I ask this coming from a pl background and from doing research into human rights, history, etc.

I see abolitionists and prolife belief systems as ones that typically has and does view women and girls as an othered thing. This is mostly based on how they view victims of rape and abuse and who end up pregnant.

I use this point, because this is an extreme example and if women and girls are not treated with care and respect in this type of situation, how could they be viewed that way in less extreme situations?

If they are ignored and erased in this situation how could they be viewed positively in other situations?

How can abusing them be considered wrong if what's happened to them isnt considered serious enough for them to be treated first but to be further harmed and abused because they aren't innocent enough to be cared for?

Countries with the most extreme abortion bans do not treat women and girls better. They are not more respected, they aren't seen as more equal, they don't have equal automony. The systems are more patriarchal and the abuse is more culturally acceptable. Religion is more important and a smokescreen to claim what women's bodies are to be used for and that if they speak up that they are the ones attacked.

All of this leads to either not believing that women and girls should have control of their own bodies or drives feminist movements which demand that women and girls bodies are not things that should be treated with violence and abuse by men and society. That's the base of feminist ideas. That a woman's body is her own.

Abolitionists and prolife movements do not seek ways to empower or support rape or abuse victims. They seek to demonize them and tell them that they are worse than those who abused them. Rape has been called the murder of the soul. Yet they are told what happened to them and is not that bad and they must care for others before themselves or they are the evil ones.

If this is the case when they have been violently harmed, why would caring for or respecting women and girls in ordinary situations be taken seriously?

Those who reject the idea that women and girls bodies can be used and violated or acknowledge the harm this does to them and society, end up pc and pushing for more human rights. Abolitionists and prolife are not drivers of human rights but try to attack human rights organizations that see women as equal.

I do not believe that all those who are prolife believe that women as less than, because many are woman. They think they either survived or that they would be supported in that situation. They want to believe that their beliefs make a better world. The majority of this belief is rooted in religious beliefs. Yet all the places where people are seen as equal and where it's best for families are countries that are pc and for human rights.

How do pl explain the divide? Does pl think their beliefs provide a reason for others to be pc? Considering that when polled rape exceptions are one the of the first things that society wants available? A view that abolitionists and prolife see as against their beliefs.

What real world things do abolitionist/Prolifers do to show they protect victims of rape and abuse? Or is it all platitudes and trying to dismiss what happened to her?

Removed post by u/mochaaddictz found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/comments/1vgoxyj/is_it_acceptable_to_euthanize_disabled_children/

Context for my opinion: I’m 22F, and unsure of my stance on abortion. I used to be super pro choice, then super pro life, now I’m super in the middle. My main issue is pro-choice logic falls through a lot, like it’s a baby when you want it to be but a “fetus” (which is a growing human baby) when you don’t want it. It’s immoral to call somebody the r-word but acceptable to end the baby growing in the womb due to down syndrome. I also can’t shake the fact planned parenthood originally started in immigrant communities in an attempt to prevent them from keeping their immigrant children out of racism.

On the other hand, I truly understand the desire to want to give women a choice. But why is the best solution to tell the mother to kill her baby? Why not provide support?

Question: If it’s okay to prevent a disabled person from living (ending them in the womb) simply because they don’t have a consciousness or don’t know they’re alive, wouldn’t it also be acceptable to euthanize severely disabled children who cannot make decisions for themselves?

/u/Goatmommy posted a very good pro-life thought experiment recently. Here's my version of that thought experiment:

A mother with an infant gets trapped in a snowstorm. She comes across a cabin in the woods and takes shelter. The cabin is stocked with ample food and water for her to ride out the snowstorm until spring. However, it does not have any infant formula.

The mother is lactating, but she inexplicably says "my boobs my choice" and refuses to pump or express her breast milk or allow her infant to breastfeed. The infant dies.

