So, let's say that Roe v. Wade is overturned. . .

[xiphias]

Fundamentally, it seems to me that, while the right to privacy IS a vitally important issue, there's a more fundamental right that Roe v. Wade protects -- the right to control one's own body.

There is quite literally no right more fundamental than the right to do what you want to do with your own body, to the extent that it doesn't infringe on other people. And that sentence, right there, sums up the whole abortion debate in one sentence. If you think a fetus is a person, then restricting access to abortion is potentially justifiable, because you're weighing the rights of two people against each other.

However, f you think a blastocyst is in no reasonable sense a human being, as I, for instance, feel, then a restriction of access to abortion is simply an example of an abrogation of the most fundamental right a person can have -- the right to their own body.

Restricting access to abortion to a woman who wants one is therefore a way of forcing her to work on behalf of a third party -- the fetus (who may or may not have legal standing.)

Could you make an argument based on the 13th Amendment therefore?

For what it's worth: I think that that any law in reference to abortion is inherently a stopgap measure. The only reasonable solution is technological: artificial wombs.

Fundamentally, what should happen is that any woman who doesn't want to have her body used as an incubator for a parasite, for whatever reason, should be allowed to have that fetus removed and placed into an artificial womb in which it could grow to term.

If a fetus does have any sort of legal standing, such a step would protect its hypothetical right to existence, without removing the mother's non-hypothetical right to control of her own person.

Comments

[holzman.livejournal.com]

There is quite literally no right more fundamental than the right to do what you want to do with your own body, to the extent that it doesn't infringe on other people. And that sentence, right there, sums up the whole abortion debate in one sentence. If you think a fetus is a person, then restricting access to abortion is potentially justifiable, because you're weighing the rights of two people against each other.

I'm afraid I'm not buying it. Even if you regard a fetus as a human being in every sense of the term, there is no legal or moral basis for requiring me to risk life and limb for the benefit of another -- which is why no one can require me to donate my organs even though a full grown adult (about whom there is no debate whether they are fully human and have legal standing) may very well die because I choose not to do so.

When anti-abortionists base their position on "a fetus is a baby," they're bullshitting you, themselves, or both of you. The only actual basis for restricting abortions that has ever been at the basis of any law against it is a belief that women should be punished for sex, and we should never let them off the hook for that position.

And if an anti-abortionist tries to tell you otherwise, ask them when they intend to pass legislation instituting a lottery for who gives up their lungs for a transplant. I guarantee fewer than one in a thousand will agree with this idea, and each of them will explain that pregnancy's different because the woman has to be held "responsible" by being forced to carry it to term.

As to the artificial womb approach, I'm curious what the relative cost and risks to the woman associated with such a process would be. If it increases either, then I can't see it as what should happen at this point in history.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Well, when I talk about an "artificial womb" I'm discussing a science-fictional device, and can therefore assign it whatever characteristics I want. I therefore postulate a form of terminating a pregnancy which is in no sense more traumatic than a current abortion, but which nonetheless maintains the integrity of the blastocyst or fetus, in such a way that it can be moved to the artificial womb where it can continue developing.

THAT'S actually the tricky part, rather than the developement of the artificial womb per se. . .

[theletterelle.livejournal.com]

I think a more comparable idea would be a lottery to force someone to give up a kidney for transplant. It won't kill them, and it'll save a life.

But I agree, it's their "personal responsibility" theme applied here. Funny how personal responsibility never applies to corporations that poison water and air, or the people that make up those corporations.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

I think a more comparable idea would be a lottery to force someone to give up a kidney for transplant. It won't kill them, and it'll save a life.

Pregnancies have the potential to kill. Randomizing what body part is taken might be more comparable, but eliminating the risk of death is not.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

Taking a single kidney also has the chance to kill -- it is a major operation, with risks from anesthesia, infection, etc.

[theletterelle.livejournal.com]

I'm generalizing with your standard, run of the mill normal pregancy. I suppose a kidney operation also has the potential to kill, if the donor has medical risk factors.

I still maintain that forcing a pregnancy to term, with possible risk of death, is more comparable to forcing kidney donation than forcing the donation of a pair of lungs, which will certainly kill.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Howabout the donation of a single lung?

[theletterelle.livejournal.com]

Is a single-lung transplant commonly done?

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

maybe a portion of a liver would be better. Kidney leaves you vulnerable should you ever have a bad kidney.

[navrins]

I think it is justifiable to assert that a parent has a responsibility to risk life and limb for his/her child, even in the absence of any such responsibility toward any other person. Not saying I agree with that claim, but it is not an uncommon belief.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

Unless you can show a history of laws requiring parents to donate organs they need to survive in order to save their child's life, I don't think this holds water. People may think there's a "responsibility," but it doesn't rise to the level of coercion that anti-abortion forces have historically placed on women.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

And if an anti-abortionist tries to tell you otherwise, ask them when they intend to pass legislation instituting a lottery for who gives up their lungs for a transplant. I guarantee fewer than one in a thousand will agree with this idea, and each of them will explain that pregnancy's different because the woman has to be held "responsible" by being forced to carry it to term.

The difference is that in the vast majority of cases, a pregnant woman has actively chosen to take steps which created a measurable risk of pregnancy. If you tried the argument based on a lottery amongst a small group of smokers to provide a lung donor for a non-smoking cancer sufferer known to have been exposed to the secondary smoke of those same smokers, the analogy would work better, and the morality of it would start to look rather different, IMO.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

If you tried the argument based on a lottery amongst a small group of smokers to provide a lung donor for a non-smoking cancer sufferer known to have been exposed to the secondary smoke of those same smokers, the analogy would work better, and the morality of it would start to look rather different, IMO.

I'm not sure I understand. Are you seriously suggesting that such a lottery could possibly be considered legal or moral?

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

Legal, no. Morally, I find it quite attractive right now, but I may feel differently once the current smoking ban debate here in the UK has been resolved.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid that, like the morality of an anti-choice position, the morality of such a lottery escapes me.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

It's the morality of cleaning up after your mistakes.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

As with the argument that banning abortion is the "morality of cleaning up after your mistakes," I'm not buying it. It's the pseudo-morality of punishing people who make choices you don't like, and nothing but.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

*grin* You know me so little, that's almost funny.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

Then why single out smokers for this lottery, and not other polluters? (Hint: if you've ever driven or ridden in a motor vehicle, your "morality" plants you in the lottery.)

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

I am an ex-smoker, so I was in already.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

I can't help but notice you neglected to answer my question.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

Yes, because the additional information contained in my answer renders your question irrelevant. Further, you appear to be assuming that I have moral objections to smoking and to women having sex, but do not have moral objections to the use of cars, when in fact the reverse is true.