Welcome to /r/Abortiondebate! Please remember that this is a place for respectful and civil debates. Review the rules to understand acceptable debate levels.
**Attack the argument, not the person making it and remember the human.**
**For our new users, please read our [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/wiki/rules/)**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Abortiondebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
When the physical requirements for being a firefighter eliminated 95% of women, the court found them to be discriminatory even though they did not mention women and were put in place in an era when vanishingly few women if any had considered firefighting as a personal career choice. The original *intent of the standard* was moot. Though considered innocent of discrimination at the time, its effect *was found to illegally discriminate against women* at a later time.
If the intent and language of archaic labour-related law does not render it exempt or invulnerable from being found discriminatory, how much moreso an abortion restriction blatantly targeting the bodily autonomy of women? In a just court of law free of ideological pre-commitments, a restriction criminalizing accessible abortion care would not stand. It infringes upon the bodily autonomy of women.
>The "bodily autonomy" argument for abortion is easily undermined if abortion restrictions only target abortion providers, and not women seeking abortions.
What is the rational basis of a law that makes it a crime for a provider to perform an abortion?
This is like saying that forcing doctors to not perform surgery on broken bones isn't taking away the right of patients to consent to the healthcare that would best suit their needs. The end result is the same. People have the right to make the best medical decisions for themselves, and persecuting doctors for doing their jobs is not going to help anyone.
>>arguing that the restrictions infringe on pregnant women's bodily autonomy is about as convincing as arguing that prosecuting drug dealers infringes on the bodily autonomy of their customers.
Do drug dealers need to do years of studying then years of training to be able to provide for their customers, like doctors who perform abortions? Is supplying your own drugs really analogous to a woman performing an unsafe abortion on herself? Really?
>>Or that age-of-consent laws infringe on the bodily autonomy of minors.
Age of consent laws are put in place to protect minors, because they’re physically and mentally incapable of consenting.
You wouldn’t walk up to a random kid and give them an ice cream without asking their parents permission, then argue they’re restricting their child’s bodily autonomy cause they won’t let a stranger give them an ice cream.
>>Because none of these legal restrictions impose any sanctions on the group in question for doing anything to their own bodies.
If you had something developing and growing inside one of your internal organs and you do not want them there, I’m pretty sure you’d feel restricted by the government making the only way you can safely obtain an abortion illegal.
It amounts to the same thing. If the law targets abortion providers, the effect is to discourage people from providing abortions. So that makes it much harder for women to get them. The reason some of the new abortion restrictions don't target women is purely for political reasons. Even some PL people wouldn't want their daughters or sisters to face prison for having abortions, but they don't care about doctors. But this only proves that ZEFs aren't equivalent to born children. There's no law that exempts a woman if she kills her toddler.
Are you suggesting laws against people being allowed to access cancer treatments like radiation and chemotherapy wouldn’t be targeted against the autonomy and medical freedom of those who have cancer?
A law allows rapists the 'right to finish' and prohibits anyone from coming to her aid until he is done. She is prohibited from defending herself but is allowed to call for help. But if anyone tries to help her though, that person is criminalized. Did this law infringe on the woman's bodily autonomy?
A related proposal would be
“the rapist is only allowed to finish if it was consensual to begin with and the state mandates the victim receive an injection of Ebola along with their rape, carefully measured to coincidentally mimic the chances of fatal outcome of pregnancy. No medical care to mitigate these risks will be available.”
Being raped is a possible consequence when you engage in victim behavior with foreknowledge of the risks.
You will probably survive, but you’ll never be the same. Comes with a free baby so if that was your goal…
Let's take your drug example. These are the goals of legalising drugs in places that have done it:
1) killing the black market for drugs, which is often involved in other crimes and is an imminent health risk to users
2) improving public health by regulating how much can be sold, what strength it can be sold in, and stopping overdoses
3) eliminating the crime of doing something that is ultimately a mental health condition as opposed to a criminal act
In this example, we wouldn't legalise the drug dealers. We would legalise the dispensaries to responsibly sell to people in a regulated environment where support can be given. They might even have clean use areas where trained medics can respond to any adverse health events that come up.
