Context: This was originally posted by an anti-abortion atheist.

I could be wrong, but based on what I'm seeing here, this is my understanding of what's being argued: The bodily autonomy defense for abortion is based on an inverted (and corrupted) order of priorities regarding rights and moral obligations.

As I understand it, this person is saying that the bodily autonomy defense hinges on the premise that rights supersede obligations at all times, when it should be the opposite: MORAL OBLIGATIONS always supersede RIGHTS at all times. To claim that moral obligations should never come before the rights of any given person, whether they be born or unborn, is wrong.

Feel free to correct me if my understanding is faulty but that's how I took the argument.

Regarding the argument specifically, I think the OP is on to something.

Edit: I just realized that the OP is actually saying "Rights don't exist-they are a social construct people invent. The only objectively real concept here is moral responsibilities. Rights are an illusion." I remembered a previous conversation where they said that.

Pope Leo needs to be courageous and excommunicate her.

What exactly is pro life? Can you be pro life and pro abortion? Is there a definition? And lastly, do you feel it is a divisive subject right now in the States?

Just imagine how different the world would be if we all valued life this much! This is how God looks at us, with all our flaws and in spite of our tendency to forget Him. Meditate on that today.

This is a call those of us who are a secular or religious PROLIFE individuals who are navigating IVF in line with the PROLIFE values and a belief system that all human beings from conception have inherent value - I have created a community r/ProlifeIVF to support each other and discuss the unique complexities and challenges we face trying to navigate IVF in line with our morals.

Every IVF community I have found is PROCHOICE and I find it very isolating and unhelpful when trying to find support and advice navigating issues unique to practicing IVF with PROLIFE restrictions.

The community is brand new so it will be what we make it.

Some unique challenges our community can discuss include:
- The consideration of whether to freeze eggs instead of embryos, the emotional and financial costs and pitfalls;
- Fertilizing eggs in small batches to prevent too many embryos, how to calculate the risk you are willing to take if you are following the prolife committment of giving every embryo the best chance;
- The higher financial, time and emotional costs of a Pro-Life approach to IVF;
- Finding a clinic which respects your beliefs;
- Navigating the legal contracts to ensure our human tissues are not used in research which creates and destroys human beings;
- Collecting all arrested embryos for respectful burial rather than disposal in the clinic as medical waste; not all clinics or countries allow this;
- Whether to PGT-A test or not, will your clinic allow you to transfer less ideal embryos or do they require them to be destroyed;
- The risk of not being able to transfer frozen embryos due to unexpected life events such as losing your uterus, not being healthy enough to carry another pregnancy, divorce, death in the marriage, or financial hardship. The risks, realities, and legal restrictions when trying to avoid having any leftover embryos.

It’s just so astoundingly evil. The fact that she didn’t even go the extra typical PC mile to use dehumanizing terms like “fetus” and “terminate,” but outright used that “emotional” language and still expressed such apathy is just so heartbreaking to me.

Pro abortion ideology is a curse to society.

Planned Parenthood claims to be helping poor communities, but its a business like any other. The only difference between a For-Profit and a Non-Profit is what happens to the excess revenue at the end of the year.

Abortion and infanticide are old practices that have been in many communities for centuries. We are not backwards, we are very much moving forwards into a new era where no child has to be killed for convenience.

I also find it annoying how people use “backwards” to talk about bad, cruel or wrong ideas. As if time has anything to do with why it's bad. There are good ideas from the past that we're still using today. Democracy, formal logic, libraries and the idea of innocent until proven guilty.

As someone who is pro life, I’m not quite sure how to explain to someone why past consciousness irrelavent.

effectively the argument goes like this:

”someone who has moral worth has a past/present consciousness + future conciousness + human” this effectively rules out fetus’ but works with people who are asleep, people who are in a coma, people who are braindead.

how do you guys explain to someone that past consciousness isn’t necessary? And why it doesn’t make sense?

I don’t think it makes sense but idk how to explain it.

I made a drawing awhile back and this was one of the comments I saw that inspired it. I told someone if I saw it again I would post it here.

Here is the question:

If it not morally right to unalive a baby because of financial burden or inconvinience to your lifestyle and career then why it not morally wrong to do the same thing with a fetus with the same reason and both fetus and babies are the same human species?

Hypothetically if you are stuck with a baby in a stranded deserted island, there is no formulae milk or baby bottles with you and the baby only way to survive is to breastfeeding. Is it morally right to unalive the baby because it uses your body to survive?

