I had another thought

This is about abortion again. It'll be shorter, hopefully. I just had a thought about it.

If somebody were to come up to me and say "you are literally the only person in the whole entire world who can save me from my debilitating disease, but I require access to your body and its resources for 9 months. This will be invasive, painful, and dangerous, but I am a famous violinist/heart surgeon/other thing that is good for society and you can save me" I can still say no.

Now, that person is a person. And I can still say no to them. So to me, changing the personhood of fetuses doesn't DO anything. Even if that fetus is classified as a person, they're still asking for use of my body and resources for 9 months, and it will be invasive, painful, and dangerous for me. And yet to some people, that's okay, but so is me saying "no" to the first guy.

For all intents and purposes, these two are the same. Persons (for this example). They have potential- heck, one has even already proven their potential. And you know what else they have in common? Even if the use of my body is the only thing that can keep them alive, I still don't owe it to them. I can still say no in both cases and that is ok. Because I, like both of them, have bodily autonomy. They're in positions of dependency by chance, i.e., they can't survive without the use of someone else's body. But nobody has to provide them with that body.

This is the same principle behind why people aren't required to donate blood or organs. We all get assigned a body by chance (and have created a system wherein some bodies are more valued than others, which is pretty fucked up), but there are still moral laws that say "this body is yours to do with as you please, provided you can support yourself."

This also means that if I was that person who needed the use of one person's body to stay alive, I might be little miffed at them if they said no, but I'd have to accept it and move on. Their bodily autonomy is more important. Besides, if the procedure might kill them (the "savior") too (which is true of pregnancy! It's very dangerous), then I mean I REALLY can't blame them.

This is what pisses me off about pro-life. It's like, oops, something happened that was beyond your control and now you're in a potentially life-threatening situation that requires your constant attention and vigilance in addition to use of all your body and resources? Sorry, but you're not allowed to get out of that shit. And that, to me, is just fucked up. You can't just go putting people in that position without their consent. That's not okay- that is morally and ethically questionable. Far more so than terminating a pregnancy.

Still my favourite comment on the issue- "Nobody has the right to use anybody else's body without their consent." I like this because a) it applies to more than just abortion, and b) it's gender neutral. It's such a great statement.. I just wish I could remember where I'd found it.

yer pal,
swegan