily autonomy, not for denying the use of their own body as a life support system.
Yes.
The analogous act in the abortion scenario would actually be the sex which resulted in creating the parasitic life.
No, if you recall we are debating from a pro lifer's "foetus = person" perspective. From their so called perspective you've put a person on life support, not just a parasite.
As a side question: why do you think aborting a pregnancy conceived from rape or a broken condom is self-preservation while aborting from consensual, unprotected sex is not?
I thought I explained it: both would be self preservation, but killing another to preserve yourself due to your negligence isn't fair, being raped, or a condom breaking isn't negligence.
No, if you recall we are debating from a pro lifer's "foetus = person" perspective. From their so called perspective you've put a person on life support, not just a parasite.
Parasitic describes the relationship of two biological entities, including two people. If you forced me to exist on your blood supply, our relationship is parasitic: I gain from using your resources and you lose out on those resources. But let’s leave the nomenclature out of it. Creating a fetus, a person, is the act now in question. Should creating fetuses be illegal? By creating a fetus you are essentially forcing into existence a person that is forced to use another person’s body as a life support system. Ergo, you either say creating life is illegal because a fetus did not choose to be created, or concede that creating a fetus is not illegal.
If we agree that creating life is legal (feel free to disagree, but that is a whole different debate) then now you have someone on life support who was put there legally, in which case they, just like any other person, do not have the right to use your body as life support.
I thought I explained it: both would be self preservation, but killing another to preserve yourself due to your negligence isn't fair, being raped, or a condom breaking isn't negligence.
Again, the issue you have seems to be with creating fetuses. I mean, you could force all children to have some sort of reversible sterilization procedure and reverse it only when adults decide they want to conceive. But otherwise, sex is a risky act in terms of creating life, even while using birth control.
By creating a fetus you are essentially forcing into existence a person that is forced to use another person’s body as a life support system. Ergo, you either say creating life is illegal because a fetus did not choose to be created, or concede that creating a fetus is not illegal.
Firstly it's not illegal vs legal, it's unethical vs ethical we're discussing. Secondly, I'm not saying pro lifers are right, I'm just here to say the body autonomy argument doesn't hold up in the case of pregnancies due to negligence to those that believe a foetus is a person, not me personally! You seem to be taking this way off track.
Firstly it's not illegal vs legal, it's unethical vs ethical we're discussing.
Fine, in that case: Is creating life unethical? If so, we should make laws that reflect that. Personally, I don’t see how producing zygotes is unethical.
Secondly, I'm not saying pro lifers are right, I'm just here to say the body autonomy argument doesn't hold up in the case of pregnancies due to negligence to those that believe a foetus is a person, not me personally! You seem to be taking this way off track.
I understand you are not pro life, but you’ve made the counter argument that my argument for abortion on the basis of body autonomy is brought down by the idea of negligence. Therefore, i have to understand why you think negligence would weaken my argument. I’m not trying to take this off track, I’m countering your counter by saying negligence does not weaken the body autonomy argument.
Here is how I think our discussion is progressing:
1) Body autonomy argument - no living thing has the right over you to use your body. This holds for fetuses, children, adults alike.
2)Your counter argument - if through your negligence you cause a living thing to rely on your body, you lose body autonomy.
3) My counter - negligence does not result in losing body autonomy privileges; however, the negligent act itself may or may not be unethical/illegal and privy to prosecution. Ex. You can be prosecuted for forcing someone to rely on your body for their survival, but you yourself can not be forced to continue allowing them the use of your body.
You do not lose your body autonomy privileges under any other scenario, so why people think a fetus changes everything is not logically sound, and ultimately why the negligence counter argument fails.
This is also why we’ve been led down the road to “is it unethical to produce life”. The only act left to question the moral integrity of is the act of producing life which cannot consent to being created. This position is of course absurd because existence is a prerequisite to consent.
You are 100% right that that is the proper response, but just for laughs, let's try to expand on OPs thought experiment: imagine the family dinner after her sister dies as a result of her refusing the blood transfusion.
"Actually mom, it's called bodily autonomy, look it up"
It feels as if without the feigned outrage acting in place of an argument, the whole thing sounds a lot less compelling.
In fact it's not like that at all because your hypothetical Frankenstein's monster doesn't require feeding on your body's nutrients to survive, which is the key point.
Except, unlike a person you’re donating blood to, you didn’t create them. The fact that you make light of killing another person by equating them with a “tenant” shows an incredible lack of basic principle.
A baby living in a mother isn’t like some room mate living in your house that you can just kick out. And why does someone have the right to end a human life for the sake of convenience? I will not try to make light of motherhood- I know fully well that having a baby is a massive burden. It’s painful, it’s 9 months of constant discomfort, and it’s thousands of dollars down the drain. In every way, a baby is hard and burdensome.
But despite that, the taking of a human life is far worse than the turmoils of motherhood. I won’t pretend that having a baby is easy, but thinking that killing a child is better than taking responsibility for it is mind bogglingly twisted. Babies aren’t fucking tenants. GTFO.
I get what you're saying. I am a mother of 4 children and would never have chosen abortion, even to save myself. Being pregnant is horrible. I have a condition that causes my joints to become extra stretchy during pregnancy, and it causes chronic pain until after birth. I have had 2 C-sections and a vbac (vaginal birth after C-section). C-sections are major surgery that makes life extremely painful for a couple of weeks and the incision has a tendency to get raw after the second one. The vbac ripped me to my rectum and now sex is painful, I rip and bleed often when I have sex with my husband and the lack of sex has caused issues. Still I do not regret anything, I adore my children.
That being said, abortion is a right that women fought for and for good reasons. There can be countless ones, she's young and can't afford to even carry them, she was raped and doesn't want to have to go through anymore trauma, she doesn't want to destroy her body, the baby will have any number of conditions that the mother doesn't want to spend her life caring for, or maybe she simply doesn't want a baby.
Where would we draw the line? Does the 15 year old incest/rape victim deserve it but not the 15 year old who chose to not use a condom? The woman who's baby is growing their organs outside their body or the woman who just lost her job, life savings, and house in a nasty divorce? No one should get to decide who "gets" to have an abortion and who should "pay" for their mistakes.
All the effort spent making abortion illegal or regulating it and alternately keeping it legal or removing regulations should be funneled into better birth control options in an "opt-out" system (meaning males and females begin birth control at puberty and can opt-out when they choose, hopefully as well grounded adults with enough resources to care for a child), better prenatal care, genetic counseling and therapy to prevent birth defects and genetic conditions, therefore decreasing or eliminating the need for abortions.
It's better to remove the problem at it's source than run around trying to deal with the consequences by taking sides against one another. We should all be on the same team.
It's not though. If I'm giving a life saving blood transfusion to someone dying in the hospital I can at any time decide that I want the needle pulled out. A positive action to end a passive action is different than just a positive action.
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u/paracelsus23 Sep 11 '18
Fucking hell this is "explanation" is stupid. It's a huge false equivalence.
Our laws make a huge distinction between action and inaction.
If you see someone drowning, you have NO legal obligation to help them. You can stand there and laugh and video tape and you'll be completely fine:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/26/us/florida-teens-no-charges-drowning-man/index.html
If you push someone into the water and they drown, you just committed murder.
Maybe you don't think that the laws should work that way. But they do.
An unborn baby is dependent on it's mother because that's how biology works. You're taking action to withdraw support. According to how our laws work, that's murder. Failing to donate blood is inaction, and not a crime.