I lean pro-life and can understand exceptions for rape (not necessarily for incest, but let's set that aside for now).
...
Let's say you were walking home one day and a man pops out of an alley and knocks you unconscious. When you awake you discover that your circulatory system has been hooked up to a stranger in such a way that if you remove the linkage the stranger will die.
The link is onerous to you, interfering with your everyday life and sapping your energy. Worse yet, you know that if you maintain the link for the full nine months required to save the stranger's life there is a small but real chance that you may die when it is removed as well as a 100% chance that your body will be changed forever afterward.
What would you do? Would you endure the cost and risk to your own health to save the life of the stranger? Perhaps you would. But should you be forced to?
Obviously this is a metaphor for pregnancy via rape. I view bodily autonomy as sacrosanct. The state should not be able to demand that I give of up any part of my own body (life) even to save the life of another person. It's fine if I choose to do so (and perhaps that would even be the moral thing to do) but if the state demands it, well, that is tyranny, pure and simple.
Some pro-abortion people try to extend this bodily autonomy argument to every pregnancy, but I strongly disagree that it applies except in cases of rape. Ordinary pregnancy is the consequence of a woman's choice and that choice means they are responsible for the consequence (delivering the baby). Bringing it back to the analogy we started with, it would be as if the mother found a stranger and forced them to tie their circulatory system to hers. If she did that arguments about bodily autonomy fall away as she specifically chose to make the stranger dependent upon her own body. Removing the link at that point could only be viewed as murder, regardless of how she feels about the downsides or dangers of maintaining the link.
I lean pro-life and can understand exceptions for rape (not necessarily for incest, but let's set that aside for now).
...
Let's say you were walking home one day and a man pops out of an alley and knocks you unconscious. When you awake you discover that your circulatory system has been hooked up to a stranger in such a way that if you remove the linkage the stranger will die.
The link is onerous to you, interfering with your everyday life and sapping your energy. Worse yet, you know that if you maintain the link for the full nine months required to save the stranger's life there is a small but real chance that you may die when it is removed as well as a 100% chance that your body will be changed forever afterward.
What would you do? Would you endure the cost and risk to your own health to save the life of the stranger? Perhaps you would. But should you be forced to?
Obviously this is a metaphor for pregnancy via rape. I view bodily autonomy as sacrosanct. The state should not be able to demand that I give of up any part of my own body (life) even to save the life of another person. It's fine if I choose to do so (and perhaps that would even be the moral thing to do) but if the state demands it, well, that is tyranny, pure and simple.
Some pro-abortion people try to extend this bodily autonomy argument to every pregnancy, but I strongly disagree that it applies except in cases of rape. Ordinary pregnancy is the consequence of a woman's choice and that choice means they are responsible for the consequence (delivering the baby). Bringing it back to the analogy we started with, it would be as if the mother found a stranger and forced them to tie their circulatory system to hers. If she did that arguments about bodily autonomy fall away as she specifically chose to make the stranger dependent upon her own body. Removing the link at that point could only be viewed as murder, regardless of how she feels about the downsides or dangers of maintaining the link.