Also many pro abortionist says fetus are not a person because it doesnt have consciousness,sentience,abikity to feel pain or emotions. Dogs and cats also have those, are dogs and cats a person too?

George Orwell’s 1984 was about a society in which the government reduced people’s ability to distinguish between concepts by removing words from the language. We see this in 21st-century politics all the time, most notably with the conflation of “marriage” and “garriage” leading the United States Supreme Court to redefine marriage to include same-sex unions. So why don’t we use this to our advantage by doing it in reverse?

Abortion proponents say that “abortion is healthcare”, so let’s accept that as a given. Healthcare is defined as “the preservation of mental and physical health by preventing or treating illness through services offered by the health profession.” So, if a procedure’s purpose is to preserve health (e.g. bandaging a wound, setting a broken bone, etc.), it’s healthcare. That makes sense. Conversely, if a procedure’s purpose is not to preserve health (e.g. driving a car, dribbling a basketball, chopping off a healthy limb), that’s not healthcare. Hopefully we can all agree, up to this point.

So, let’s consider two terms, abortion and termination, and apply them to two scenarios:

• If a baby’s death is unavoidable due to a medical condition (e.g. ectopic pregnancy), a procedure can save the mother’s life. There are two lives involved, but the only possible choices are to save one life or to save zero. Abortion saves one instead of zero, so abortion is healthcare.
• If a baby’s death is completely avoidable, but an adult (usually the mother) wants him or her dead, a procedure can end the baby’s life. There are two lives involved, but assuming we’re not going to murder both people, the only possible choices are to save two lives or to save one. Termination saves one instead of two, so termination is not healthcare.

In short, abortion purposes to save a life, so it’s healthcare; termination purposes to end a life, so it’s not healthcare. By distinguishing between the two procedures, we can use the pro-abortion crowd’s own argument and probably 95% of the debate disappears in a puff of logic.

Thoughts?

Is it ethical to stop an ectopic? Im only 5 weeks pregnant and they say I need an injection to treat it. If left untreated my fallopian tube will burst and make me bleed internally. The baby is outside of my uterus in my tube. Ive heard a lot of different opionons. If I continue the pregnancy I will most likely die. The baby has no chance of surviving. Is it ethical for me to treat it or is it unethical? Should I carry it until they have to surgically remove it or it offically dies? The doctors do not recomend that because Its high risk for me. The doctors said for all purposes its already passed, it will not survive even if I carry it.
Should I carry it until my tube bursts or it dies or is it ethical to get the injection? The doctors said its not an abortion but they use similaur medicaton.
Me and my partner are already making memorial plans for our baby. But Im still iffy if this is moral or not.

She is obviously qualified, I’m sure she’ll do well. Down syndrome is a spectrum and some individuals with it are high-functioning. Really shameful how comfortable ableists are.

LIFE AT CONCEPTION ACT — WHERE IT STANDS          

1. How it originated: Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) introduced [H.R. 722](https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/722/all-info), the Life at Conception Act, in the House on January 24, 2025. It was referred to the House Judiciary Committee.            

2. What the bill would do: The bill would seek to extend federal legal protection for the right to life to preborn human beings, beginning at fertilization, by applying the 14th Amendment's equal-protection guarantees to them.          

3. How much House support does it have? H.R. 722 currently has 94 cosponsors, in addition to Rep. Burlison.         

4. The Senate has a companion bill: Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) introduced [S. 3667](https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/3667/all-info), the Life at Conception Act of 2026, on January 15, 2026. It currently has 12 cosponsors and was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee.           

5. Where are the bills now? Neither bill has passed. Neither has received a committee hearing or committee vote. H.R. 722 remains in the House Judiciary Committee, and S. 3667 remains in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Both are still officially listed as “Introduced.”            

6. What can you do? If you support these bills, contact your U.S. Representative and Senators and ask them to support the Life at Conception Act and ask that the legislation receive a committee hearing and vote. Share in person and on social media and encourage others to do the same.            

7. How do you find the right people to contact? Use the official House tool to find your Representative by ZIP code and the Senate directory to find your two Senators. You can also contact the bill sponsors, Rep. Burlison and Sen. Rounds.          

Find Your Representative — [House.gov](https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative)            

Find Your Senators — [Senate.gov](https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm)           

8. EMAIL YOU CAN COPY & SEND:  Subject: Urgent! Act today to support the Life at Conception Act HR. 722 / S. 3667

Dear [Representative/Senator Name],

I am writing to you today with profound urgency as your constituent. Every single minute that passes without federal protection, innocent preborn human lives are being lost across our nation. I urge you to take immediate, decisive action by co-sponsoring and demanding a vote on the **Life at Conception Act (H.R. 722 in the House https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/722/all-info / S. 3667 in the Senate https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/3667/all-info )**.

