I really enjoyed reading your comment and it gave me a new perspective. I had never thought of this issue in terms of using your body to preserve the life of someone else.

Just to continue the discussion, in the case where the fetus is the product of a consensual sexual relationship (not rape), morally does that make a difference? In that case are you now ethically required to save the fetus's life?

The fetus would not exist had it not been for your actions and perhaps should not have to suffer pain and death (depending on how long the pregnancy is).

Not arguing for or against, im of the opinion that its very personal and complex.

It is an interesting question that complicates the issue.

It partially comes down to the question of whether the act of consenting to sex necessarily implies consent to carry a baby to term. It's not clear that that's true. It's not even clear that if you did consent to get pregnant, that you have a continuous obligation to take the baby to term.

To build an imperfect analogy, consider a case where you have been asked to start donating blood every week because you have a rare blood type, and there is a sick person who will die if you don't donate. Let's assume you consent and begin donating. Do you have a right to revoke consent and stop donating at any time? What if the blood donation is taking an unexpected, significant toll on your health? What if the doctors determine that despite the donation, the receiver isn't getting better and will definitely die in a matter of months? What if you changed you mind and you just don't want to anymore? Do we really want to live in a society where once you've given consent to have your body used, you can't revoke it afterwards?

To build another analogy, let's say you behave recklessly and drive drunk getting into a car wreck with your friend and they get seriously injured and hospitalized. It's so bad that they need an organ donation and you're a match. Are you legally obligated to surrender your bodily autonomy and give up an organ to save your friend's life? We might say that's the ethical thing to do, but can we say that we want that to be a legal obligation and you will be coerced by the violence of the state into doing it?

Comparing a natural process like pregnancy to an extraordinary medical procedure is disingenuous.

The relationship between a mother and her child during a pregnancy is not an artificial construct: it's not created by legal obligations, not by societal norms. It's a basic reality that all just laws and mores simply have to recognize. Similar to how gravity is simply a physical reality: any rational understanding of the natural world just has to recognize that massive objects exert force on other massive objects.

The relationship between McFall and Shimp, on the other hand, was predicated on legal and social conventions. Bone marrow donation is not a normal, naturally occurring process. Shimp did not have a natural obligation to donate bone marrow to his cousin, though it would have been an extraordinary gesture of charity towards McFall.

The error of the abortion argument here is in asserting that the natural relationship between mother and child is the same as any other sort of contractual relationship between consenting adults in the modern world. This is simply false. Mothers do have a moral obligation to their unborn children. Their bodily autonomy is not absolute, and they do not have the right to abort their child in the same way that Shimp had the right to refuse to donate bone marrow.

> so even if you could prove to me that the fetus is conscious at the moment of conception

Based on _this_ assumption, then I would add the following:

Rights are not absolute. Yes, the woman has the right to bodily autonomy, but it can't infringe on the baby's basic right to living. Similar to how you have the right to bear arms, but that right can be limited or forfeited if you start to threaten to shoot random people. That's why we say both matter.

On the contrary, if you look at, say, a Catholic viewpoint, the modern conception of liberty, where you are a sort of free-floating mind, "subject to your will alone", all prevenient natural relations dissolved, or rather transmuted into mere contracts of volition, without natural obligations to impinge your freedom and preferring "to have neither a whence nor a whither, to be neither from nor for, but to be wholly at liberty" (so Ratzinger), is identified as exactly the root of disagreement in a host of issues, from abortion (no mother-child relation), to divorce (no husband-wife relation), to gender and sexuality (no body-self relation).

If I follow you correctly, it seems to me that the root disagreement is not whether these relationships exist. They obviously do.

The question is when it is permissible to sever or alter these relationships. Catholics might say that divorce is impermissible because the husband/wife relations is sanctified by god and is permanent. They might say that god never makes mistakes mismatching the soul (self) with the body. They might say that god blessed the woman with a relation with her fetus.

