Taboo Topics (Heavily moderated)

[Riku]

Okay, bear in mind, doesn't really make sense to assume that they're all anti-woman when just as many people who consider themselves pro-life are women. Not all republicans are old white dudes. they're just the ones in office.

[Lambeth]

Women can be anti-sex just as well as any Man.

[Riku]

Okay, but that's different. That's just having an unrealistic standard, not directly attacking half the population.

[SaintCrazy]

Can I get a little more background on the Bodily Autonomy concept?

It seems pretty self-evident at first glance, but how is the idea backed up? Basically, why are basic human rights limited for those who depend on another body for their survival? And at what point does that dependency move to being independent? One could argue that because a human newborn baby cannot survive without some other human's assistance, it doesn't have bodily autonomy either. You could also extend that idea to people on life support or are otherwise injured - does the hospital have the inherent right to kick them out for using their resources?

[Cori]

So here's my logic, saint.

A hospital is not a person. Therefore, a hospital does not have bodily autonomy and it cannot consent. Additionally hospitals make cheddar by caring for patients, and I'm pretty sure that applies to patients on life support too, so there's no profit for hospitals to kick someone out.

A baby is a person and therefore it has bodily autonomy but it neither understands the concept nor is it capable of giving consent. Theoretically a child's parent(s) would consent to having the baby in their care, and if they stopped giving consent they could adopt the kid out to someone who WOULD consent.

But a parent/child relationship doesn't count as bodily autonomy in my book.

Bodily autonomy means that someone can't use your BODY without your constant consent. You have the right to your body, and no one else can make you do things with your body. It's why a father isn't obligated to donate bone marrow to an ailing child, and it's why people have to consent to being an organ donor when they die. If you don't sign up to be an organ donor, then your body may not be used for anything after you die.

A human fetus is using the mother's uterus. The fetus can't survive outside the mother's body, and it gets all of its' nutrients from the mother. In that sense it's by definition a parasite that the mother consents to having inside her. If the mother does not consent, she should not be OBLIGATED to let the fetus use her body. She should be able to take the fetus out.

And in that sense, not allowing a woman to have an abortion means that a corpse currently has more rights to its own body than the mother does.

[Kamak]

Until such a time that the fetus is able to live physically autonomous of the mother, it's generally considered to be a part of her and fall under her purview of bodily autonomy (at least within the scope of this concept). Yes, a newborn infant needs to be cared for, but it is no longer physically attached to the inside of a human being's body. The same can be said for those who are vegetative. They all have the basic human right of bodily autonomy because they do not physically depend on another individual's body.

In effect, this means that the fetus should logically be considered a part of the woman's body until it becomes autonomous of her body.

[TheStranger]

It all comes down to wether or not you view a growing fetus as a person. I dont, so I have no issues whatsoever with abortions, who's having them, and for what reason. For the people who DO, there really is no recourse, if you genuinely belive that abortion means taking an innocent, thinking beings life, then it is for all intents and purposes murder, and no amount of civil discussion and evidence is ever going to change that. I dont think there is a solution to the problem.

[Cynical Slob]

I don't really have anything I have to add, but I just want to agree with the notion that it's an incredibly integral part to both sides, and you won't be able to shift the idea in any short period of time. It'd seriously suck to be pregnant or have your partner be pregnant and you both know you won't be able to comfortably support the kid, but I guess it'd be better to solve that problem before it begins with contraceptive. In saying that, though, it really does put people in an awful position if the state wants to ban contraception and abortion, like I know some people want it to do.

[Cori]

If women had easier access to birth control then there would be a much smaller need for abortions in the US. That's what I feel. There are too many old fogeys in the government who don't want females to take birth control, and then they talk down on people who get pregnant because they could not get birth control.

There are even some doctors who refuse to give a woman a hysterectomy if she hasn't had a child yet, even if the woman has stated several times that she doesn't want children.

And on the subject of a fetus being human or not, I believe that it shouldn't matter if a fetus is considered a person already. By the law of bodily autonomy, it's still dependent on the use of another person's body to survive. If that person does not consent, they should not be obligated to put up with having the fetus growing inside them--especially since pregnancy causes permanent changes to a woman's body and hormones. Not to mention that pregnancy and childbirth itself is cumbersome, painful, and sometimes dangerous to the mother.