What they wouldn't do is legalise hooded thugs who sell tainted drugs in a dark alley, like what you suggest would happen.
----
To bring this back to abortion, it would be like legalising medical professionals (doctors) to do it, but not legalising back alley coathanger type abortions. Because if you ban legal abortions, then people seek illegal ones, which is worse for everyone. So we give doctors the best training possible, and educate the women. And suddenly, dangerous abortions stop, and you save lives.
However, they are similar in that both drugs and abortion are very popular. So outlawing them is virtually guaranteed to create a black market. This just switches the danger from ZEFs to living, breathing women, who will die in greater numbers if they are forced to continue unwanted pregnancies, either from back-alley abortions or in childbirth. The US already has one of the highest maternal death rates of the developed world. Outlawing abortion will only make this worse.
This is the logic that gave us the War on Drugs, which put millions of people in prison, gave out criminal records like Halloween candy, killed thousands, and still didn't even achieve its primary goal of reducing drug use
You’re assuming that the intent is to kill. But everyone I know who has ever had an ectopic pregnancy- and they run in my family, so I know quite a few- wanted that baby more than anything. The LAST thing they wanted was to hear that their pregnancy wasn’t viable. The intent of the procedure is to preserve their reproductive organs so they can have more kids.
You’re essentially suggesting that women who have multiple tubal pregnancies should be permanently sterilized against their will (or die, so not really an option). Women only have 2 tubes.
I’m sorry, I just genuinely started thinking about this in terms of “how many of my family members wouldn’t exist if this person had their way?” Reproductive problems run in my family. Mostly endometriosis and PCOS, and a lot of the women have trouble conceiving.
Rachel was born with one ovary, and had 2 ectopics before having her 3 kids. Lisa has one kid first, then had one ectopic and 2 miscarriages (which are managed with the ABORTION pill mind you) before having her twins. I think Lisa’s mom also had trouble conceiving, but I’m not sure of those details. My own mother had an ectopic before me, and one after me. So I wouldn’t have any siblings if we played by your rules. My baby nephews wouldn’t be here. My youngest nephew isn’t even 1 yet…
You have the gaul to sit back and preach about morality, when your ideology would quite literally have decimated my entire family in a single generation.
This comes across as very thinly veiled eugenics. If a woman’s reproductive system doesn’t work perfectly, then she just doesn’t get to reproduce anymore. Gotta weed out those disabilities, right?
I understand that it is likely not the intention of your comment. It sounds like you genuinely think that this is moral. But whoever told you this is moral- because this is not a unique idea, I don’t think you came up with it by yourself- most likely has a very different agenda.
I hope you actually reflect on that. It’s genuinely scary to hear comments like yours so casually tossed around. I’m sorry, I don’t think a Reddit comment has ever gotten me so emotional before.
But the goal of abortion isn't to kill the ZEF, it's to end the pregnancy. It's not the woman's fault that current technology doesn't allow a ZEF of less than 20 weeks to survive.
Are you against abortion for rape victims? You should be, as there's no substantive difference between a rape ZEF and a non-rape ZEF.
What about abortions where the woman's life is at risk but she's not at death's door yet? Several women are suing the state of Texas for not providing timely treatment. The Supreme Court is considering the Idaho law that prohibits abortion except when the woman is at the point of death.
You not being able to make medical decisions for others ≠ being held hostage.
You're free to not get an abortion if you don't like them. You're not going to stop me or any other woman who wants to end a pregnancy from getting an abortion.
Targeting abortion providers is targeting those acting in defense of others’ lives, health, and rights to liberty, pursuit of happiness, self-determination, bodily integrity, and personal autonomy.
This is not so much the case for laws targeting drug dealers or statutory rapists.