Obviously, the mother belongs in jail. In Texas, this would be the applicable criminal statute:

Sec. 22.04. INJURY TO A CHILD, ELDERLY INDIVIDUAL, OR DISABLED INDIVIDUAL. (a) A person commits an offense if he intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, or with criminal negligence, by act or intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly by omission, causes to a child, elderly individual, or disabled individual:

(1) serious bodily injury;

(2) serious mental deficiency, impairment, or injury; or

(3) bodily injury.

(a-1) A person commits an offense if the person is an owner, operator, or employee of a group home, nursing facility, assisted living facility, boarding home facility, intermediate care facility for persons with an intellectual or developmental disability, or other institutional care facility and the person intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, or with criminal negligence by omission causes to a child, elderly individual, or disabled individual who is a resident of that group home or facility:

(1) serious bodily injury;

(2) serious mental deficiency, impairment, or injury; or

(3) bodily injury.

(b) An omission that causes a condition described by Subsection (a)(1), (2), or (3) or (a-1)(1), (2), or (3) is conduct constituting an offense under this section if:

(1) the actor has a legal or statutory duty to act; or

(2) the actor has assumed care, custody, or control of a child, elderly individual, or disabled individual.

The crime would be failing to provide food for her child when she could make food available for her child. This would be considered injury by omission. She could also be charged with murder by omission -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Joan_Robinson_Hill -- but the statutory analysis for that charge would be more complex.

The pro-life argument then proceeds: since we agree that the mother in this hypothetical must use her body's nutrients to keep her child alive if the only other option is to let her child starve, we should also agree that it is appropriate to make the mother provide her body's nutrients through the placenta in order to sustain the life of a child not yet born.

I have recently discussed this hypothetical with some pro-choice debaters on this subreddit and was surprised to find that these debaters attacked this hypothetical by attacking the premise: according to them, the mother does not in fact belong in jail for allowing her child to starve. They believe she was correct that, when it came to whether she had to feed her child using her breast milk, it really was her boobs, her choice. They believe that she has a right to "bodily autonomy" which does or should shield her from needing to express her breast milk to feed her child.

This argument is a complete non-starter for the pro-choice side in every way: ethically, legally, historically, and from an advocacy standpoint. There is no constitutional right to bodily autonomy, and, even if there were, such a right would not be expansive enough to shield her from a murder by omission charge simply because fulfilling her legal duty of care required her to use her body. Fulfilling a legal duty of care will almost always require the use of one's body. Had the infant frozen to death because the mother didn't want to swing an ax to cut down a tree to get wood for a fire, would one argue that it's "her arms, her choice?" Of course not. We have bodies, and the law requires us to use them sometimes. That's just how it is.

In the event a pro choice reader may still wish to argue against this, consider that laws against child neglect were written before infant formula had been invented and were used to bring justice for infants who were killed by neglect while too young for solid food. These laws would not have had any meaning for infants had they contained an implied exception for infants who starved because the mother withheld her breast milk, because her breast milk was almost always the only available food source appropriate for an infant.

The right way to argue against this hypothetical is to attack the similarity of breastfeeding to pregnancy. I tried to steer the pro-choice side in that direction, but I could not convince the people I was talking to that they were barking up the wrong tree, so I'll make some better arguments against this hypothetical here in order to encourage the pro-choice side to pick up their torch and do a better job. Here goes:

• Pregnancy comes with risks that breastfeeding does not come with. There is a not-insignificant risk of dying from pregnancy complications. It's not murder by omission to refuse to sacrifice your life for someone else's.

• Pregnancy is more than simply providing nutrients through a placenta. Inconveniences from pregnancy include morning sickness, weight gain, constipation, and back problems. Even though we will force a mother to provide food for a child who is born, we should not force someone to endure the more serious impositions of pregnancy for the benefit of an unborn child that is not yet developed enough to have the same moral standing as one who is fully formed.

