“My body, my choice” only makes sense when someone else’s life isn’t at stake.
Fun fact: If my younger sister was in a car accident and desperately needed a blood transfusion to live, and I was the only person on Earth who could donate blood to save her, and even though donating blood is a relatively easy, safe, and quick procedure no one can force me to give blood. Yes, even to save the life of a fully grown person, it would be ILLEGAL to FORCE me to donate blood if I didn’t want to.
See, we have this concept called “bodily autonomy.” It’s this….cultural notion that a person’s control over their own body is above all important and must not be infringed upon.
Like, we can’t even take LIFE SAVING organs from CORPSES unless the person whose corpse it is gave consent before their death. Even corpses get bodily autonomy.
To tell people that they MUST sacrifice their bodily autonomy for 9 months against their will in an incredibly expensive, invasive, difficult process to save what YOU view as another human life (a debatable claim in the early stages of pregnancy when the VAST majority of abortions are performed) is desperately unethical. You can’t even ask people to sacrifice bodily autonomy to give up organs they aren’t using anymore after they have died.
You’re asking people who can become pregnant to accept less bodily autonomy than we grant to dead bodies.
reblogging for commentary
But, assuming the mother wasn’t raped, the choice to HAVE a baby and risk sacrificing their “bodily autonomy” is a choice that the mother made. YOu don’t have to have sex with someone. Cases of rape aside, it isn’t ethical to say abortion is justified. The unborn baby has rights, too.
First point: Bodily autonomy can be preserved, even if another life is dependent on it. See again the example about the blood donation.
And here’s another point: When you say that “rape is the exception” you betray something FUNDAMENTALLY BROKEN about your own argument.
Because a fetus produced from sexual assault is biologically NO DIFFERENT than a fetus produced from consensual sex. No difference at all.
If one is alive, so is the other. If one is a person, so is the other. If one has a soul, then so does the other. If one is a little blessing that happened for a reason and must be protected, then so is the other.
When you say that “Rape is the exception” what you betray is this: It isn’t about a life. This isn’t about the little soul sitting inside some person’s womb, because if it was you wouldn’t care about HOW it got there, only that it is a little life that needs protecting.
When you say “rape is the exception” what you say is this: You are treating pregnancy as a punishment. You are PUNISHING people who have had CONSENSUAL SEX but don’t want to go through a pregnancy. People who DARED to have consensual sex without the goal of procreation in mind, and this is their “consequence.”
And that is gross.
^ THIS. This is this this THIS THIS THIS. THIS!!!!!
This is probably the strongest and well worded/supported argument for abortion that I have ever read.
I’ve made it clear that I’m pro-choice before. However, I do feel there is a flaw in your argument:
You talk about how we take bodily autonomy so far that even corpses get it when taking it away would do more harm than good. But if a corpse has an organ that can save another life, that organ should be put to use. If someone can give blood to save a life at minor inconvenience, they should be made to. One’s conveniance or feelings are less important than one’s life, or the quality thereof. While I agree with your pro-choice stance, I believe you are ultimately “Right for the wrong reasons”. And using a fundamentally broken practice to support your case.
Youre saying that the government should be able to force you to undergo medical procedures against your will to benefit other people? That you should not have the ability to consent when it comes to how others use your body if it benefits them?
And you don’t see the potential for that to be deeply abused and exploited basically immediately?
Actually, on second thoughts, wouldvit really be that bad. The government ALREADY takes freedoms away from people who show they aren’t responsible enough to have them. That’s what jail is for. So would this really be that different? Especially with the example of a corpse, which has no ability to want or suffer.
A lot of times that specifically comes down to religious respect, since a lot of people’s post-death wishes about their bodies are based on religious or cultural or ethnic beliefs.
And disrespecting and disregarding the religious/cultural/ethnic beliefs and personal wishes of someone because their body might be useful to you?
Thinking that you’re entitlement to someone else’s body is more important than their cultural traditions and religious beliefs? The cultural traditions and religious beliefs of their family?
Are you asking me personally? Or are you asking what I feel would be the right move on a larger scale, independent on personal feelings?
They are rhetorical questions, intended to make a point rather that illicit a specific answer.
