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Comment by EntropyIsAHoax | Hacker News Reader

I don't really care whether fetuses are people are not. The fact is that bodily autonomy is never restricted so much, even when lives are at stake. I'm not forced to donate organs, to donate blood, or even to do something so simple as get a vaccine. Why is my bodily autonomy no longer important when the "life" at stake is inside my body?

That's the crux of the debate, whether pregnant people have as much bodily autonomy as everyone else. If anti-choice people were to also concede that people should be forced to give up bodily autonomy in other areas like the ones I listed above, I would take them more seriously and we could discuss whether a fetus is a person. Until then it doesn't matter, it's just about restricting rights of others and almost always based in religious arguments and sexism.

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> I don't really care whether fetuses are people are not.

... well, if they are, then abortion is murder, right? I don't see why you wouldn't care whether they "are people" or not. It seems crucial, at least if you think, like I do, that murder is just about the worst thing a person could do.

> The fact is that bodily autonomy is never restricted so much [...] I'm not forced to donate organs, to donate blood, or even to do something so simple as get a vaccine.

These are not in the same category. All of these might give another person a chance at living longer (and yes, some of them like organ donation in particular carry some risk of death for the donor). Abortion definitely takes away any possibility of living from another person.

I don't buy the bodily autonomy argument. Yes, ~half the human population bears the burden of carrying children, and no, that's not fair. Everybody (men and women, of all generations) should be invested in living in a society where we don't create incentives for anybody to kill anybody else, up to and including not having sex outside of some setup/framework where any children produced will be loved and cared for.

If we can't agree to something like that, then it seems like we would have to collectively accept that murder isn't all that bad.

> some of them like organ donation in particular carry some risk of death for the donor

Just like carrying a pregnancy to term. Especially in the US which has a very high maternal mortality rate.

> if they are, then abortion is murder, right?

If I'm giving someone a blood transfusion because their kidneys are failing and they'll die within minutes/hours if I stop, is it murder to disconnect us? Maybe so but I should still have the right to choose. I can only recommend this video which makes the point much better than I ever could https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2PAajlHbnU

> Abortion definitely takes away any possibility of living from another person.

This seems to contradict your idea that a fetus is already living in the first place? And if it is already living than just like organ donation, carrying the pregnancy to term "_might_ give another person a chance at living longer" just like organ donation. Remember miscarriages are common, stillbirths are common, dying in infancy is common. Organ/blood donation is extremely comparable to being pregnant if a fetus is alive: they are alive at the grace of and only because of your body.

>Just like carrying a pregnancy to term. Especially in the US which has a very high maternal mortality rate.

it's actually 19 per 100k, which UNICEF considers to be "Very Low" [0].

> If I'm giving someone a blood transfusion because their kidneys are failing and they'll die within minutes/hours if I stop, is it murder to disconnect us?

Except in this case we're talking about your child, towards whom you have legal obligations that you would not have towards anybody else. It's legal to let the homeless man down the street starve to death, but it's not legal to let your child starve to death.

So the only situation in which it wouldn't be murder is if you don't consider the fetus to be a real human yet, which is a very difficult question to answer.

[0] https://data.unicef.org/topic/maternal-health/maternal-morta...

Sorry I should specify that I live in Germany and 19 per 100k is almost 3 times the maternal mortality rate here, and we're already a little high compared to most of the EU. Sure if you compare it to countries with barely any medical infrastructure it's very low, but for a rich nation it's terrifyingly high.

Even with your child you're not obligated to donate blood or organs, which is more analogous than giving food since giving someone food doesn't impact your health or body in any direct way. In some places in the US you don't even have to provide a child with health care if it goes against your religion, I don't see why you should be forced to give up your body for 9 months and then also possibly suffer various conditions afterwards or death.

> in Germany and 19 per 100k is almost 3 times the maternal mortality rate here, and we're already a little high compared to most of the EU. Sure if you compare it to countries with barely any medical infrastructure it's very low, but for a rich nation it's terrifyingly high.

If you only have a penny and I have a nickel, I am 5x richer than you. But am I terrifyingly rich?

0.00019 is certainly bigger than 0.00006, but they're both quite small.

FWIW, the abortion restrictions which were upheld in the US are less restrictive than France's.

Yeah and abortion is also practically illegal in Germany :(

I don't really understand the legal framework for it but definitely a lot of abortions that are performed here are technically illegal, it's just not enforced.

And France has a lot of problems with right-wing ideologies. All but the furthest left parties in France are violently islamaphobic, for instance. In their recent elections they almost elected Le Pen (again) who wants to leave the EU, has close ties to Russia, is extremely LGBTQ-phobic, etc...

Europe has a rising alt-right problem in every country that I have any knowledge of their politics. Of course some of it is not new either, like Poland has never had legal abortions, many (if not most countries) still make changing your legal name and gender very difficult and/or humiliating, and many countries still don't even have same-sex marriage. Far from the liberal paradise I see US republicans online make it out to be

> If I'm giving someone a blood transfusion because their kidneys are failing and they'll die within minutes/hours if I stop, is it murder to disconnect us?

No, similar to how it's not murder to disconnect somebody in a coma from life support or other extraordinary medical means. If the person dies, it's from their loss of blood, not from you refusing/failing to give them your blood.

I admit I didn't watch more than 60 seconds here and there of the video; it's almost 40 minutes long and it's late here.

> This seems to contradict your idea that a fetus is already living in the first place

Hm, I should have added "any longer" to clarify: "Abortion definitely takes away any possibility of living any longer from another person".

> just like organ donation

Organ donation is extraordinary; pregnancy is the most ordinary thing in the world.

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