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Right to bodily sovereignty

Do you believe in the right to bodily sovereignty?

  • Yes

    Votes: 39 81.3%

  • No

    Votes: 2 4.2%

  • Other (please explain)

    Votes: 7 14.6%
  • Total voters
    48
thatguymd said:
Put yourself in the other position. Anytime you are out driving, someone could run into you and, if so, could choose to have you die and not be charged with causing your death.
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Relly? Where do you live?
 
cpwill said:
rather than death? you are seriously asking if the right not to be inconvenienced is greater or less than the right to life?
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Is there a right to life? when did that happen and where is it written?
 
thatguymd said:
The analogy was that a car accident forced the person not at fault for the accident to take the bodily resources of the person that was at fault for the accident. Maybe you just missed that part. I’m not sure what else could have caused this confusion.

What are you missing? If the person lives, you can’t be charged with their death. So, the decision to give the bodily resource determines whether or not you are charged with their death. Any other charges are tied to the original event (car accident).

The problem is that you are associating the death with the original event but to be directly analogous to abortion the original event must do no harm. So, maybe in my original analogy picture the car accident as a small collision that did no damage. Despite this fact, the collision still causes the not at fault person to immediately be taking bodily resources from the at fault person.
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The problem is that you made a bad analogy.

If we are to take your line of reasoning, since the real chance of having an accident while driving exists and one by driving therefore consents to the accident, then in case where say brakes fail and someone could die if you did not offer your organs, you will not be charged with their death. If you took the precautions that can be expected by a reasonable person, by driving safely, having the car in good repair and so on, yet the brakes failed you will not be responsible. Same way with sex, if you took or used contraceptives and a pregnancy still occurred you can not be forced to offer your organs to support that life.
 
Zyphlin said:
Of the hospital....

;)

Sorry, yes I was taking it to an absurd level on purpose
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So if you're in the middle of receiving a surgery and the owner of the hospital bursts in all "zomg you inconvenient an' consumin resources an' I don' wants ya too lol GTFO now and ****. "...the hospital has the right to stop then and there and put you on the street knowing that doing so will likely cause your death?

merry_go_round-01.jpg
 
rivrrat said:
What personal property rights?



Guess it's good that a fetus isn't a person. ;)

If and when you can show me that it's physically possible for it to have higher thought processes, then we can talk. But for now, a first trimester fetus has less in common with a person than my chihuahua does.
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A person could use very similar arguments to justify infanticide of children under 2... and some indeed have argued that parents should be allowed to "retroactively abort" until the child is 3 years old, because "it isn't fully sentient".

The fact remains that if you leave the unborn baby alone, in <9months it emerges as what almost everyone considers an undeniable human being.

If a newborn baby can claim a right to my financial support of its life for the next 18 years, I don't see why an unborn can't claim a right to your bodily hospitality for 9 months. You left the door open for it to come in...
 
rivrrat said:
So, you do think we should drag people off the street and force them to give blood transfusions and donate organs?
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nope. but neither do i think they should be allowed to take organs from the hospital and sell them on the streets. the question is a matter of action. inaction is protected if it leads to the death of another; action is not. if i am a doctor and i walk away from someone who has been injured in a car crash, i am legally allowed to do so. if i am an excellent swimmer, and i do nothing while a child drowns in a pool; i cannot be brought up on charges. but i am not allowed to push that child in so that, nor am i allowed to hit that victim with my car. it takes an action to kill that child and assure that you are not inconvenienced, and it is that action that - properly - is forbidden. i am not allowed to kill another, irrespective of the amount of convenience it would bring to me.
 
Goshin said:
A person could use very similar arguments to justify infanticide of children under 2... and some indeed have argued that parents should be allowed to "retroactively abort" until the child is 3 years old, because "it isn't fully sentient".
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They could, but they would not be able to use my reasoning.

The fact remains that if you leave the unborn baby alone, in <9months it emerges as what almost everyone considers an undeniable human being.
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And?

If a newborn baby can claim a right to my financial support of its life for the next 18 years, I don't see why an unborn can't claim a right to your bodily hospitality for 9 months. You left the door open for it to come in...
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I left no door open. In fact, I bolted it shut.

