r/Abortiondebate

So here's the thing, when people defend abortion, they do so using the argument of bodily autonomy...

Here's the definition of bodily autonomy I found on google:

"The fundamental human right to make all decisions about your own body, health, and future without coercion, violence, or interference from others"

So basically, if a woman wants to keep a baby, it should be her choice... Cuz after all it's her body which is supporting the foetus... Which is, fair enough...

But then, can't this argument also be used to justify child neglect?

Like, does taking care of a child involve a parent using their body? Yes (like the mother breastfeeding, or even something as basic as the mother or father carrying the baby)... Then, why can't a parent just say that it's their bodily autonomy that they DON'T want to carry the baby, feed it, etc?

LOGICAL ANSWERS ONLY, PLEASE...

Ps, I'm pro-choice myself... But I want answers to this point...

Greetings everyone!

Welcome to AbortionDebate. Due to popular request, this is our weekly abortion debate thread.

This thread is meant for anything related to the abortion debate, like questions or ideas, that are too small to make an entire post about. This is also a great way to gain more insight in the abortion debate if you are new, or unsure about making a whole post.

ADBreakRoom is our officially recognized sister subreddit for all off-topic content and banter you'd like to share with the members of this community. It's a great place to relax and unwind after some intense debating, so go subscribe!

I’ve been thinking about the labels we use in the abortion debate.

“Pro-choice” emphasizes the value of individual choice. But many people who identify as pro-life don’t consider choice to be the central issue. They believe there are situations where individual choice should be limited to protect another human being.

So I wonder whether “Pro-healthcare” would be a more accurate and more compelling label.

From my perspective, abortion is healthcare. It is a medical procedure performed by healthcare professionals, guided by evidence, informed consent, and clinical judgment. It is used to treat miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, serious pregnancy complications, fetal anomalies, and unwanted pregnancies. Whether someone believes abortion is morally justified is a separate ethical question from whether it belongs within healthcare.

Framing the discussion as “pro-healthcare” versus “pro-life” also highlights a practical question: If abortion is healthcare, should politicians be restricting healthcare that physicians and patients decide is appropriate?

Even someone who opposes abortion morally presumably still values good healthcare. That makes this framing less about abstract rights and more about whether medical decisions should remain in the hands of patients and healthcare professionals.

I’m curious whether others think “Pro-healthcare” better captures this position than “Pro-choice,” or whether “Pro-choice” still communicates the underlying principle more effectively.

Let's imagine a device called the Implantation Conducive Kit, or ICK. The ICK can be briefly inserted vaginally after sex and activated, which increases the chance for a blastocyst to implant in the uterine lining.

Does a woman have any obligation to use the ICK? If she has an obligation to gestate an entire pregnancy to term to satisfy PLers' desire for the embryo's survival, why not the comparatively smaller imposition of using the ICK?

Let's also imagine a couple, Eric and Lana, after consensual intercourse. Lana is on birth control and they are using condoms, but both of those have a chance to fail. Is Eric justified in pinning Lana down and forcing the ICK into her in order to "protect his child"?

If not, why do you get to violate a woman's integrity by forcing her to gestate a pregnancy to term, but Eric does not get to violate her for the same motivation?

Let’s skip the usual semantic exchange and grant the absolute best-case PL premise: A fetus has 100% full human rights and moral worth from the exact moment of conception. It is an innocent human being, identical in value to you or me.

Even with this massive concession, the position still utterly collapses. Why? Because a person's right to stay alive does not grant them a legal lease on someone else's internal organs.

Let's look at how this plays out in real human terms.

Imagine a 5 year-old child’s kidneys fail due to a sudden illness. In the middle of the night, the state kidnaps his father, drags him to a hospital, hooks his arteries up to his son, and when he wakes up they tell him: "You are stuck to this bed for the next nine months as a biological life-support machine. If you unplug yourself, your son dies, and we will charge you with first-degree murder."

Should the government have the legal right to do that?

Of course not. We instinctively recognize that bodily sovereignty is an absolute boundary. We respect this right so deeply that the state cannot even harvest the organs of a dead corpse without prior consent, even if it could save 5 dying children. If a corpse has the right to refuse to save a life, a living person certainly does.

By saying the state cannot force that father to stay connected, you admit a fundamental truth: Bodily autonomy always supersedes another person's biological need to survive, even in a morally equal being. You can owe a child financial support or parental care, but the state can never mandate the involuntary use of your organs to them.

So answer this directly: if you believe the state has zero legal or moral authority to kidnap that dad, strap him to a bed, and force his physical organs to act as a life-support system to keep his own child alive, how do you logically justify using the exact same force of law to do it to a pregnant woman?