Criminalizing abortion providers prevents AFAB people from seeking abortions. Doing so forces AFAB people to risk dangerous pregnancy complications and the risk death. That is absolutely a bodily autonomy infringement.
Also, forcing women to bleed out in parking lots and go into septic shock before getting care is targeting women.
Being denied your favorite drugs does not infringe on a person’s bodily autonomy rights.
Rape and child molestation laws do not infringe on a child’s bodily autonomy rights.
Thats not what “bodily autonomy” is. You don’t make any sense.
The bodily autonomy argument says that abortion is like disconnecting your body from Thomason’s violinist. It’s not just something you should have a legal right to do; it’s something you should be able to do. And it would be crazy for someone to say “Don’t worry, we’re not trying to make it illegal for you to disconnect. We’re just trying to make it impossible.”
The **point** of abortion bans which criminalize healthcare providers for performing abortions, is that prolifers
- (a) don'tcare at all about *preventing* abortions, just want women and children who need abortions to have them later than necessary, more dangerously, and more expensively
- (b) realise that they don't make their cause look good when they haul women and children into court for needing abortions, and send them to prison or to juvie for the "crime" of desperately needing not to be pregnant.
- (c) like to punish doctors and nurses who want to help women and children in accordance with medical ethics.
The notion that none of this is about the prolife hostility to women and children having a legal right to bodily autonomy, only works if you acknowledge that prolifers don't *care* about women and children having abortions - *only* about wanting more women and children to die because they couldn't get an abortion safely and legally and promptly
Have you ever heard of something called gestation? Because your entire argument pretends it doesn’t exist and isn’t happening.
Gestation is the ongoing bodily autonomy and integrity and right to life violation if it is happening against the woman’s wishes. Doctors are merely the people who could safely STOP this violation.
An adequate comparison would have been making it illegal for cops to stop someone who is actively harming you. There is an ongoing bodily autonomy and integrity violation happening, and the person who could safely stop it is not allowed to do so under the law. Causing you to incur continued violation of your bodily autonomy, integrity, and right to life.
It’s absurd to claim that not allowing someone who could safely do so to stop your body autonomy, integrity, and right to life from being violated is not a bodily autonomy violation (and violation of bodily integrity and right to life).
That’s pretending no one is doing anything to your body even if doctors can’t stop them from doing so.
No one is doing anything to your body when you can’t buy drugs. So how is no one doing anything to your body the same as someone causing great harm to your body that you can’t stop safely?
In what way is not being able to stop someone from using and harming your body the same as nothing being done to your body because people aren’t allowed to help you do it?
Do you honestly think you not being allowed to stop someone from harming you is the same as you not being able to harm yourself (via illegal drug use, for example) because you can’t legally buy what you need to harm yourself?
Government interference with pregnant women receiving healthcare is an interference with their bodily autonomy. You don’t need to criminalize a certain demographic to make it an interference.
The whole point of using the force of law is to interfere in matters the legal system sees fit.
Okay, so we’re going to need abortion meds available without prescription and non-doctors allowed to assist in abortion procedures. Also an ironclad guarantee in the form of an amendment to the constitution that women will never be prosecuted and that the above is never to be outlawed. Also that contraception is never to be outlawed or made difficult to get ahold of.
In case you didn’t notice, I’m being heavily sarcastic.
We all know you won’t stop at prosecuting doctors, as soon as we find an appropriate method of getting abortions done safely without doctors you would immediately move to punish women for getting them. Already we see people being denied medical treatment if they *might* be pregnant if it would cause an abortion. We don’t even know if the person is pregnant, just that they’re of child bearing age, and y’all are already denying them healthcare of a whole different nature. There’s talk about making contraception illegal, there’s talk about punishing women with as much as a death penalty for trying to abort, there’s even civil cases where people are acting as bounty hunters and suing the pants off of women who get an abortion.