And my position on forced paternal child support is already known: I disagree with it as long as abortion is legal.



cpwill said:
nope. but neither do i think they should be allowed to take organs from the hospital and sell them on the streets. the question is a matter of action. inaction is protected if it leads to the death of another; action is not. if i am a doctor and i walk away from someone who has been injured in a car crash, i am legally allowed to do so. if i am an excellent swimmer, and i do nothing while a child drowns in a pool; i cannot be brought up on charges. but i am not allowed to push that child in so that, nor am i allowed to hit that victim with my car. it takes an action to kill that child and assure that you are not inconvenienced, and it is that action that - properly - is forbidden. i am not allowed to kill another, irrespective of the amount of convenience it would bring to me.
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Actually, you're incorrect. When I became a medical professional, I was told explicitly that inaction could and likely would result in a valid lawsuit. In other words, if I saw a car accident and drove on past without stopping to help, and someone could prove that, I could be sued.

Regardless, all of your examples involve people. Not unthinking, unfeeling lifeforms.
 
Goshin said:
A person could use very similar arguments to justify infanticide of children under 2... and some indeed have argued that parents should be allowed to "retroactively abort" until the child is 3 years old, because "it isn't fully sentient".

The fact remains that if you leave the unborn baby alone, in <9months it emerges as what almost everyone considers an undeniable human being.
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I doubt there are that many who would seriously consider 'retroactve abortion' to be a serious argument....

Turning it on it's head, your second paragraph sounds almost identical to the Catholic viewpoint - if you leave everything alone and have sex then in <9months you will have a baby, so all forms of contraception should be illegal.

It's all lines in the sand.
 
digsbe said:
It strengthens the argument that it isn't the woman's body. They aren't of the same organism.

And yes you do, if you have sex you chose to take the risk that you may wind up pregnant. If you don't want a pregnancy don't consent to sex. No protection is 100% effective all the time.
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You guys should have to stop having sex cause you might impregnate someone.

What if women could get pregnant every year they are fertile till menopause? This would mean there would be a whole lot too many people on this planet. Technically this could happen. It probably never has because most women aren't strong enough, but that Dugger woman is trying for it.

What would happen if this did happen and you didn't have enough food to eat, so you were forced to stop eating to let the younger humans survive?

Noone should be forced to have their body violated for 9 mos.

China had to force people to stop having kids cause they had too many people. The planet has too many people. Many times the body does expell pregnancies. Should a woman be charged with manslaughter when this happens because her body wasn't strong enough to carry this child to term?

I just think it's ridiculous for people to tell people what to do with their bodies. All this goody good crap about it only being 9 mos. I mean what if you are retarded and the baby is going to be retarded? Oh, a life is precious. Not when you have to change it's precious diapers for the next 90 years.
 
cpwill said:
5th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
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The Fifth and Fourteenth protect us from the gov't taking our life away without due process of law.

It is not quite the same thing as a right to life.
 
Sigma said:
The Fifth and Fourteenth protect us from the gov't taking our life away without due process of law.

It is not quite the same thing as a right to life.
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"life, liberty, pursuit of happiness".

Unborn babies get no due process before their mother and doctor kill them.

Yet, wait 9 months and all the sudden it is murder. :roll:
 
Unborn babies get no due process before their mother and doctor kill them.
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Neither do undead corpses. Because there's no such thing, just like there's no such thing as "unborn babies", ergo the law makes no provision for them.

:lol:
 
Goshin said:
"life, liberty, pursuit of happiness".

Unborn babies get no due process before their mother and doctor kill them.

Yet, wait 9 months and all the sudden it is murder. :roll:
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"Due process of law", given in the Fifth and Fourteenth, refers to the fair and clear procedures that are given us when the State or Federal gov't restricts our rights. It has no application re: abortion.

Laws proscribing murder are State matters. Murder is not prohibited by the Constitution.
 
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Goshin said:
"life, liberty, pursuit of happiness".
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Now if that were to be the law, YES, but since it is only propaganda not so much.

Unborn babies get no due process before their mother and doctor kill them.
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Due process applies to actions of the sate against the population and since the fetus is not the sate nor the population it does not apply.

Yet, wait 9 months and all the sudden it is murder.
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Because then it is born and part of the population and the due process still does not apply but equal protection does.
 
I do agree that a person has a right to bodily sovereignty, just as long as that right does not violate someone else's rights. With regards to abortion the moment of conception you are talking about someone else. Talking about their level of development or practical benefit is an argument for also killing the retarded or the extremely lazy.

prometeus said:
Is there a right to life? when did that happen and where is it written?
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It amazes me that people can be this ignorant of constitutional law. Do you know anything about the 9th Amendment or the dispute over the Bill of Rights? Hell, do you know anything about the political philosophy this country is founded on?

cpwill said:
if i am a doctor and i walk away from someone who has been injured in a car crash, i am legally allowed to do so.
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You most certainly are not. It is called criminal negligence.

if i am an excellent swimmer, and i do nothing while a child drowns in a pool; i cannot be brought up on charges.
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If you are just a normal bystander this would unfortunately be legal in most parts of the country, but it would be considered a crime in some states.
 