[SaintCrazy]

It all comes down to wether or not you view a growing fetus as a person.

This is the problem. If you view a fetus as a person with all the rights of a child, it doesn't really matter if that person is chained to another's body. Heck, you could even view the fetus and mother as having the same set of rights that conjoined twins have - they are both considered as equal persons and one does not have the right to kill the other.

And on the subject of a fetus being human or not, I believe that it shouldn't matter if a fetus is considered a person already. By the law of bodily autonomy, it's still dependent on the use of another person's body to survive. If that person does not consent, they should not be obligated to put up with having the fetus growing inside them--

That's the problem - its not a universally accepted law. If you ask different people what defines a person, you're going to get many different answers. There is no scientific definition of what defines a person. There is one that defines what a human body is, what a living thing is, but not for whatever gives us a "soul" or consciousness or whatever really makes us a person as opposed to just a colony of cells

A person has the right to life. A non-person does not. If we can't decide what defines a person, the question of abortion will never have an objectively "right" answer.

in the meantime, though, I still think we should honor a woman's right to choose whether or not abortion is morally correct or not - it's not a perfect solution since it still opens the possibility of doing something morally wrong, but IMO its the best middle ground. It's not right to be forced to go through pregnancy and childbirth if you're not prepared to do so - even if the pregnancy could have been prevented, saying you absolutely MUST live with the consequences does sound a lot like enforcing punishment for having sex.

[Lambeth]

Living with the consequences is fine as long as there are alternatives, ways to avoid those consequences.

[D-vid]

It all comes down to wether or not you view a growing fetus as a person.

This is the problem. If you view a fetus as a person with all the rights of a child, it doesn't really matter if that person is chained to another's body. Heck, you could even view the fetus and mother as having the same set of rights that conjoined twins have - they are both considered as equal persons and one does not have the right to kill the other.

And on the subject of a fetus being human or not, I believe that it shouldn't matter if a fetus is considered a person already. By the law of bodily autonomy, it's still dependent on the use of another person's body to survive. If that person does not consent, they should not be obligated to put up with having the fetus growing inside them--

That's the problem - its not a universally accepted law. If you ask different people what defines a person, you're going to get many different answers. There is no scientific definition of what defines a person. There is one that defines what a human body is, what a living thing is, but not for whatever gives us a "soul" or consciousness or whatever really makes us a person as opposed to just a colony of cells

A person has the right to life. A non-person does not. If we can't decide what defines a person, the question of abortion will never have an objectively "right" answer.

in the meantime, though, I still think we should honor a woman's right to choose whether or not abortion is morally correct or not - it's not a perfect solution since it still opens the possibility of doing something morally wrong, but IMO its the best middle ground. It's not right to be forced to go through pregnancy and childbirth if you're not prepared to do so - even if the pregnancy could have been prevented, saying you absolutely MUST live with the consequences does sound a lot like enforcing punishment for having sex.

That's the thing Cori was talking about. Even if you consider a fetus a full person, bodily autonomy of the mother dictates that she is in no way obligated to give her body to keep the fetus alive. The same way you could not be forced to give your kidney to your dad.

[SaintCrazy]

I was saying that not everybody can agree that bodily autonomy can define what a person is or what rights a person can have.

It seems somewhat intuitive but it isn't absolute by any means, just another idea or belief. There's no external reason that bodily autonomy matters.

You could be forced to give a kidney to your dad, bodily autonomy just suggests that you shouldn't. It's a belief, not a law.

[Cori]

I'm pretty sure if a doctor forcibly took out someone's kidney to donate to the person's dad, they would be arrested and lose their medical license forever.

[SaintCrazy]

Because our culture believes it would be wrong. Feasibly, another culture could believe that its okay (maybe they really emphasize caring for your family, etc). You can't assume that everyone will agree.

There are plenty of people that won't agree that bodily autonomy matters in the case of abortion. The argument is appealing, and may convince some, but it doesn't convince everybody because not everybody agrees with the concept.

I did a google search on bodily autonomy the other day and found a number of conservative websites challenging this argument (they were higher up on the list than promoters of it, notably). It's far from a universally accepted human right or natural law.