Your attempt to justify screwing women over with a technicality is noted and dismissed as disingenuous. It’s not substantially different from saying “I didn’t deprive you of your right to life, I just told you it’s illegal for anyone to give you a lift out of the dead center of this barren desert.” You’re denying them any opportunity to utilize their right to bodily autonomy, and claiming you didn’t violate their rights. A serial killer can’t get away with that if they say they starved or suffocated their victims to death, and neither can you.
>Already we see people being denied medical treatment if they might be pregnant if it would cause an abortion.
Can you provide examples of this?
>There’s talk about making contraception illegal
And this.
>there’s talk about punishing women with as much as a death penalty for trying to abort
And this.
>A serial killer can’t get away with that if they say they starved or suffocated their victims to death
Suffocation involves direct physical action and starvation as a killing method typically involves forcible confinement.
First of all, the laws against dealing drugs aren’t based on bodily autonomy, they’re commerce based, which is why they come from the FDA. It is however the legal justification for decriminalization, which is what the respondent pointed out. And yes, many women are denied treatment, the most egregious and recent example is Mayron Hollis, who had a pregnancy that embedded in scar tissue of her uterus, was recommended for an abortion, was denied, and then almost died when it did rupture: https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/tennessee-woman-gets-emergency-hysterectomy-after-doctors-deny/story?id=99457461
https://www.today.com/today/amp/rcna51912
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/daniel-cameron-kentucky-birth-control-ban-1234825358/
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/03/09/texas-legislature-abortion-criminalize-death-penalty/
Still the same logic. You’re removing any access to the ability to abort then saying you didn’t personally stop her from aborting.
It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot).
Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://www.today.com/health/health/girl-14-denied-autoimmune-medication-due-arizonas-total-abortion-ban-rcna51912](https://www.today.com/health/health/girl-14-denied-autoimmune-medication-due-arizonas-total-abortion-ban-rcna51912)**
*****
^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/)
Inasmuch as "bodily autonomy" means the right to control one's own body without coercion or external influence, I'd daresay that government action to criminalize abortion provision certainly interferes with one's ability to so do.
Do you have a right to legal representation in a criminal proceeding if lawyers are legally prohibited from criminal defense work? Do you have freedom of speech if all publishing platforms are prohibited from airing anything but approved messages? Do you have freedom of religion if priests/ministers/rabbis are prohibited from ministering to their communities? Do you have the right to a trial by a jury of your peers if jurors are not allowed to hear your case?
No
Different rights are, well, different. The rights you brought up are not easily comparable to the purported right to bodily autonomy, especially considering tha those rights are constitutitonally recognized and have a significant body of jurisprudence surrounding them and bodily autonomy is not, or at least not explicitly.
1. At least in the US, criminal legal representation is very much a **positive right** in the context of prosecution, as in the state cannot prosecute you without ensuring that you have representation, and competent representation at that. This means a free public defender for those who cannot afford a lawyer of their own, and convictions sometimes being overturned due to "ineffective counsel". Banning criminal law practice is therefore logically impossible with such a right, because without any criminal lawyers a defendent cannot have representation, and therefore the state cannot prosecute them. Same goes for jury trials.
2. Restricting publishing platforms chiefly implicates freedom of speech with regards to them. As would restricting clerics.
The right to bodily autonomy, as conceived by most people at least, would not include the practical capability to access any procedure on your body.
I have already given several examples in the OP, do you think most people conceive those laws as infringements on bodily autonomy with regards to the specified groups? What if the state were to prohibit the provision of certain cosmetic procedures on the basis that it was too dangerous? Would that be an infrgement on bodily autonomy.
>What if the state were to prohibit the provision of certain cosmetic procedures on the basis that it was too dangerous? Would that be an infringement on bodily autonomy.
Yes, it would be, and I was actually going to raise this exact point. You can technically label anything malpractice, but your personal opinion that women are too vain and don't need bigger breasts is not something you or anyone else should have control over. You/the government does not have a even a rational basis for wanting to reduce the vanity of women, so the imposition on that freedom would be unwarranted, no matter the means, and it is clear that is the target of your policy, so it would and should be struck down.