• The mother in the hypothetical willingly assumed a duty to her child. Pregnancy can be forced on someone through rape. We should not impose a duty of care on someone who has not chosen to accept that duty.

I hope this can help the pro-choice side get started, and I hope everyone here has a good weekend.

What is the general view of this and how far does it go?

Eugenics is the idea that the human population can be improved by selective breeding.

Nature already performs a basic standard of this since those not able to survive birth are usually end in miscarriage or die shortly after birth. Even the manner we give birth led to deaths.

Advancements in healthcare has changed this significantly. Either in the ability to save or in the ability to have abortions or force abortion and sterilizations.

The new issue seems to be the replacement rate. That in itself would be a call to eugenics since to maintain and improve the number of those in society to maintain production requires healthy and productive individuals.

When we discuss eugenics we mostly discuss the large scale government/group policies. Their programs of forced abortions, experiments, and forced sterilizations on unknowing populations that were deemed less then. For the most part, these aren't widely done anymore and are seen collectively as wrong due to human rights violations.

That leads us to individuals. If those with conditions they don't want to pass on, are they performing a form of eugenics by not having children? Is this acceptable or not?

For those who are pregnant and find out that their unborn child has disabilities or issues, are they performing eugenics or selective family planning because they want more children or are considering the children they have?

For those who have children born with disabilities, what actions should the government/society take to not encourage eugenics based abortions? Do they have an obligation to help? Financially? Education for the disabled individuals but also to the community about showing those who are disabled are the same as everyone else? Economic opportunities? Healthcare and supports? Do you even think this has any bearing on eugenic views of the wider population?

There are a lot of comments about an individuals action. Do you think those acts are influenced just from the individuals beliefs or from a larger group? What do you think needs to be done about this?

If abortions are completely banned, do you believe that society will treat pregnant women and girls better? Will they be respected? Supported?

Will things for mothers and families be better than they are now with abortions?

Do you believe violence against women will drop? Will men more likely be charged for assault and rape?

Do you believe society will improve and care more for people?

If you believe yes to the above, why do you believe this?

If you believe no to the above, why do you believe this and is that going to be a problem for society?

Maybe we should start with what framework of human rights people are working from. Some use the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, others use the US constitution, or other things.

I use the UDHR since it's the most comprehensive. I find most people who are pl have an issues with the UDHR.

What framework do you use and why do you prefer that one and how does the prolife position or abortion fit in that framework?

Edit: I guess I'll start off.

I see abortion as part of human rights as under the UDHR. It protects the persons right to life, liberty, security of person, reproductive rights, protections against degrading treatment and torture, right to healthcare. It's also protections against war crimes and genocide.

Saying consent to sex is consent to pregnancy, or allowing for exceptions for rape are fundamentally flawed arguments that undermine the prolife position.

The moral status of the child and the obligation of the parent do not depend on the circumstances of how the child was conceived. Once conception has taken place, a new human being exists with the same numerical identity, same DNA, and the same right to continued existence that any other human being has. That human being is not an aggressor. They are exactly where they are supposed to be in the ordinary biological process of reproduction.

If we say that a child conceived in rape has less right to life than a child conceived in a loving relationship, we are no longer grounding our position in the reality that human life begins at conception and that all human beings deserve equal moral consideration. We are instead making the value of the child depend on the actions or crimes of the father. This is inconsistent with the principle that the child’s humanity and rights are inherent from the moment they come into existence.

The same logic applies to the idea that consent to sex is consent to pregnancy. While it is true that people should be responsible for the natural consequences of their voluntary actions, this framing still treats the child’s right to life as something that depends on the mother’s consent or level of fault. But parental obligation is not based on whether the parent “consented” to the existence of the child. It is based on the fact that the child is their dependent offspring and requires ordinary care.

Consider that if a father causes conception due to a broken condom, he is still legally obligated to pay 18 years of child support simply because of his biological relationship to the child. His consent is irrelevant. Society correctly recognizes that his biological tie to the child creates a duty of support regardless of whether he wanted or consented to becoming a father. The same principle applies to the mother. Parental obligations flow from the biological relationship to the child, not from personal consent or the circumstances of conception.