Demon of Light said:
With regards to abortion the moment of conception you are talking about someone else.
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Who else? A cell? maybe you consider yourself equal to it but we are just a little bit more.

It amazes me that people can be this ignorant of constitutional law. Do you know anything about the 9th Amendment or the dispute over the Bill of Rights? Hell, do you know anything about the political philosophy this country is founded on?
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The only ignorance and embarrassment, I might add, belongs to you , for the total lack of understanding your Constitution. I suppose basic civics was an elective for you.
The political philosophy that this country was founded on was incorporated into the Constitution, the supreme law of the land, the very same one you clearly do not understand. I do not suppose that it dawned on you that the single most important element for the founding of this nation was self determination, the very same thing you are trying to deny women.
 
The car accident analogy is short sighted. Millions of people know the dangers of driving cars but choose to drive them. When people get into life threatening accidents, we don't deny them medical care on the premise that "they should have known better". If you applied the "deal with the consequences" mentality of the pro-life sect upon car accident victims, then they would all just die on the roadside.

When a fetus can express pain and suffering, can live autonomously and fight for its "right" to live, then I'd be in favor of giving it personhood. As it stands, it is a parasite that provides no symbiotic benefit to the woman carrying it, and terminating the pregnancy should be at her discretion.

Consenting to sex does not mean you consent to parenthood; I think that argument has been fairly debunked. And yes, I am also in favor of fatherhood rights along the same lines.

Also, as a general rule, society has zero control over whether or not a woman aborts. Women always have and always will abort if they want, and I encourage women everywhere to be aware of their natural, inalienable right to do so. There are means in the natural world to do it, and there will always be snake oil salesmen offering the procedure. The law has little to do with stopping it, and more to do with offering a safe procedure.

The right wing who wants to force women to go through with pregnancies should also be preprepared to increase funding to entitlement programs, since society will degenerate further from all of the unwanted children and children raised in unprepared circumstances. It's ironic given that anti-choice advocates typically are also against entitlement spending, even though their religious convictions are the bedfellow to entitlements.

But no... the right doesn't think about social consequences, or bodily harm to the woman should she not have safe access to the procedure. All they care about is a bundle of flesh in the body that has no awareness of its own existence. It makes no sense. They don't even think about the expansion of government that would be required in order to force women to go through with pregnancies, to monitor and investigate all miscarriages, and to essentially violate their constitutional rights to due process in order to ensure that a baby is born. Only people who are deeply mentally disturbed and hate the freedoms of the western world would be in favor of such a thing.

As for the bodily soverengty argument in general, it is of utmost importance to maintain it. It's why doctors respect DNR certificates when someone is flatlining, or why patients in the right state of mind can refuse medical procedures, even life saving ones. The government has no right to tell you that you can't say no. At least in the free world anyway.
 
Also, as a general rule, society has zero control over whether or not a woman aborts. Women always have and always will abort if they want, and I encourage women everywhere to be aware of their natural, inalienable right to do so. There are means in the natural world to do it, and there will always be snake oil salesmen offering the procedure. The law has little to do with stopping it, and more to do with offering a safe procedure.
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I would think, what with the internet being what it is, it would be virtually impossible these days to stop the distribution of RU486.
 
1069 said:
I would think, what with the internet being what it is, it would be virtually impossible these days to stop the distribution of RU486.
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You don't even need that. There are herbs growing in most states that could be consumed to cause abortion. Granted, it's not the best method of going about it, but it's doable.

Having access to a safe procedure under medical supervision would be better, and if it's a private clinic where the woman pays for herself then I see no conflict of interest.

I have very little respect for the religious right's desire to punish women for having sex.
 
Orion said:
As for the bodily soverengty argument in general, it is of utmost importance to maintain it. It's why doctors respect DNR certificates when someone is flatlining, or why patients in the right state of mind can refuse medical procedures, even life saving ones. The government has no right to tell you that you can't say no. At least in the free world anyway.
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To be fair, even in the free world bodily integrity is not an absolute right. You can be compelled to give blood samples to the police, for example.
 
prometeus said:
Who else? A cell? maybe you consider yourself equal to it but we are just a little bit more.
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We are just a little bit more than a newborn as well. Are you saying people can kill newborn babies without suffering the same consequences as they would for killing an adult? We are also a little bit more than the mentally retarded does that make it a lesser offense to kill them or just no offense at all?