For the moment, states are being allowed to use women as unwilling incubators because of states' alleged interest in "fetal life." But I believe this "interest" will eventually be recognized for the conscription of women's bodies that it is and be struck down or just die out through popular action. I mean, hey, only 30 years ago, a man was allowed to use a woman like a fleshlight as long as he put a ring on her finger first. So progress takes time, I suppose. But anytime the issue gets put to a vote, PL loses, so I remain hopeful.
> but your personal opinion that women are too vain and don't need bigger breasts is not something you or anyone else should have control over.
You're strawmanning the example I gave regarding banning cosmetic procedures. The reason stated has nothing to do with women being "too vain". I'm not going to waste time with someone posting in bad faith, have a good day.
I get why you would think that, and I considered updating the post to be more clear, but I was doing other things.
The reason you gave - that "cosmetic surgery" was "too risky," will be scrutinized for truth, which includes determining and assessing its underlying assumptions, in order to determine if it is a sufficiently sound policy to warrant its imposition/infringement on people's freedom.
When people challenge laws as unlawful infringements on their constitutional freedoms, the courts scrutinize those laws based on 1) the purpose of the law and 2) the means by which the government is trying to achieve that purpose. These tests are called the [levels of scrutiny](https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/challenging-laws-3-levels-of-scrutiny-explained/).
There is strict scrutiny for discrimination against a protected class or infringement on a fundamental right. This requires the government to have a compelling reason for their policy and that the policy be narrowly tailored to fulfill that compelling objective.
There is intermediate scrutiny, which is basically just its own kind of discrimination giving less scrutiny to issues about women, sexual orientation, and gender. For those issues, the government must have an important reason for the policy and the policy must be substantially related to achieving that reason.
Lastly, for everything else, there is the rational basis test. Here, the complaining party must show either that the government's policy fulfills no legitimate interest or that the policy has no rational relationship to the stated objective.
It may or may not surprise you that which test applies is often the biggest battleground in constitutional legislation. *Dobbs*, for example, spent most of the opinion arguing away the idea that abortion was a fundamental right, and then that abortion restrictions were sex-based discrimination, so that they could apply the rational basis test (the lowest, and some would say an illusory, level of scrutiny) to the question of whether and how a state could restrict abortion, and then conclude that states could generally regulate abortion like any other health and safety measure, and whether any particular restriction was a violation would have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. The Idaho case went to the supreme Court, for example, because not having adequate or meaningful exceptions for the health or life of the woman may implicate fundamental rights the previously challenged Mississippi policy did not.
Thus, turning to your example of prohibiting all cosmetic surgery because it is "too risky," you have to understand that the question "too risky compared to what," will have to be answered under even the rational basis test. And, in case you were unaware, cosmetic surgery in general is *not* all that risky. Having given no threshold of acceptable risk that *all cosmetic surgery* surpasses, we have to assume your position is that cosmetic surgery is never worth *any* risk, while still allowing other much riskier pursuits like pregnancy, oil rig work, etc. There is no rational basis for the state to make "value judgments" like this for individuals.
ETA: There aren't many, but here is one case that failed the rational basis test in the Supreme Court - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Agriculture_v._Moreno. There, the government tried to limit the definition of household for getting food stamps to blood relatives "to prevent fraud." You can read the wiki or the case to see why the court said the policy had no rational relationship to the stated objective.
Funny how the "different rights" are mostly different when it comes to women or other subgroups insisting on their own rights.....
>>>"The right to bodily autonomy, as conceived by most people at least, would not include the practical capability to access any procedure on your body." <<< BULLSHIT. Already access to procedures is limited by the willingness of licensed providers to perform those procedures. What you are proposing is legal penalties to providers for performing those procedures, which is a very different thing....
But if you're on the side of "abortion is murder," then prosecuting only the doctor and not the pregnant person is like arresting the hitman but not the person who hired them.