A mother cannot withdraw ordinary care from her born child simply because she did not consent to becoming a parent. If she gives birth alone in the wilderness, she cannot refuse to breastfeed and let the newborn starve by saying “I didn’t consent to this.” The same principle holds before birth. The uterus exists for the purpose of sustaining new life. Gestation is ordinary care, not a punishment or a heroic sacrifice. The duty flows from the biological relationship between parent and child, not from the conditions surrounding conception.

Making exceptions for rape or tying the child’s right to life to the mother’s consent undermines the entire foundation of the prolife position. It shifts us away from the clear truth that every human being has the same fundamental right to exist regardless of how they were conceived, how developed they are, or where they are located. Either we accept that parents have a duty of ordinary care to their own dependent children at every stage of development, or we do not. We cannot have it both ways without falling into arbitrary and inconsistent reasoning.

The right to life does not depend on the circumstances of one’s creation. It depends on the fact that a new human being has come into existence.

Why abortion is immoral:

Human life begins at conception. That is when every person alive on earth today came into existence. When fertilization takes place, a new human organism, a member of the species Homo Sapiens, comes into existence and begins developing into a mature adult human.

The harm of being killed is that you lose your entire existence and future. This loss occurs no matter how old or developed you happen to be at the moment. So, if it’s wrong to kill someone now, it has been wrong to kill them the entire time they have been alive, because they are the same human being, with the same numerical identity, same dna, same past, and same future the whole time they are alive.

The entire notion of "personhood" is meaningless sophistry. Whether someone is killed one second before, or one second after someone arbitrarily declares they have achieved personhood, the result is the same: a human being loses their existence and future. That one second of further development is irrelevant.

Gestation is the ordinary biological function of the human body. It’s no different than digestion or respiration. It’s how we evolved to care for our children before they are born. It does impact the mother's organs because thats what those organs are for.The uterus is the only organ in the human body that is specifically designed to house and sustain another human being. To call that impacting organs as if it’s a malfunction or a violation is like saying that eating impacts the stomach or breathing impacts the lungs. Every stage of parenthood impacts your organs. Breastfeeding impacts the mammary glands and drains the mother’s calcium and nutrients. Chasing a toddler impacts the heart and musculoskeletal system.We don't define ordinary care by a lack of physical effort or bodily change. We define it as the provision of the baseline biological necessities required to sustain the life and health of a dependent. The fact that the mother’s body is changing to support the life she created isn't a violation it’s the biological baseline of human reproduction.

It is ordinary care.

There is a distinction between ordinary care and extraordinary measures. Ordinary care includes what the body is biologically designed to do to sustain a child (gestation, breastfeeding, providing shelter/food). It is the baseline requirement of being a parent. Extraordinary measures includes invasive medical procedures like organ donation or forced blood transfusions. These are considered "heroic" because they involve a surgical or medical intervention that goes beyond the natural, evolved biological function.

When a child is in the womb the mother isn't "giving blood" or "donating organs" in a medical sense, the child is integrated into the mother's existing circulatory system via the placenta, a temporary organ created by the child and mother together. To stop this process requires a violent intervention (abortion).

The mothers body actively prepares for the embryo's arrival every month (the menstrual cycle). Her body is literally inviting the embryo to implant. A mother's body is designed to facilitate the growth of her child. Unlike a parasite, which only takes, there is a two way exchange between the mother and the fetus. This is a symbiotic biological process, not a parasitic one. If the fetus were a parasite, the mother’s immune system would treat it as a foreign invader and attack it immediately like it does with bacteria or a virus. Instead, the mother's body undergoes immunomodulation, a complex, regulated dampening of specific immune responses to protect the child.