As Ronald Kipke said,

"Ethics is not a science that describes and explains a reality independent of us, but is one that focuses on us. We ourselves, our evaluative self-understanding and our actions, are its object. Therefore, ethics must start from this self-understanding; it must interpret and clarify it. It must take the participant's perspective seriously, or at least not ignore it without good reason.21"

We can't just ignore the strong moral convictions we have, because ethics is literally on what humans think, evaluate, feel, etc. not on things out there waiting to be discovered, like how science studies 'a reality independent of us.' If a ethical theory radically diverges from our moral convictions, it doesn't mean it is false, but that it requires good reason as to why we should adopt it. So, what does this have anything to do with the abortion debate?

Well, in the abortion debate, most only care about consciousness: but it isn't really in line with our moral convictions.

Ontology is, in the words of Evangelos D. Protopapadakis, “engaged in the quest for the actual nature of beings,” whereas ethics is concerned with ‘ideal order of things.’ These two are different, so we should stop mixing them. Ethics is not about any property, but on the making of a pleasant, worthwhile world. Grounding our morality on a property renders ethics restrictive; It isn't in line with our everyday understanding: the multiple assassination attempt on Hitler's life was a decent act, though he was conscious. Being indecent to a dead body is still morally repugnant, though it lacks consciousness. Even burning a holocaust museum feels ugly, even though you may be the last person on earth. I think ethics is about feelings; it is about our duties to one another.

Sources:

(99+) Being human: Why and in what sense it is morally relevant

(99+) “Should the baby live? Abortion and infanticide: when ontology overlaps ethics and Peter Singer echoes the Stoics”

I have seen this said a lot by PL people and I’m really curious as to how this helps the argument.
From my perspective I agree with this. Yes every human being alive has been at this stage of development and most PC people know this since most of us primarily use fetus to describe the human in the womb. I don’t see how this helps when my biggest thing is nothingness to nothingness is changing nothing. It doesn’t change anything and other actions could lead to a similar scenario. Every person alive today could be easily be different from who they are right now if anything changed from their past. Experience is a big factor to life so taking something with no experience and continuing to give it no experience isn’t wrong because there is no change.
Is this just something PL people use to attach feelings into the argument? How exactly do you give feeling to something that has no feelings?

I want to hear the arguments! I'm not here to judge or be rude, I just want to hear your perspective on this claim and how you may support it!

And if you happen to be a pro-lifer who comes across this, reply to comments with your counter-argument! This is a debate after all:)

Edit: I’ve seen a lot of people who are saying that this is a flawed PL argument and that this is not what they mean but I have come across people who ACTUALLY said “The fetus is not alive.” or “The fetus is not a human.” Sorry for thinking that this belief was more common than it actually is. You are welcome to answer a secondary question- Why do you believe an unborn baby is not a “human being” or a person”? How would you define personhood? What makes killing humans who are “not persons“ ok in your eyes?

I’m pro-choice, but I think this is one of the weakest arguments our side makes.

Whether we like it or not, mainstream embryology classifies the zygote and embryo as living human organisms at an early developmental stage. This terminology appears throughout standard embryology texts. You don’t have to agree with the moral implications, but denying the biology simply isn’t supported by the scientific literature.

The pro-choice position does not require claiming that embryos aren’t organisms. It only requires arguing that being a human organism does not automatically grant personhood or the right to use another person’s body without consent. Those are philosophical and legal questions, not biological ones.

As a biology teacher, every time I see a pro-choice advocate insist that an embryo is "just a clump of cells" or "not an organism,"I cringe a little. It’s an easily refuted claim that allows opponents to dismiss stronger arguments about bodily autonomy, personhood, sentience, proportionality, and the limits of state power. Saying the zygote or embryo is just "a clump of cells" is as reductive and wrong as saying it is a "baby". Thoses two arguments are equally false on a scientific developmental standpoint.

If we care about making persuasive arguments, we should stop relying on claims that conflict with mainstream developmental biology. We don’t need to reject science to defend abortion rights. In fact, I think our case is stronger when we don’t.

This is a hypothetical about the value of human life, the moral principle that it should be protected, and the contradiction of exposing it to arbitrary risks of death to sustain another.

In this scenario, newborn children have a chance to become practically immortal, and we'll presume that this will be an absolute positive for them and won't cause any side effects other than the ones described. The alternative is for them to live out whatever their normal lifespan would be.

But in order for this to happen, someone else needs to experience all the same harm, suffering and most importantly risk to their life caused by carrying a pregnancy to term again, over the same span of time. The individual effects will be just as arbitrary and unforeseeable as those of an actual pregnancy, and if possible can be medically treated in the same ways, including an abortion of the process with the same side effects as the abortion of a pregnancy.

