Post by Cody™ on Jan 22, 2019 13:56:18 GMT
Jan 22, 2019 11:55:15 GMT @graham said:
A fetus doesn't have rights.
Even if it did, it's rights would not trump those of a person whose body it was using.
I've used this analogy before : suppose person A has a heart attack. Person B agrees to an operation which will connect person A's circulatory system to person B's. So person B's heart pumps for both of them. (I'm not saying this is currently possible. It's just a hypothetical to demonstrate the principle.)
After a time, person B changes his mind. He wants person A disconnected. With no hearts or heart machines available, this will mean that person A will die.
My view is that person B has a right to bodily autonomy which allows him to disconnect his body from person A, even if it costs A his life.
Person A also has a right to bodily autonomy, which also allows him him to be disconnected from B if he wants to be. However, his right to bodily autonomy does not allow him to force B to remain connected against B's wishes. He can control his own body, he cannot control other peoples.
If we took the position that one person's "right to life" trumped other people's right to bodily autonomy, it would have drastic consequences. For example, there is a shortage of organs for transplant. An overwhelming "right to life" would mean that Doctors would be justified in kidnapping people off the street and forcing them to donate kidneys, lungs, parts of their liver, etc - anything you could remove from a person without killing them.
Obviously we don't do that, because we accept that people have a right to control their own bodies and that this right does not vanish just because another person needs their body.
So no, proclaiming some "right to life" of a fetus doesn't do anything to make abortion less justified.
First of all the word fetus comes from the Latin word meaning “young child”. Second once we grant that fetus’(young child) are human beings, which biologically they are. It should settle the question of their right to live.
The right to live doesn’t increase with age and size. Otherwise that would mean toddlers and adolescents have less right to live than adults.
As for your little hypothetical scenario. Comparing a babies rights to a mother’s rights is unequal. Because what is at stake in abortion is the mother’s lifestyle, as opposed to the babies life.
The most reasonable thing for society is to expect an adult to live temporarily with an inconvenience if the only alternative is killing a child.