The only ignorance and embarrassment, I might add, belongs to you , for the total lack of understanding your Constitution. I suppose basic civics was an elective for you.
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Did you by any chance actually look at the 9th Amendment after I suggested it?
 
Orion said:
When a fetus can express pain and suffering, can live autonomously and fight for its "right" to live, then I'd be in favor of giving it personhood. As it stands, it is a parasite that provides no symbiotic benefit to the woman carrying it, and terminating the pregnancy should be at her discretion.
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A person who is in a coma, but expected to recover from it eventually, is unable to fight for his right to live, and often unable to express pain and suffering. Does a person in such a coma, as a temporary state, have no right to live?

Consenting to sex does not mean you consent to parenthood; I think that argument has been fairly debunked. And yes, I am also in favor of fatherhood rights along the same lines.
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At least you're consistent. I'll give you that much.


Also, as a general rule, society has zero control over whether or not a woman aborts. Women always have and always will abort if they want, and I encourage women everywhere to be aware of their natural, inalienable right to do so. There are means in the natural world to do it, and there will always be snake oil salesmen offering the procedure. The law has little to do with stopping it, and more to do with offering a safe procedure.
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How many abortions were there before Roe V Wade, and how many after? I think accurate figures would be hard to obtain, but I strongly suspect there were far more once it was legalized.

The right wing who wants to force women to go through with pregnancies should also be preprepared to increase funding to entitlement programs, since society will degenerate further from all of the unwanted children and children raised in unprepared circumstances. It's ironic given that anti-choice advocates typically are also against entitlement spending, even though their religious convictions are the bedfellow to entitlements.

But no... the right doesn't think about social consequences, or bodily harm to the woman should she not have safe access to the procedure. All they care about is a bundle of flesh in the body that has no awareness of its own existence. It makes no sense. They don't even think about the expansion of government that would be required in order to force women to go through with pregnancies, to monitor and investigate all miscarriages, and to essentially violate their constitutional rights to due process in order to ensure that a baby is born. Only people who are deeply mentally disturbed and hate the freedoms of the western world would be in favor of such a thing.
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Remarkably harsh, Orion. Especially the bolded part, which sounds outright hateful.

Not all of those who are anti-abortion are of the "religious right". Chuz Life, for instance, apparently isn't particularly religious at all. I've made many arguements against abortion without resorting to religion, though I am religious.

Prior to Roe V Wade, did we have massive entitlement bureaucracies? No. Did we have investigative arms that monitored pregnancies and investigated all miscarriages? No. What we had was a patchwork of states where abortion was legal in some, illegal in others. Why do you assume we'd have to change that paradigm? I personally believe that Roe V Wade was bad law, and that leaving it to the individual States is more in keeping with our Constitution.

You went over the top quite a bit in that post, Orion, and mischaracterized the opposition rather drastically.

Specifically, you seem to think we're motivated by hatred for mothers who have sex and don't want to carry a baby to term, rather than by love for the unborn babies that are being, in our viewpoint, killed unjustly.

Many of us are also concerned about the long-term effects on our society, of killing 1.2 millions babies in the womb annually. In recent years there has been a spate of cases where women have attacked other pregnant women with the specific aim of forcing them to spontanously abort, striking them in the lower abdomen. There have also been several gruesome cases of pregnant women being butchered like hogs in their last month of pregnancy; murdered, and the baby taken alive by another women. I can't prove that these recent crimes are directly related to a certain callousness engendered by over a million abortions a year, but I strongly suspect there is a correlation.

Religiously, I believe that all aborted babies have human souls. I believe that, having died in their innocence, they go to heaven to be with God. Having said that, it would be easy for me to shrug and say "Well, maybe that is for the best." It is tempting, really.

However, the importance of defending innocent life is a major concern, and I see unborn babies as the very quintessence of innocent life.

As for the issue of supporting further social spending, I think I have an alternative: streamline and simplify the adoption process in the US.

There are probably enough couples in the US that would like to adopt to take up the slack, or at least come close. The problem is that adoption in the US is complicated and expensive. I've known people who have spent $50,000-100,000 in legal fees and several years of dealing w/ bureaucracy, for a newborn or even a small child to adopt. A lot of people could give a child a good upbringing who can't afford $50,000 in legal fees!

But chiefly Orion, you seem to think we pro-lifers are motivated by hate and repression. I firmly believe that the vast majority of those who oppose abortion-freely-on-demand are not thus motivated, but are motivated by a love and concern for innocent life.
 
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