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One of those things is not like the other. Certainly your own growing child is a special case of "someone else" using your body.

giraffe_lady 3y ago
Alike in this one important way: if your own child needs your kidney to live, it is not a crime to deny it to them. People will hate you for making this choice, I would myself condemn it. But you cannot be compelled by force of law.
- RecycledEle 3y ago
  Being forced to donate a kidney is different. We should always allow people to decide to be left alone and for nature to take its course. Allowing a child to grow naturally inside his or her mother's body is the natural course of events. Pregnancies terminate naturally at birth. Brutally murdering your own child and taking away many decades of life from that child to avoid a few months of inconvenience is an unfair trade. If the mother gained more than a year of life at the expense of one year of the child's life, I would be more sympathetic to the baby killers, but in the case of abortion-murder, the mother avoids a few months of discomfort by taking away maybe 8 decades of life from her own child. Disclaimer: Relatives have told me I survived an attempt to abortion-murder me. I want revenge.
  - hn_acker 3y ago
    > Allowing a child to grow naturally inside his or her mother's body is the natural course of events. Pregnancies terminate naturally at birth. Kind of. The "natural" course of events you describe depends on the pregnant person to interact differently with society. A pregnant person eats more (and hence has to go out of their way to buy more food), pays more for healthcare products/services, and has to worry about maternity leave. (In the US, employers are mandated to provide only unpaid maternity leave [1].) Working and paying bills while pregnant or not means relying on an unnatural system called the economy within the larger maybe-natural system called society. In other words, carrying a pregnancy to term is not entirely a sequence of natural events. (Meanwhile, after birth the "natural course of events" analogy stops applying, because one plausible natural course of events for a born person is starving to death.) But enough digressing on my part. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave_in_the_United_S... > murdering your own child and taking away many decades of life from that child to avoid a few months of inconvenience is an unfair trade The inconvenience of pregnancy is not simply the pregnancy. Even if you ignore maternal mortality (and pregnancies from rape, incest, and bad luck in cases where the pregnant person had used contraceptives correctly), your estimate of many decades of life for the child translates to almost two decades of inconvenience for the caretakers of the child, assuming that the average person doesn't become mostly independent before turning 18. (When I say caretakers, I'm including cases where the born child is sent to foster care or an adopting family, as well as cases where the child gets at least one different caretaker before 18.) Additionally, the less capable the childbearer is of childcare, the more inconvenience the born child will have. I feel that bodily autonomy for a pregnant person is more than just the convenience or inconvenience for the bearer. I haven't formed a coherent argument about bodily autonomy yet. But especially in matters of bodily autonomy, I don't think everything immoral should be illegal.
    - JakeFromTexas 3y ago
      > Additionally, the less capable the childbearer is of childcare, the more inconvenience the born child will have. So we should just terminate the baby to prevent any possible inconvenience she might experience? That is some twisted logic.
  - nobody9999 3y ago
    >Allowing a child to grow naturally inside his or her mother's body is the natural course of events. Pregnancies terminate naturally at birth. When it's your uterus, it's your decision. Otherwise, mind your own damn business!
    - Georgelemental 3y ago
      It was the mother's decision, and (cases of rape excepted) she made it when she chose to have sex. If, as a consequence of her free choice, another human being comes to rely on her for survival, she must accept that consequence, not kill the helpless child.
      - nobody9999 3y ago
        So you say. Reasonable people may disagree. Unfortunately, given your outrageous statement, I expect you're not a reasonable person. And more's the pity.
        Georgelemental 3y ago
        Which part(s) of my statement do you deem "outrageous"? Which of the below points of reasoning do you see as fallacious, and why? - Sex is (in most cases) a mother's free choice - A child's conception is the consequence of this choice - This consequence gives the mother a moral duty to care for her child
        nobody9999 3y ago
        Do you have a functioning female reproductive system? If you do, your statements/beliefs may well apply to you. Beyond that, you have nothing useful or worthwhile to say to or about anyone else. I don't doubt that you believe the statements you made. As is appropriate. But that you think you (or anyone else, for that matter) have some sort of authority over the bodies of others (in that you can prescribe appropriate actions) is what's outrageous. Think terminating pregnancies is a bad thing? Then don't terminate your own pregnancies. Otherwise, mind your own business. And what goes on inside the bodies of others is most definitely not your business.
nobody9999 3y ago
>One of those things is not like the other. Certainly your own growing child is a special case of "someone else" using your body. That's as may be. However, unless it's your (in the individual, not the general, sense) body, it's none of your business or concern.

giraffe_lady 3y ago

Alike in this one important way: if your own child needs your kidney to live, it is not a crime to deny it to them. People will hate you for making this choice, I would myself condemn it. But you cannot be compelled by force of law.