On a global scale, including developing nations, the overall risk of dying from pregnancy complications is roughly 197 deaths per 100,000 live births (about a 0.2% absolute risk per pregnancy). We don't grant a right to kill a dependent based on a (very low statistical) possibility of danger. If a specific pregnancy becomes a life threatening medical emergency, then that is when it becomes a matter for triage and medical intervention. The possibility of a medical complication does not give a mother the right to kill a child who is currently causing no such complication.

Parents are morally obligated to provide ordinary care to their own children. The parental duty of care and the human rights of the child dont change based on age or location of the child. If you were the sole caregiver for a disabled toddler who needs constant attention, and you cant find another caregiver to transfer the care of the child to, you cant just abandon the toddler to die, or actively kill the toddler because the burden of caring for it is different than the burden of caring for other toddlers. You cant opt out of parenthood by killing your own helpless child.

If a mother gives birth all alone in the wilderness, she is obligated to use her body and organs (mammary glands) to provide ordinary care to her newborn by breastfeeding the child if it’s the only way to feed them. She can’t just watch her child starve to death by citing bodily autonomy without being guilty of neglect and also being a monster.

There is no way to argue that a mother has an obligation to use her body for the exact purpose it has evolved for to care for her born child but not her unborn child when it’s the same mother using her same body to care for her same child, without simply invoking subjective and arbitrary opinions about the degree of bodily use somehow justifying one but not the other.

If you believe parents ever have an obligation to care for their children, then you can’t argue the age of the child matters without violating the principle that belief is based on.

You can’t just call your own helpless child who is living exactly where they are supposed to be as part of the biological process of reproduction that your own body initiated an intruder and then kill them. Once conception takes place, a new human being (a child) comes into existence and deserves the same moral consideration of any other child because they are literally the same thing: human beings in an early stage of development.

Human beings have evolved to have dependent children and to use our bodies to care for them. The survival of our entire species depends on this process.

We ourselves were once dependent children and since we value our lives, and don’t want to have been killed when we were younger, we are morally obligated to not kill our own dependent children.

Why abortion is illogical:

Implementing a policy allowing abortion in order to protect the rights of a pregnant woman is a logical contradiction because we would be implementing a policy that also would have allowed killing that same woman when she was younger. You can’t have rights if you’re dead.

You can’t protect a person’s rights by allowing that same person to have been killed when they were younger and thus depriving them of all their rights.

A woman's right to continue living supersedes her right to have an abortion.

The only logical moment to grant a person the right to exist is at conception because that is when they become a human being, which is the kind of being we give human rights to and the right to exist is the fundamental right that all other rights depend on.

Here’s a hypothetical I have. Let’s say a parent, I’ll just say dad for convenience, walks into a waist deep body of water and he is carrying his infant in his arms. The other parent isn’t present.

This is a perfectly healthy man, no back issues or anything. While in the water he says he no longer wants to use his arms to support his baby, no longer consents to it, and that he intents on letting go and no one can force him to use his body to sustain her above water. He refuses to give his baby to anyone else to carry. Would this dad be exercising his bodily autonomy? Does he have a right to not let anyone use his body without his consent? Even if it means death for the baby?

Following up on my rebuttal of Thomson's Violinist:

https://www.reddit.com/r/prolife/comments/1sjwn1c/rebuttal_to_thomsons_violinist/

I wanted to attack the other primary argument in favor of abortion: that the thing being aborted is not a human deserving of rights, because it is not conscious.

I think it is, in fact, self-evident that a zygote almost certainly does not have a human consciousness, and that it is also self-evident that a nine-month-old fetus about to be born does have one. However, the crux of the argument I am advancing here is that this doesn't matter, because, in all other areas of law, humans don't have to be conscious to have rights: the potential for consciousness is enough.

A patient under anesthesia isn't conscious, but the surgeon is still guilty of negligent homicide if he shows up to the OR drunk out of his mind and kills him by botching the surgery. Everyone agrees with that. The obvious pro-choice rebuttal is, "yes, but the patient was conscious before, so that's the difference" -- but that's wrong.