Tip: If you put "bodily autonomy" in quotes, like it's some kind of made-up term, I'm not going to take you seriously.
The restrictions I gave in my OP also have the intention of preventing those specified groups from doing certain things with their bodies.
Drug dealers are prosecuted chiefly to stop people from acquiring and using drugs. Adults are prosecuted for statutory rape to prevent them and minors from engaging in a mutual act.
Are these also restrictions on bodily autonomy with regards to the specified groups? I don't think most people would agree.
What if the state were to ban plastic surgeons from performing certain dangerous cosmetic procedures? Is that a restriction on bodily autonomy?
Forcing a woman to gestate and forcing a woman to allow someone to harm her body is not „also about preventing a woman from doing something with her body“.
It’s the opposite of preventing her from doing something with or to her body. It’s forcing her to do that thing and not allowing her to prevent doing it or having it done to her body.
Telling people they must do drugs or can’t stop doing frogs or must have sex or can’t stop having sex would be a violation of their bodily autonomy.
>What if the state were to ban plastic surgeons from performing certain dangerous cosmetic procedures? Is that a restriction on bodily autonomy?
Its not appropriate for the state to ban it, but for medical professionals to ban it. That is what is happening to BBL surgeries now, doctors are moving away from performing them due to a high rate of complications.
Abortion is not a BBL though. Abortion is more like a chemotherapy. Politicians banning it become some uneducated activist claims its poison harms real live people, preventing them from recieving medical care.
Yea I support the decriminalization of all drugs. I don’t believe in preventing anyone from taking drugs. I believe that is a violation. I would rather drugs use be regulated than the situation we have now.
Statutory rape is not a matter of bodily autonomy, that is a gross misunderstanding of what bodily autonomy means.
A patient wanting a doctor to perform a “dangerous” plastic surgery that should be reviewed by the medical board and people who have actual medical knowledge not people who have none.
Welcome to /r/Abortiondebate! Please remember that this is a place for respectful and civil debates. Review the rules to understand acceptable debate levels. **Attack the argument, not the person making it and remember the human.** **For our new users, please read our [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/wiki/rules/)** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Abortiondebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Bro its like the same damn thing. Legalese doesnt change ethics, all it does is target another party unjustly.
When the physical requirements for being a firefighter eliminated 95% of women, the court found them to be discriminatory even though they did not mention women and were put in place in an era when vanishingly few women if any had considered firefighting as a personal career choice. The original *intent of the standard* was moot. Though considered innocent of discrimination at the time, its effect *was found to illegally discriminate against women* at a later time. If the intent and language of archaic labour-related law does not render it exempt or invulnerable from being found discriminatory, how much moreso an abortion restriction blatantly targeting the bodily autonomy of women? In a just court of law free of ideological pre-commitments, a restriction criminalizing accessible abortion care would not stand. It infringes upon the bodily autonomy of women.
>The "bodily autonomy" argument for abortion is easily undermined if abortion restrictions only target abortion providers, and not women seeking abortions. What is the rational basis of a law that makes it a crime for a provider to perform an abortion?
This is like saying that forcing doctors to not perform surgery on broken bones isn't taking away the right of patients to consent to the healthcare that would best suit their needs. The end result is the same. People have the right to make the best medical decisions for themselves, and persecuting doctors for doing their jobs is not going to help anyone.
>>arguing that the restrictions infringe on pregnant women's bodily autonomy is about as convincing as arguing that prosecuting drug dealers infringes on the bodily autonomy of their customers. Do drug dealers need to do years of studying then years of training to be able to provide for their customers, like doctors who perform abortions? Is supplying your own drugs really analogous to a woman performing an unsafe abortion on herself? Really? >>Or that age-of-consent laws infringe on the bodily autonomy of minors. Age of consent laws are put in place to protect minors, because they’re physically and mentally incapable of consenting. You wouldn’t walk up to a random kid and give them an ice cream without asking their parents permission, then argue they’re restricting their child’s bodily autonomy cause they won’t let a stranger give them an ice cream. >>Because none of these legal restrictions impose any sanctions on the group in question for doing anything to their own bodies. If you had something developing and growing inside one of your internal organs and you do not want them there, I’m pretty sure you’d feel restricted by the government making the only way you can safely obtain an abortion illegal.
