r/prolife

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the foundation of human rights lately, and it feels like a lot of our debates—especially regarding abortion—are stuck on a really shaky premise. People often argue that you only have a "right to life" if you’re currently capable of certain things, like thinking, reasoning, or being conscious.

But if you actually follow that logic to its end, it creates some pretty massive problems.

If our rights depend on what we’re currently doing (our "functions"), then where does that leave everyone else?

• If you’re in a temporary coma, are you suddenly not a person with rights anymore?
• What about a newborn? They definitely don’t have the same cognitive reasoning as an adult—do they have fewer rights?
• What about when you’re asleep or under anesthesia? You aren’t "performing" the functions of a rational agent in those moments. Are you disposable then?

This is why a lot of philosophers lean toward the "Substance View" of personhood. The basic idea is that we have value not because of what we’re doing, but because of what we are—human beings.

If we want to say that all humans are equal, we can’t base that on something that fluctuates, like consciousness or how developed our brains are. As soon as you start drawing lines based on "function," you’re basically creating a hierarchy where some people are "more human" than others. History is full of examples where we’ve used that kind of "utility-based" thinking—where worth is determined by how useful or developed someone is—and it’s never a path we want to go down again.

If we actually want human rights to be universal, they have to be grounded in our shared nature as humans, regardless of how big we are, how developed we are, or how much we depend on others.

I’m curious how people who disagree with this view handle the consistency issue: If you base rights on "consciousness" or "function," how do you avoid making human rights conditional? How do you protect the most vulnerable without accidentally creating a sliding scale of human value?

Don't mind me. Just making a post because I heard other subs won't let you make posts or may ban you if you have a history here. So just want to make sure I don't participate in those subs. Prayers for the pro-life movement

What are your thoughts on this. I agree, because birth control is never 100%.

"This is why no girls like you" or "you're never gonna get a girlfriend if your pro life you misogynist" or really any incel allegations

I don't care about my dating life enough to support genocide, PC guys who say this aren't cooking or making a good gotcha, why would I give up for dates? I don't understand why PL guys are called incels, well I do, it's because a mans worth is measured by how many women he can get by society, but still, PL guys are acc the least incel community considering that they know how controversial abortion is and still choose the one that is "against women's rights". Pro life guys are nonverbal admissions that they don't care about dates than children and that they're willing to be voluntarily celibate for the sake of their values which is the exact opposite of incel. Also it exposes how a lot of PC guys are just men who are too scared of being alone and decide to be pick me's.

So pro-choice people have failed to convince me that abortion is okay. Or morally correct in most situations. The last thing they can do, their last hurrah, is probably just arguing that even though abortion is immoral we shouldn't make it illegal. Like how we all agree that adultery is immoral but we don't make that illegal.

The Bible shouldn’t influence the law. The state should protect life and property, it shouldn't tell you to be a Christian.

So why should we make abortion illegal? Why should it be a moral and legal issue?

Because abortion kills a human! That's a matter of life and property. Now pro-choice people would combat this by saying the fetus isn't conscious yet. Aside from the fact that pro-choicers are still okay with late term abortion because they think it's for emergencies, we cannot let consciousness be the deciding factor because it's way too arbitrary and unspecified. We have no idea how the mind works and we shouldn't make irreversible dangerous decisions until we do.

It's also wrong to suggest that a person isn't a person because they lack the ability to think. That fetus is still a unique human with unique DNA. If they kill them, that's it. They will never come back again. The conscious mind I didn't have yet before I was born was not going to return inside another fetus.

We should make abortion illegal because it isn't a matter of religion. It's a matter of life and property. Abortion takes away human life and it doesn't matter if that life is thinking yet or if it can't feel pain.

Came across a thread on a feminist subreddit about the topic of children and abortion and wether a child should be forced to have an abortion if she gets pregnant. The general consensus, unfortunately, seemed to be "Yes, if a 13 year old gets pregnant she should be forced to have an abortion because children don't get to make medical choices for themselves. I would force my daughter to have an abortion"

someone questioned "what about trauma from having an abortion?" and a reply was "what makes you think an abortion would be traumatic?"

I actually feel sick to my stomache I want to vomit. I lived with an extremely pro-choice mother and she forced me to take plan B after a situation happened but it was still so traumatic because I knew if i got pregnant that she would have tried to make me get an abortion or i would have been kicked out.