RecycledEle 3y ago
Being forced to donate a kidney is different. We should always allow people to decide to be left alone and for nature to take its course. Allowing a child to grow naturally inside his or her mother's body is the natural course of events. Pregnancies terminate naturally at birth. Brutally murdering your own child and taking away many decades of life from that child to avoid a few months of inconvenience is an unfair trade. If the mother gained more than a year of life at the expense of one year of the child's life, I would be more sympathetic to the baby killers, but in the case of abortion-murder, the mother avoids a few months of discomfort by taking away maybe 8 decades of life from her own child. Disclaimer: Relatives have told me I survived an attempt to abortion-murder me. I want revenge.
- hn_acker 3y ago
  > Allowing a child to grow naturally inside his or her mother's body is the natural course of events. Pregnancies terminate naturally at birth. Kind of. The "natural" course of events you describe depends on the pregnant person to interact differently with society. A pregnant person eats more (and hence has to go out of their way to buy more food), pays more for healthcare products/services, and has to worry about maternity leave. (In the US, employers are mandated to provide only unpaid maternity leave [1].) Working and paying bills while pregnant or not means relying on an unnatural system called the economy within the larger maybe-natural system called society. In other words, carrying a pregnancy to term is not entirely a sequence of natural events. (Meanwhile, after birth the "natural course of events" analogy stops applying, because one plausible natural course of events for a born person is starving to death.) But enough digressing on my part. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave_in_the_United_S... > murdering your own child and taking away many decades of life from that child to avoid a few months of inconvenience is an unfair trade The inconvenience of pregnancy is not simply the pregnancy. Even if you ignore maternal mortality (and pregnancies from rape, incest, and bad luck in cases where the pregnant person had used contraceptives correctly), your estimate of many decades of life for the child translates to almost two decades of inconvenience for the caretakers of the child, assuming that the average person doesn't become mostly independent before turning 18. (When I say caretakers, I'm including cases where the born child is sent to foster care or an adopting family, as well as cases where the child gets at least one different caretaker before 18.) Additionally, the less capable the childbearer is of childcare, the more inconvenience the born child will have. I feel that bodily autonomy for a pregnant person is more than just the convenience or inconvenience for the bearer. I haven't formed a coherent argument about bodily autonomy yet. But especially in matters of bodily autonomy, I don't think everything immoral should be illegal.
  - JakeFromTexas 3y ago
    > Additionally, the less capable the childbearer is of childcare, the more inconvenience the born child will have. So we should just terminate the baby to prevent any possible inconvenience she might experience? That is some twisted logic.
- nobody9999 3y ago
  >Allowing a child to grow naturally inside his or her mother's body is the natural course of events. Pregnancies terminate naturally at birth. When it's your uterus, it's your decision. Otherwise, mind your own damn business!
  - Georgelemental 3y ago
    It was the mother's decision, and (cases of rape excepted) she made it when she chose to have sex. If, as a consequence of her free choice, another human being comes to rely on her for survival, she must accept that consequence, not kill the helpless child.
    - nobody9999 3y ago
      So you say. Reasonable people may disagree. Unfortunately, given your outrageous statement, I expect you're not a reasonable person. And more's the pity.
      - Georgelemental 3y ago
        Which part(s) of my statement do you deem "outrageous"? Which of the below points of reasoning do you see as fallacious, and why? - Sex is (in most cases) a mother's free choice - A child's conception is the consequence of this choice - This consequence gives the mother a moral duty to care for her child
        nobody9999 3y ago
        Do you have a functioning female reproductive system? If you do, your statements/beliefs may well apply to you. Beyond that, you have nothing useful or worthwhile to say to or about anyone else. I don't doubt that you believe the statements you made. As is appropriate. But that you think you (or anyone else, for that matter) have some sort of authority over the bodies of others (in that you can prescribe appropriate actions) is what's outrageous. Think terminating pregnancies is a bad thing? Then don't terminate your own pregnancies. Otherwise, mind your own business. And what goes on inside the bodies of others is most definitely not your business.

nobody9999 3y ago

>One of those things is not like the other. Certainly your own growing child is a special case of "someone else" using your body. That's as may be. However, unless it's your (in the individual, not the general, sense) body, it's none of your business or concern.