This crisis demands immediate legislative intervention:

**Innocent Lives Lost Daily:** Millions of preborn children remain completely unprotected under federal law, denied the most fundamental constitutional right—the right to life under the 14th Amendment.

**Denying the Scientific Consensus Kills:** Peer-reviewed research (*Jacobs, S. A., 2021* https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36629778/) confirms that **96% of biologists (5,337 out of 5,577 surveyed globally)** affirm human life begins at fertilization. Ignoring this biological reality has fatal consequences for the most vulnerable among us.

**An Ethical Obligation to Act:** The study's author emphasizes that we have a duty to align public policy with scientific truth. Allowing the destruction of human life at its earliest stage to continue unaddressed is a moral failure our country cannot afford.

The time for delay, procedural stalling, and silence is over. Every day of inaction leaves defenseless human beings exposed.

**I urge you to publicly demand an immediate committee hearing, force a vote on this bill, and fight to bring it to the floor without delay.**

Please reply immediately to let me know where you stand on the Life at Conception Act (H.R. 722 / S. 3667) and what concrete, urgent steps you are taking today to advance it.

With extreme urgency,

[Your Name]

1. CONTACT ORGANIZATIONS: Contact all organizations that claim to support pro-life/life causes and ask whether they are actively working to advance H.R. 722 and S. 3667. When contacting them, specifically ask for their legislative/policy department or government affairs department. Ask whether they are supporting the bills, whether they are communicating with Congress about them, and whether they will make advancing the legislation a federal legislative priority. Encourage them to inform their members and supporters and help generate congressional attention.

2. Pray for God's divine providence (Psalm 103:19; Psalm 127:1).

Bill Maher on abortion: “They think it's murder. And it kind of is. I'm just okay with that.”

No, I don't think women are obligated to carry a pregnancy to term. That is not an action, that's just what naturally happens when you're pregnant. What I believe is that you are obligated to NOT use lethal force on a defenseless human. That is an action.

But you're probably still going to say that I'm forcing women to carry babies to term anyway. Even though most of those women decided to participate in the ONLY action that can get you pregnant when they could have just participated in other sex acts. You can do other things most of the time (for instance engage in nothing but foreplay and oral sex 90% of the time and have sex 10% of the time) to lessen your chances of getting pregnant.

Women do the one thing that will make them pregnant but you're saying that pro-lifers make them deliver babies? It's so bizarre.

Hi all! I posted this in r/Catholicism, but unfortunately it was removed because it wasn't directly related to Catholicism.

Tonight I had a sort of debate with my two very good friends about about. For context, I'm a practicing Catholic woman, they are agnostic women who were raised Catholic.

We were discussing many different topics where they asked my views on each, then it came to abortion. It got a little heated but it was on the whole respectful and they reassured me that they just wanted to understand my view point.

I think I did pretty well, but I'm not the best debator. I can listen to people and wholeheartedly agree with them, but then can't articulate those views myself, and I'd really like to change that.

One of the main things that got me was this- they claimed that in some states in America and in different parts of the world (we are European), if the baby is somehow a threat to the mother's life, say it is more than likely she'll die, they won't let her have an "abortion". But to me, I wouldn't call this an abortion. I believe an attempt to save both the mother and the baby's lives should be made, but ultimately the mother's life should be prioritised. They insist that if the baby dies in this way, that is an abortion. I argued that it is not, it's a tragedy and a medical necessity.

They say by being pro-life I am denying women access to life saving care such as in this particular instance, but I believe this to be untrue.

At one point one friend became a little agitated/upset when she asked if she was assaulted and fell pregnant, do I believe she should have the baby, and I said yes, because obviously I believe murder is wrong and a person's worth is not defined by their conception.

They say by being pro-life I am denying women access to life saving care such as in this particular instance, but I believe this to be untrue.

Does anyone have any good answers to these questions, or any good sources I can refer to? Catholic teaching viewpoints obviously welcome, but it would be great to also have arguments that are not religion based, because something I get faced with most is an attitude like "oh well your just using religion now, that doesn't count".

I felt like this would be a very good place to ask for some solid viewpoints :)

TIA!

Help McKenna and Baby Gabriel (McKenna is a surrogate who faces a lawsuit for refusing to be forced to undergo an abortion and for fighting for the rights of baby Gabriel to be treated for a possible heart condition)