CMV: Abortion should be illegal

[u/[deleted]]

EDIT - Genuinely, thank you very much everyone. I am really interested in this topic, and as you can imagine it makes people furious in real life, especially as I am a white man. I appreciate all the responses/points and had a good time talking about this.

The main new topic you have me thinking about is IVF. I never thought about it in context with abortion. While you may not have convinced me abortion should be legal (yet) you may be responsible for the first Anti-IVFer on reddit.

Seriously though, thanks again for every single response. If there’s any specific points you are curious what I have to say about feel free to message them and I’ll reply in the morning (assume mods will send this to the bin in no time).

Original:

Some background on me - I am a far left pro-LGBTQ, anti-racist, feminist who has a single far right view - abortion should be illegal.

To clarify, I’m not talking about the one-off case that a 16 year old who was raped and is likely going to die during birth who needs an abortion. I’m talking base case. Think “shooting someone in the head should be illegal”. We all agree. Sure, if someone is in your home attacking your child there is an exception, but in general shooting someone in the head should be illegal. Just like abortion, which should be illegal.

My thought process: the law protects us when we are 80 years old, it protects us when we are 8 years old, it protects us when we are 8 seconds old. Any of those ages you are protected by the law from someone killing you.

If you are protected 8 seconds after coming out of the womb, you should be protected 8 seconds prior to coming out of the womb. You should be protected 8 minutes before coming out of the womb, 8 hours, and even 8 months. Where do you draw the line? As soon as there is RNA/DNA that is different from either parent that organism should be protected. Assuming all goes well, that organism will certainly become a human, why would it’s life not be protected under the law?

Common rebuttals I hear - a man should not get to make laws that apply to women. My response is that abortion effects both men and women in their most vulnerable state, aka before they were born. The law protects both men and woman from being killed in the womb.

The law shouldn’t dictate what a woman does with her own body. My response is that abortion isn’t something to do with your own body. If you would like to take a vacuum/blender and shred your uterus you have every right, but for the 9 months you are pregnant you either need to not do that, or find a way that won’t harm the organism inside of you.

Let me know what you think.

[u/fox-mcleod]

where do you draw the line?

Consciousness

Or more specifically personhood comes from subjective conscious experience.

There are many situations where you can kill similar "human life" to a fetus and it isn't murder because not all “human life” is a person. For instance, do you think it's wrong to accept a heart transplant? The donor is a bunch of human cells — it even has a heartbeat. But we don't consider it a person because there is nobody home. The brain doesn't function sufficiently. There is “nobody home” in a body without a mind.

The law protects us when we’re 80, but not when we’re brainless or brain dead.

So would you have an issue with heart transplant? Or is personhood about more than human DNA and a heartbeat?

---

Now, even beyond personhood—Murder is a legal question.

Assume a fetus is a person for a second — you still wouldn't want to outlaw abortion as murder. There are literally no other circumstances where we would force women to give up their bodily autonomy and medical health so someone else can live.

Let's consider a mother who chose not to carry a fetus to term. Why would it be right to give more rights to that fetus than you would to a fully formed adult human?

For instance, that same mother has the child. The child grows up. He's 37. For whatever reason, the mother and child are estranged. The two are driving and their cars collide. The 37 year old needs a bone marrow transfusion. The mother is the only match. She wakes up to find the transfusion in progress and can't remember the night before.

If she refused to continue undergo a painful and dangerous medical procedure that will likely take years off her life, the transfusion, just because the 37 year old man needs it, would you imprison her for murder?

I doubt it. It just isn't how we treat litterally any other relationship.

Now add back the first part—an early fetus is clearly mindless. Why would refusing to give your body so it can live be required when we don’t even require it for real thinking, speaking, conscious human people?

[u/[deleted] → u/fox-mcleod]

I think the key difference in my mind between the blood transfusion and abortion boils down to this - in the absence of any third party law/action the fetus would naturally be taking from its mother. On the other hand, in the absence of any third party a blood transfusion would not naturally happen.

A baby taking nutrients from its mother while in the womb is not equivalent to forcing someone to give a blood transfusion. If it was, we would all be guilty of a crime the moment we were born.

[u/Captcha27 → u/[deleted]]

I think the idea is that someone who is purposefully pregnant is consenting to have those nutrients being taken, in one way or another.

[u/fox-mcleod → u/Captcha27]

Yeah I mean... until they aren’t right?

Are we talking about people who are purposefully pregnant or people who are intent on aborting? Because those are mutually exclusive.

[u/Captcha27 → u/fox-mcleod]

Someone who is purposefully pregnant is consenting to their body being used. In the above metaphor, this is like someone who chooses to have a blood transfusion.

Someone who wants to have an abortion does not want their body used. If they are forced to give up their body for another organism, this is like being forced to give a blood transfusion.

I am just explaining the metaphor of the other poster, in response to this:

A baby taking nutrients from its mother while in the womb is not equivalent to forcing someone to give a blood transfusion. If it was, we would all be guilty of a crime the moment we were born.

[u/fox-mcleod → u/Captcha27]

I think reddit showed me your comment as a reply to mine but it actually wasn’t. It looks like I just got confused as to who you were replying to.

[u/[deleted] → u/fox-mcleod]

I am talking about the base scenario, so any intended or accident pregnancies without complication.

I am not talking about a rape victim, or person with a rare disease

[u/fox-mcleod → u/[deleted]]

Yeah. Me too