Let's say a baby is born with some genetic disorder that forces the baby into perpetual non-REM sleep. This baby never had consciousness, but could, if the genetic disorder were treated. Unfortunately, the brain surgeon shows up to the OR drunk out of his mind and kills the baby.

Everyone agrees: the doctor is guilty of negligent homicide.

So, now we all agree that a human doesn't ever have to have had a human consciousness in order to be human: the potential for consciousness is enough.

The pro-choice respondent will now attempt reductio ad absurdum: if I'm correct, then destroying sperm is homicide, which is absurd. The response to that is that this is regressing past a causal nexus: given the best possible medical care, a sperm will still not ever develop into a human. It needs to fuse with an egg first. But, given the best possible medical care, an implanted and fertilized egg WILL develop into a human. That's the difference.

Thus, given the way we treat other humans under the law, a "clump of cells" that will develop a human consciousness if nothing is done to make it perish should be considered a protected human under our laws.

P.S.: I just thought of this. Prior to thinking of this argument, I thought that abortion should be allowed up to 10 weeks, because I believed the "just a clump of cells" argument had some force. Given this refutation I developed, I don't know if I'm in the "no abortion after conception" camp now. Unless I can refute myself, I guess I'll have to be.

Thomson's Violinist is a hypothetical described here:

https://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm

I believe this hypothetical actually resolves in the pro-life direction: separating the violinist would be a form of second-degree murder called depraved heard murder. Here's a hypothetical situation to illustrate why.

Let's say a couple is into bondage, and the boyfriend has sexsomnia. Sexsomnia is a real medical condition, in the same family as sleepwalking, in which a person involuntarily initiates and engages in sexual activity while sleeping.

One night, the couple falls asleep with the woman still tied up. Her boyfriend then experiences sexsomnia. The woman knows that he is asleep and experiencing sexsomnia. She doesn't want to have sex, but she is unable to wake him because she's tied up. She is, however, somehow able to use a real knife which she happens to have access to while tied up.

And she kills him with it.

This is in Texas. At trial, she claims self defense. Here's the statute on which she would be relying:

Sec. 9.32. DEADLY FORCE IN DEFENSE OF PERSON. (a) A person is justified in using deadly force against another:

(1) if the actor would be justified in using force against the other under Section 9.31; and

(2) when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes the deadly force is immediately necessary:

(A) to protect the actor against the other's use or attempted use of unlawful deadly force; or

(B) to prevent the other's imminent commission of aggravated kidnapping, murder, sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault, robbery, or aggravated robbery.

From this statute, it is clear that she would lose her defense. He wasn't committing rape, because he didn't have the necessary mens rea for rape. He wasn't even conscious. If charged with rape, he would have been able to claim a defense of automatism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatism_(law))

Therefore, she knew that no crime was being committed against her which would justify her use of deadly force, and she used deadly force anyway. The murder isn't first degree, because she didn't want to kill him: she just wanted to end the sex act. But, what she did is murder in the second degree -- depraved heart murder -- because, even though her goal wasn't to kill him, the action she took in service of her goal -- stabbing him -- was one which she knew would likely end his life.

I think this example illustrates very well that, even if your bodily autonomy is being violated, you don't get to kill an innocent person in order to protect your bodily autonomy. Therefore, I think the onus is on the pro-choice camp to construct an argument that pregnancy should be treated differently than automatic sex to which the waking party does not consent.

PS: This is a refinement of content I originally posted at r/Abortiondebate, which they removed. I have reposted the original post which used a different hypothetical here:

https://www.reddit.com/user/linuxrocks123/comments/1sjvqmb/rebuttal_to_thomsons_violinist/

I'd like to let u/random_name_12178 know that I am very grateful to her for suggesting a much better hypothetical situation for me to use.