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Comment by nonethewiser | Hacker News Reader

But your test doesnt work if the baby/fetus etc. is a person, which is what abortion opponents think. If its a person then your test (does the woman have autonomy to make decisions about her body) has a contradiction. In that case, one expression (abortion) of one person's autonomy would transgress the other. You are not actually addressing the crux of the issue so your argument only works for people who already agree the fetus isn’t a person, which is the very thing being disputed. You have to address if the thing inside the tummy is a person or not, and when.

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I didn't posit a test. The previous posts discuss [women's] bodily autonomy, so either one can assume women should always have bodily autonomy, or the other option which is women sometimes do not have bodily autonomy.

>You have to address if the thing inside the tummy is a person or not, and when.

As an aside, the data overwhelmingly shows neither women nor doctors are choosing to abort viable fetuses willy nilly. The real world effect is, as the data shows, to cause doctors to think about their financial and criminal liabilities before their patients' well being.

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/04/raw-data-abor...

>so either one can assume women should always have bodily autonomy, or the other option which is women sometimes do not have bodily autonomy

Framing it as a question of women's bodily autonomy assumes there is only one person involved, which is exactly what abortion opponents dispute. So your framing doesn't settle the issue.

The crux of the issue is if and when the thing in the tummy is a person.

That's not completely true; even if the tiny blob of cells is a person, bodily autonomy matters because there is no other situation where we force one person to use their body to keep another person alive.

Like the state cannot hook you up to a blood transfusion machine (or whatever), plug you into some guy who needs your blood, and then keep you there. And you cannot be prosecuted for murder for denying a life-saving blood transfusion to some guy who needs your blood. That's somewhat analogous to pregnancy.

>That's not completely true; even if the tiny blob of cells is a person, bodily autonomy matters because there is no other situation where we force one person to use their body to keep another person alive.

Yeah but if it's a person then it's not about bodily autonomy because the abortion denies the baby bodily autonomy.

At that point it's about what we owe other people.

>At that point it's about what we owe other people.

Who is “we” in this statement? The “owed” amount seems to be entirely paid by considerably less than half the population.

A Kantian framework does not graft onto “women must bring pregnancies to term because they owe it to them,” doubly so when it’s not conclusively a person. You keep asking people to respect that opinion yet leave zero room anywhere for people who think it isn’t a person.

I also don’t appreciate that you are arguing on behalf of a group you are clearly in agreement with yet your phrasing avoids committing to the stance. You present yourself like you’re just giving them due consideration and respect but you only give that side these graces.

By what framework does one grant or deny personhood to any genetically distinct, living human? Should age and location even apply?

Dude I am not debating “is it a person?” with you. It’s clearly not currently settled that it’s a life, it’s literally why there’s a debate at all, and we are not going to solve it or change our stances on it. You believe it is, I do not, and that’s the gulf that makes this whole thing such a 3rd rail issue. Ultimately it’s also not something I have to ever face with my body so I look to those who have to carry it to term for guidance on what is or isn’t violating.

The dependent being cannot have autonomy by definition. The woman in the case of an abortion is denying the embryo autonomy, she's refusing to support the dependency.

> bodily autonomy matters because there is no other situation where we force one person to use their body to keep another person alive

The state will however happily violate bodily autonomy to achieve much lesser goals, like putting needles in you for blood tests or to literally kill you.

Keeping another person alive is arguably one of the more worthy goals.

> That's somewhat analogous to pregnancy.

The comparison goes in the right direction, but it's not quite there. Your examples are all about inaction, while terminating pregnancy generally requires action.

> The state will however happily violate bodily autonomy to achieve much lesser goals, like putting needles in you for blood tests or to literally kill you.

Be that as it may, it does not and cannot force you to donate your organs or blood, even as a condition of incarceration.

> The comparison goes in the right direction, but it's not quite there. Your examples are all about inaction, while terminating pregnancy generally requires action.

Not quite true. If you were hooked up to a blood transfusion machine, you'd have to unhook yourself. Maybe a better scenario would be a dialysis machine that connected one human to another human's kidney.

> Not quite true. If you were hooked up to a blood transfusion machine, you'd have to unhook yourself.

Umm...

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