You should read that and think “oh gosh, are my personal views on how a body should be handled post-death more important that the cultural and religious beliefs of that person, just because I think that person’s body could benefit me in a tangible way? Of course not. That sounds super entitled, arrogant, and insensitive. Why, on a larger scale, it even invokes shadows of colonialist thought and could easily be exploited to commit cultural genocide against marginalized ethnicity by denying them their traditions while profiting off their literal corpses. That’s terrible.”
You call it arrogant, but is it not also arrogant for them to place THEIR religious beliefs over my values?
Because the thing is, while I will happily coexist with various religious beliefs and even appreciate them so long as they do not threaten MY values, the very SECOND someone’s beliefs threaten something I care about, I WILL trample over them without hesitation or remorse. (If it were a loved one of mine who needed the organ, I would dig up the grave and dissect the body myself) Because I care about MY values more than I will ever care about anyone elses.
And in the second case, that strikes me as a very poor example since the colloniasts were not exploiting natives out of a need, or to protect their own lives, nor did they just limit themselves to ignoring religious beliefs. They murdered and stole out of GREED and that is very different to ignoring religious doctrine to save lives. Remember that some “religious doctrine” says that women should have their clitoris burned off because it’s sinful for them to feel pleasure during sex. Should this be simply accepted?
Their religious beliefs are only impacted THEIR body in this scenario. You thinking YOUR values entitles you to someone else’s grandma’s corpse is a liiiiitle different.
I know colonialism is like, a whole beast to get into, but you know that many of the people involved thought they WERE doing it for good reasons. Missionaries thought they were saving people’s souls. Doctors who experimented on native women thought it would bring about good medicinal discoveries. Soldiers thought that the resources they were capturing would help their families back home. That’s kind of my point. As soon as you think “I’m doing a good thing” is enough reason to violate another person’s body, then bad shit happens.
As for female genital mutilation- since those girls aren’t CHOOSING for it to happen, it is violating THEIR BODILY AUTONOMY. See? Other people imposing THEIR values on OTHER PEOPLES BODIES means bad shit happens.
And the idea of a bunch of white politicians up in Congress deciding that native people and black folk don’t get to decide what happens to mama’s corpse anymore, because they think those organs are better off helping whatever rich person can pay for them? That’s bad. That’s reeeeeeeaaaaaallllllly bad.
You make salient points here. Particuarly the one about only a few rich people benefiting (And I also need to think more on the point of well-intentioned harm). But what you aren’t taking into account is that in this hypothetical scenario, my loved one will die if those organs are not harvested.
And I agree with you on something else. My values do not give me a right.
But neither do their’s.
In fact, I don’t think the concept of “rights” comes into the equation. And in fact, if we’re getting truly objective, “rights” don’t really exist at all.
No, I don’t have a right to anything. But I do have wants. And that’s what this is about.
I say: “I want my loved one to live.”
They say: “I want my grandmother’s body intact.”
These are incompatible desires. One must benefit at the expense of another, and I chose that it be me instead of them.
We’re going to disagree on that, because I do believe in the existence of rights. Rights, our belief in them, and our society’s adherence to them are what make us a society, what make us communities.
And I’m sorry, but your WANTS to entitle you to pillage someone’s grandma’s corpse for organs.
Like, do I have to explain that desecrating corpses and stealing organs is a bad thing?
I should probably ask how you’re defining rights.
But again, you misunderstand me. I DON’T feel entitled. I DON’T feel owed. I am TAKING what I want. If I get it, I get it. If I don’t, I don’t.
As for your final points, I would consider them selfishly hoarding the organs to be a “bad thing”, but I’m trying to put aside morality and be fair here.
You’re talking about stealing organs from a corpse because you want them.
Go sit down somewhere away from the internet and reflect on that for a while.
Also, since we got WAY off topic and started talking about my personal choices, to tie it back into my original point.
Tangible and practical benefits mean more to a society than any individuals wants or feelings. There for it is foolish for any government to choose a person’s want to their body over the saving of another’s life, soley as a matter of principle (Yes there are case by case scenarios where the bodily autonomy is more important, but they should be treated as such, not as some inarguable law).
Here’s how I see it as. If my nephew or my Mom we’re dieing because they need a organ and the only organ nearby is from a corpse, I’m going to take it. I don’t give a fuck if you don’t want your organs taken when you die my mom will die soon, she needs it a hell of a lot more then you ever did.
Pro-lifers are now advocating for grave robbing and desecrating corpses. You can’t even make this shit up anymore.
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