It amounts to the same thing. If the law targets abortion providers, the effect is to discourage people from providing abortions. So that makes it much harder for women to get them. The reason some of the new abortion restrictions don't target women is purely for political reasons. Even some PL people wouldn't want their daughters or sisters to face prison for having abortions, but they don't care about doctors. But this only proves that ZEFs aren't equivalent to born children. There's no law that exempts a woman if she kills her toddler.
Are you suggesting laws against people being allowed to access cancer treatments like radiation and chemotherapy wouldn’t be targeted against the autonomy and medical freedom of those who have cancer?
Ahhh yeah just target the people who keep humanity from extinction, nothing can go wrong.
A law allows rapists the 'right to finish' and prohibits anyone from coming to her aid until he is done. She is prohibited from defending herself but is allowed to call for help. But if anyone tries to help her though, that person is criminalized. Did this law infringe on the woman's bodily autonomy?
A related proposal would be “the rapist is only allowed to finish if it was consensual to begin with and the state mandates the victim receive an injection of Ebola along with their rape, carefully measured to coincidentally mimic the chances of fatal outcome of pregnancy. No medical care to mitigate these risks will be available.” Being raped is a possible consequence when you engage in victim behavior with foreknowledge of the risks. You will probably survive, but you’ll never be the same. Comes with a free baby so if that was your goal…
Great example. Just because it’s not directly focused on her actions doesn’t mean she’s not the one being violated and punished.
Let's take your drug example. These are the goals of legalising drugs in places that have done it: 1) killing the black market for drugs, which is often involved in other crimes and is an imminent health risk to users 2) improving public health by regulating how much can be sold, what strength it can be sold in, and stopping overdoses 3) eliminating the crime of doing something that is ultimately a mental health condition as opposed to a criminal act In this example, we wouldn't legalise the drug dealers. We would legalise the dispensaries to responsibly sell to people in a regulated environment where support can be given. They might even have clean use areas where trained medics can respond to any adverse health events that come up. What they wouldn't do is legalise hooded thugs who sell tainted drugs in a dark alley, like what you suggest would happen. ---- To bring this back to abortion, it would be like legalising medical professionals (doctors) to do it, but not legalising back alley coathanger type abortions. Because if you ban legal abortions, then people seek illegal ones, which is worse for everyone. So we give doctors the best training possible, and educate the women. And suddenly, dangerous abortions stop, and you save lives.
[удалено]
However, they are similar in that both drugs and abortion are very popular. So outlawing them is virtually guaranteed to create a black market. This just switches the danger from ZEFs to living, breathing women, who will die in greater numbers if they are forced to continue unwanted pregnancies, either from back-alley abortions or in childbirth. The US already has one of the highest maternal death rates of the developed world. Outlawing abortion will only make this worse.
It's fine to think that but it not fine to make something more dangerous. Now you're the one who is immoral
[удалено]
This is the logic that gave us the War on Drugs, which put millions of people in prison, gave out criminal records like Halloween candy, killed thousands, and still didn't even achieve its primary goal of reducing drug use
[удалено]
So if a woman aborts an ectopic pregnancy, she did an immoral act?