For those living back here in reality, there is no god setting up these relationships with a grand plan. We are the collective authors of our future, and it's up to us through conversation and education to decided what kind of world we want to build. Maybe we'll decide that the old ways are good, and maybe we'll decide that they're not.

Ultimately, the choice is up to us.

Being in control feels empowering, but perhaps it is merely a coping mechanism we tell ourselves to feel better, regardless of reality.

https://trendguardian.medium.com/free-will-a-rich-fairy-tale...

Have you ever questioned if "choice" was merely propaganda by the elite to sell a certain lifestyle?

Ex: "Women's rights" disguised as "the right to have sex without consequences" regardless of gender?

Have you ever questioned if "pro-life" was merely propaganda by the religious elite to enforce a certain lifestyle that gives them control over people?

Ex: "Right to life" disguised as "the obligation of people to live the lifestyle we want to force them to live"?

Fundamentally, the pro-choice side of the aisle is the side of individual sovereignty and freedom. That includes preserving your right to live a more traditional, conservative life if that's what you so choose. I'm personally of the opinion that many, if not most, women when given sufficient information and life experience, would choose the more traditional, motherhood/housewife lifestyle.

Conversely, the pro-life side of the aisle is one of coercion and slavery. It's the side that attempts to force people (specifically women in this case) to serve the role that the conservative elite want them to serve, regardless of whether or not they consent to it.

In my opinion, the pro-life/anti-abortion ideology is fundamentally un-American, undemocratic, and has no place in a free and open society that values individual sovereignty.

Regardless of your abortion beliefs, the question stems from: if the idea of "choice" itself is a lie promulgated to push agendas, because this concept is used in other instances to avoid responsibility - ex: anti-covid vaccines.

Choice is hardly a lie. It is a privilege.

The expansion of individual choice and sovereignty is one of the key outcomes of progress in civilization and society. Everything we've been doing for the past 12,000 years has been driven by the desire to be free to consume more, work less, and have more freedom to explore our selves and existence. Never before have there been so many people with the freedom to live such an intense variety of lifestyles.

Collectivist responsibility still exists, e.g. taxes, public health, rules of the road, because we will always live in resource constrained world where people necessarily must interact with each other. But more and more, we are able to carve out larger pockets of individual freedom.

It would be incredible to live in a world were we had such control over the spread of disease, that vaccination mandates becomes unnecessary. It would be incredible to live in a world where forced military drafts are long gone. Just like it is equally incredible that we now get to live in a country that doesn't allow chattel slavery.

I fail to see a legitimate reason as to why we must socially regress and revoke a woman's choice over the sanctity of her body.

> "the right to have sex without consequences"

Assuming everyone's consenting and taking care about diseases, why is this a bad thing? Outside the strictures of religious morality?

> Men effectively have this right

Uh, what? Men with guns will come to your house and take you to jail to enforce “consequences”.

The difference in scale between having a financial responsibility you’d probably need to be taken to court over if you denied it vs. being legally required to have a permanently body altering, very risky, possibly emotionally devastating years-long medical ordeal is not remotely the same scale of responsibility.

For having consensual sex with a woman? Not quite.

No, GP is right.

Men aren't free from at least financial responsibility for their biological offspring. Some people actually make the argument that since women have the right to abort, men should have the right to their own "financial/legal abortion" of their parental rights and responsibilities if the woman chooses to keep the baby against his consent.

> men should have the right to their own "financial/legal abortion" of their parental rights and responsibilities if the woman chooses to keep the baby against his consent.

Up until what point—until the baby is born? Or in Texas, would they have to decide in the first 6 weeks? Or are you arguing that the man should have the right to do this when the child is 1, or 5, or 10 years old?

Alright, I'll buy that argument. It still seems relatively small compared to the consequences imposed on the woman, but it's still a consequence.

That is the first interesting argument on abortion that I've seen in decades. I'm not sure that I agree, but it's interesting. I'm going to have to think about that.

There's a lot more here to stir your mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_aspects_of_the_a...