4 ms·
I wonder if anti-choicers have really thought through the implications of their position, or if they just feel that it will never apply to them and thus don't c
by xoa 8y ago
I wonder if anti-choicers have really thought through the implications of their position, or if they just feel that it will never apply to them and thus don't care? Even if we take as granted that a fetus is a full human at conception, fundamentally anti-choice is about having the government use its effective monopoly on physical force to compel one human to suffer pain, risk of death, and have their bodily fluids harvested to save another against their will. It's true that anti-choicers want to restrict this to just a certain class of humans (women), but the logic can certainly apply to far more then that. There are objectively often significant shortages of organs and critical fluids (including both blood and plasma), and the lack results in suffering and death amongst humans (including children). This could be reduced if the government could just forcefully harvest from any person under their jurisdiction at will. Even if we restrict it to only cases where risk of death would be the same or less then pregnancy, that still leaves a lot on the table. I can't speak for anyone else, but that would be a scenario I'd deeply oppose. I have donated blood before, I have my organ donor card filled out and with me when I drive, and I honor those who volunteer to take on risk and pain for others in general. But that doesn't mean I would be comfortable with it being forced rather then volunteered, not even given the clear fact that it would surely save some children's lives.
Pro-choice doesn't mean pro-abortion, just that someone doesn't support the government using violence for forceful body harvesting [1]. In fact I strongly suspect that most pro-choice people are anti-abortion, either for moral reasons or even simply because they view it (I do) as an unfortunate scenario brought on by bad luck, limitations of our current medical technology and societal choices. For example, ideally we'd have invested all the money spent on this debate into trying to develop far better birth control methods for both men and women and then made that available for free to everyone. If we imagine something based on stents and implantable long lasting induction powered valve systems then perhaps something like a reversible-on-demand vasectomy/tubal ligation would become possible, or something else we haven't even considered. If constantly involuntarily active near perfect birth control was ubiquitous that would likely significantly reduce the incidence of abortions. If our medical technology was more advanced we could cover a wider class of in-utero conditions that current present tough choices for mothers. If we had better universal healthcare and UBI that might save some people from certain life critical financial choices too. Etc etc. Heck, maybe someday we'll have full on synthetic womb technology at a level where someone who doesn't wish to carry to term can just not even in the first week yet have development happen anyway.
There are lots of potential constructive avenues for those who truly wish there to be fewer abortions. I find it hard to see how it's justified to bring shooting women/doctors/whomever into the picture frankly, and the whole spectre of forcefully harvesting one human for another should be more then a little off putting even for men.
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1: That's not hyperbole, that's just what it means for something to be "illegal", there are of course lots and lots of intermediate steps and pressures government will generally apply first, but at the foundation of the whole endeavor is force. And I think "make it illegal" is treated far too casually in modern society.
- belorn 8y agoPro-choice or pro-life are both about framing the question. Pro-life side of the argument is about framing the issue into what right and responsibilities a person has. They want universal rules that can be applied. Pro-choice side of the argument talk about the result, and the choice (exclusively by women) to decide if they want to raise a child or not. A planned parenthood by women for women. Synthetic womb technology won't resolve the issue. This year a group of prenatal and midwife medical council here in Sweden made a decision if nurses were to be allowed to do life-saving care to aborted children when the abortion has been delayed to the point where the child life could in theory be viable after the abortion, and the decision was no. They decided that the woman choice to not raise a child needed to be respected, even if the child could be kept alive outside the womans body.