The person required to go through this process is the child's father. We'll presume that he will be available and will have the same chances of successfully completing the process as a woman in the same physical and psychological condition who's carrying a pregnancy to term.

(1) Should the father be legally compelled, under threat of punishment equivalent to an abortion ban, for him or anyone who helps him to abort it, to start this process on behalf of his child?

(2) Should the father be legally compelled, under threat of punishment equivalent to an abortion ban, for him or anyone who helps him to abort it, to complete this process on behalf of his child, once he started it?

(3) Should the father be legally compelled, under threat of punishment equivalent to an abortion ban, for him or anyone who helps him to abort it, to complete this process on behalf of his child, presuming that the process starts naturally?

(4) Would your answers stay the same if the risks for the father were higher or the benefits for the child lower? If so, where would you draw the line?

Please keep in mind that if any of your answers are yes, then the same would apply to the child if they're having a child of their own one day and their immortality will not negate the effects.

Almost every pro life argument I see goes back to morals. As we all already know, morals are just feelings and opinions. Morals can and do vary from place to place, from person to person.

We understand already that pro lifers find abortion "morally wrong", in the same way some religions find being gay "morally wrong" or how vegans find eating meat "morally wrong."

Can pro lifers give a reason why abortion should be outlawed and people should be forced to gestate and birth against their will WITHOUT referring back to morals? I'm curious if there is a reason that pro lifers have that ISN'T about feelings or "moral worth" or "abortion is morally wrong" etc.

1. Abortion laws are being made to restrict women’s rights.

Abortion is being restricted not out of hate for women, but because if you honestly believe that all innocent human life has moral worth then it is wrong to kill it (Abortion would be even more illegal to pro life individuals in a case where a man forces a woman to get an abortion, meaning the choice being from a woman isn’t the reason of pro-life policy).

2. Consciousness dictates moral worth of humans.

We believe it isn’t wrong to kill brain dead individuals (which are defined as being unable to ever have consciousness again), which gives proof to the idea that fetuses are ok to kill because they have no consciousness. This implies moral worth comes from being a human with consciousness. This line of argumentation fails when we consider individuals in comas or people that are asleep. Individuals in comas aren‘t ok to kill and the thing that separates them from people that are brain dead is that they will be able to be conscious in the future. This shows that future conscious experience grants worth to humans which is a trait of fetuses.

3. Sometimes women can die from childbirth.

The idea that in spectacularly rare scenarios an abortion could save the life of a mother, isn’t an argument that abortion is ok; the exception isn‘t the rule. If someone says killing innocent people Is wrong and then someone counters with the trolly problem, one cannot say that because killing one person to save others is moral then it is ok to kill people in general.

4. If you care about children how come you don’t support (x policy related to poverty childcare).

If abortion is the murder of a human life then the abortion industry is murdering millions of people and supporting the stopping of the abortion industry would be necessary morally where a niche childcare policy isn’t a remotely similar issue. This pro choice argument is also utilizing the tu quoque fallacy, where it is making an argument from hypocrisy which doesn’t address why they don’t hold that position. Another example of tu quoque would be one person telling another that they shouldn’t eat hairspray because it is proven to cause cancer when ingested and the person responding that it isn’t unhealthy because the informant ingested hairspray the other day.

The crux of both arguments trying to convince the other person rely on aspects of abortion that are uncommon and ultimately do not account for the majority of abortions.

From the pro-choice side, rape and incest and ectopic pregnancies are often brought up to try and catch the pro-lifer off on their stance by trying to get them to agree with pro-choice or to admit to prioritizing the ZEF over the woman.

While on the pro-life side, pictures and images as well as words that give fetuses infantile features or emphasizing them as an “innocent baby” is used as a fear tactic to get pro-choices to agree with killing babies that look like newborns.

Neither is being completely honest to the reality of abortion. The reality of abortion is that the vast majority of abortions occur from consensual sex (with the knowledge that rape often goes under reported) and prior to the fetus being able to survive on its own or even have executive brain function, let alone look like a newborn.

The PC side often gore toward the rare exceptions to try and convince PL of a few exceptional conditions for abortion to appeal to them, and PL claims abortion kills innocent babies to demonize the PC side.

So, how would you approach the PL/PC debate if you could NOT use the arguments above? What would you say to convince the other side?

