Abortion thought - throwing this out there for discussion
Suppose you woke up one day and found yourself attached by tubes to another person, and then you are told that this other person will die if you disconnect the tubes. You, however, will not be injured. Supposed that at no point did you agree to have this other person tethered to you.
Suppose this other person is in a wheel chair. You can get around, but it obviously severely limits your movements.
Do you, as an autonomous human being with your own rights, have the right to disconnect the tubes, therefore causing the other person to die?
What if it was just for an hour?
What if it was for a month?
What about 9 months?
What if the connection was threatening your own health? What if the connection could potentially kill you?
What if this connection could cost you your job? Your family? Your friends?
What if you had to expend major financial expenses to keep this other person alive, to the point that it would bankrupt you?
And before you say anything, I am aware that this is not an exact parallel for abortion. I have my own thoughts on this, but I’m hoping to get some reasonable discussion on it.
~ Steve
Honestly, if it were a “person”, I probably wouldn’t disconnect the tubes, at least not without going through significant trauma and emotional pain for killing another person. But I think most of the controversy is on the “personhood” of a fetus and at what point in time it actually becomes a something/someone who can have emotions and feel pain. I think a better analogy in this case would be something like being sucked on by a parasite, or a set of cells, at least during the first trimester.
You probably wouldn’t disconnect the tubes. I suspect that many people wouldn’t disconnect the tubes. Should, however, there be a law requiring that you to keep the tubes attached?
I’d disconnect the tubes. Go ahead, call me a bad person. No one has the right to take my bodily autonomy away from me with out my permission.
Would I feel bad? You bet your ass I would. I’d feel horrible, but I have two children I’m already raising, I need my job, I need my health to do my job and raise those children.
I wouldn’t have the resources to keep this other person alive.
So, then you ask, what makes my life more important than the life of this person attached to me?
Remember that part about having permission? To quote Deus ex Human Revolution, “I never asked for this.”
I was not prepared, someone did this to me without asking me first, it would be different had I volunteered, but I’m not going to destroy my life, or the life of my children, for something that was put upon me without my permission.
So, then, how does this apply to abortion?
Look at it this way, we have come to a point technologically, where we can cure diseases, we can effectively repair a lot of bodily damage, people can survive injury and disease that they never could have just a few generations ago.
We can now repair injuries that at one time meant certain death, there are even methods to exert control over how our neurology functions.
We now have more effective control over our bodies, we can defeat our own biology, and we can defeat the biology of many pathogens.
Having this new control over our biology, we also have a means to be able to have sex for reasons other than procreation. I mean, people always have, sex feels good, it feels good for a reason, so we would want to procreate, if something feels good you’re going to want to do it, it’s kind of what drives life.
But now that we have the means to control our biology, we are no longer slaves to it. We can have sex and enjoy it for physical pleasure, emotional closeness, or just for the simple fact it’s fun.
That’s wrong you say?
Why?
It’s not natural you say?
Being able to have your heart replaced isn’t natural. Removing diseased or cancerous tissue isn’t natural, but it saves our lives, it repairs us or preserves us in order to continue living.
I mean, simply as the human race, very few things we do is natural. From driving cars to flying in airplanes, to artificial lights using guns and generating electricity.
As a species we shape our world, we control our biology, so why wouldn’t this be part of our “unnatural” existence, to have sex just for the sake of having sex, as long as we’re safe about it, we can use a preventative means over our biology, and just as everything else I’ve listed improves the quality of our existence.
Now, no means of contraception is 100%, and one can slip by the goalie, but this goes back to permission. If you are using contraceptives, then it isn’t your intent to have and raise a child.
You didn’t want to get pregnant, that’s not why you’re doing it. So, as a last means, you can have the fetus terminated before it develops, and this is what most abortions actually are, the are performed very early, before it’s grown into anything resembling a human being, it never knew it existed - remember the year 1743? - No? - That’s what it’s like.
Just like every bit of medical and external technology I listed above, this improves the quality of our lives, the lives of the already living.
If forced to have a child one does not have the resources for, the quality of life for those that person is supporting gets worse. Some animals eat their young because of lack of resources, that’s natural, ghastly, but natural. We wouldn’t want to do what’s natural in that case, would we?
In this way, everyone who is already living sees an improvement in quality of life, less people are consuming resources, people only raise the amount of children they can afford to.
Society benefits overall, the same way my family would benefit if I unhooked the person attached to me with tubes, that I didn’t ask to be there in the first place. Why sacrifice my already existing, living, breathing, thinking and feeling family for that?
Exactly like using a means of birth control, this means you do not intend to get pregnant, you have not made the conscious decision to get pregnant, to have sex, yes, but not to bring another person into the world, that’s why you were using birth control.
You make the decision to, fine, then it’s your responsibly, you made the conscious decision to, that means you got yourself into it on your own, not by having sex with contraceptives.
In most cases you won’t wake up one day with the proverbial person attached to you with tubes, nearly 99% of the time you won’t, but very, very, rarely someone sneaks into your house at night and hooks you up to someone who is totally dependent on you and you have to make the decision to maintain your family’s quality of life, or your already living offspring’s quality of life, or even your future offspring, that you will have when you decide you have the resources for them.
That, or we could just eat our young, which is natural, buy the way.
Just a couple of things:
- Is anyone surprised that the original post was made by a middle-aged white dude? No? Solid, that’s what I thought.
- I love how the OP and a few others try to word this like they’re being respectful and just want an interesting debate. No. Fuck you. This is none of your god-damn business. You are never going to be put in a position where you have to make that choice. You don’t get to start a conversation on it, especially when your wording is so obviously slanted towards the anti-choice side of things.
- A FULL GROWN PERSON IS NOT EVEN CLOSE TO THE SAME THING AS A FETUS. YOU AWFUL, AWFUL PERSON.
- The original post and this whole discussion is just fucked.
No, it’s not. Jesus fucking christ. OP is showing how no one has the right to your body, EVER. That was VERY easy to understand.