From the moment of fertilization, a new living human organism is formed because it meets all biological criteria of life: it has its own unique genetic material (DNA different from that of the mother and father) carries out an active metabolism, uses energy and produces new cells, grows and develops in an organized manner according to the developmental “program” encoded in its genome, responds to chemical stimuli in the uterine environment, and maintains basic biological processes necessary for survival and further development. From the perspective of biology and embryology, there is no moment at which “something non-living” becomes living; rather, there is a continuity of development of one organism from the zygote through the embryo and fetus until birth. Therefore, scientifically it can be said that from fertilization we are dealing with a living human organism at a very early stage of development, while science only describes biological life and does not resolve moral questions or determine whether and when such an organism is a “person” in an ethical or legal sense.

This is my first time sharing my opinions on the matter because I’m scared of being called a child murder or being accused of treating women like a breeding factory. Truth be told, I don’t like either sides perspective. PL’s don’t view abortion as anything other than baby murder, even under circumstances where it is needed to save the mother’s life. And PC’s don’t care that a fetus will eventually develop into a baby if kept healthy.

In my personal opinion, if you consented to sex, you consented to its consequences. However, death or permanent bodily harm are never an acceptable consequence. And obviously if rape was involved, then you don’t consent to anything.

I’m not super religious, but I don’t need to read the Bible to know that aborting a healthy fetus inside of a healthy mother is wrong.

I do not believe in abolishing abortion, however I do think it needs limits. Abortion is still a form of healthcare at the end of the day.

So am I Pro-choice or Pro-life?

Note, that I am not religious or anything and every argument here is purely secular.

A woman is kidnapped and locked in a cabin. She has just given birth and recovered. In the cabin she finds her newborn baby in a cradle, not her child, a stranger's. There is baby formula and food available for both of them.

Authorities find the cabin three weeks later. The baby is dead. The woman never fed it.

Is she morally and legally wrong?

Most people say yes. And the law agrees. Being the sole capable person present with means to help a dependent creates duty of care regardless of consent. This is established in R v Stone and Dobinson [1977] QB 354, which confirmed that being the only available caretaker for a vulnerable person creates legal and moral obligation even without any prior relationship or agreement. Omission becomes criminal.

So far the bodily autonomy crowd can breathe easy. No bodily intrusion was required here. Formula was available. This doesn't touch their argument yet.

Stage 2

Same scenario. But this time there is no formula. The woman is lactating from having recently given birth. The only way to keep the baby alive is to breastfeed it herself for the duration.

Authorities arrive three weeks later. Baby is dead.

Is she morally and legally wrong now?

This is where it gets genuinely interesting because now we have bodily intrusion. Her body is specifically required. She didn't consent to any of this.

And yet I'd argue most people still say yes, she was wrong. Here's why that matters.

Breastfeeding is not trivial. It involves cracked and bleeding nipples, mastitis, infections, chronic sleep deprivation from feeding every 2 to 3 hours, significant hormonal impact, and months of physical and psychological burden. This is a real bodily imposition.

And yet the moral intuition that she did something wrong doesn't disappear just because her body was involved.

This directly defeats the core bodily autonomy argument. The argument isn't that bodily intrusion is never relevant, it's that bodily intrusion automatically ends the moral conversation. This scenario shows it doesn't.

Stage 3

Someone will bring up personhood so I want to address it directly.

The standard pro-choice move is to say the fetus isn't a person yet, so the cabin analogy doesn't apply. But this runs into what philosopher Stephen Schwarz identified as the SLED problem. The only differences between a fetus and a born human are size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency.

None of these hold up as morally relevant distinctions when applied consistently.

A newborn is also dependent. A toddler is also less developed than an adult. A premature infant in an incubator is in an artificial environment. If level of development determines personhood then we have to explain why a one day old newborn qualifies but a third trimester fetus does not, and nobody has ever given a non-arbitrary answer to that.

Every line people draw, heartbeat, brain activity, pain receptors, viability, birth, self-awareness, if applied consistently would also justify infanticide of newborns. We don't accept infanticide. So the lines are arbitrary.

What I'm Actually Asking

1. Where does the cabin scenario fail as an analogy?
2. If the woman in Stage 2 is morally wrong despite bodily intrusion being required, what principle distinguishes that from pregnancy?
3. Which developmental milestone do you draw the line at, and can you defend it without that same logic applying to newborns?

Genuinely looking for the strongest counter-arguments here. If there's a flaw in the reasoning I want to find it and try to strengthen it.

Sounds a lot more humane than just killing it

This is in response to the common personhood rebuttal.

All humans should get human rights. Size, ability, dependency, location, none of it matters. If you're human, you get human rights.

Logically, this also applies to human skin or hair cells as both are human. If you want to say you have to be a human organism, you're adding a qualifier that you have to be more than simply human.

Why do you say all humans should get human rights but when asked if that includes human hair or skin cells, both human, act like that is absurd?