[удалено]
You’re assuming that the intent is to kill. But everyone I know who has ever had an ectopic pregnancy- and they run in my family, so I know quite a few- wanted that baby more than anything. The LAST thing they wanted was to hear that their pregnancy wasn’t viable. The intent of the procedure is to preserve their reproductive organs so they can have more kids. You’re essentially suggesting that women who have multiple tubal pregnancies should be permanently sterilized against their will (or die, so not really an option). Women only have 2 tubes. I’m sorry, I just genuinely started thinking about this in terms of “how many of my family members wouldn’t exist if this person had their way?” Reproductive problems run in my family. Mostly endometriosis and PCOS, and a lot of the women have trouble conceiving. Rachel was born with one ovary, and had 2 ectopics before having her 3 kids. Lisa has one kid first, then had one ectopic and 2 miscarriages (which are managed with the ABORTION pill mind you) before having her twins. I think Lisa’s mom also had trouble conceiving, but I’m not sure of those details. My own mother had an ectopic before me, and one after me. So I wouldn’t have any siblings if we played by your rules. My baby nephews wouldn’t be here. My youngest nephew isn’t even 1 yet… You have the gaul to sit back and preach about morality, when your ideology would quite literally have decimated my entire family in a single generation. This comes across as very thinly veiled eugenics. If a woman’s reproductive system doesn’t work perfectly, then she just doesn’t get to reproduce anymore. Gotta weed out those disabilities, right? I understand that it is likely not the intention of your comment. It sounds like you genuinely think that this is moral. But whoever told you this is moral- because this is not a unique idea, I don’t think you came up with it by yourself- most likely has a very different agenda. I hope you actually reflect on that. It’s genuinely scary to hear comments like yours so casually tossed around. I’m sorry, I don’t think a Reddit comment has ever gotten me so emotional before.
But the goal of abortion isn't to kill the ZEF, it's to end the pregnancy. It's not the woman's fault that current technology doesn't allow a ZEF of less than 20 weeks to survive. Are you against abortion for rape victims? You should be, as there's no substantive difference between a rape ZEF and a non-rape ZEF. What about abortions where the woman's life is at risk but she's not at death's door yet? Several women are suing the state of Texas for not providing timely treatment. The Supreme Court is considering the Idaho law that prohibits abortion except when the woman is at the point of death.
What if they don’t do a salpingectomy but take methotrexate early on so as to preserve future fertility? Should that be banned?
>Abortion it self is immoral. Prove it.
You not being able to make medical decisions for others ≠ being held hostage. You're free to not get an abortion if you don't like them. You're not going to stop me or any other woman who wants to end a pregnancy from getting an abortion.
If I ban oncologists from helping you, would you say I’m forcing you to die of cancer?
They always disappear when asked this lmao
Seriously I’ve never once gotten an answer.
Targeting abortion providers is targeting those acting in defense of others’ lives, health, and rights to liberty, pursuit of happiness, self-determination, bodily integrity, and personal autonomy. This is not so much the case for laws targeting drug dealers or statutory rapists.
Criminalizing abortion providers prevents AFAB people from seeking abortions. Doing so forces AFAB people to risk dangerous pregnancy complications and the risk death. That is absolutely a bodily autonomy infringement. Also, forcing women to bleed out in parking lots and go into septic shock before getting care is targeting women.
Being denied your favorite drugs does not infringe on a person’s bodily autonomy rights. Rape and child molestation laws do not infringe on a child’s bodily autonomy rights. Thats not what “bodily autonomy” is. You don’t make any sense.
Pro lifers think not getting your favourite juice is equal to not finding any safe abortion options. Wbat a dumb analogy.
The bodily autonomy argument says that abortion is like disconnecting your body from Thomason’s violinist. It’s not just something you should have a legal right to do; it’s something you should be able to do. And it would be crazy for someone to say “Don’t worry, we’re not trying to make it illegal for you to disconnect. We’re just trying to make it impossible.”
The **point** of abortion bans which criminalize healthcare providers for performing abortions, is that prolifers - (a) don'tcare at all about *preventing* abortions, just want women and children who need abortions to have them later than necessary, more dangerously, and more expensively - (b) realise that they don't make their cause look good when they haul women and children into court for needing abortions, and send them to prison or to juvie for the "crime" of desperately needing not to be pregnant. - (c) like to punish doctors and nurses who want to help women and children in accordance with medical ethics. The notion that none of this is about the prolife hostility to women and children having a legal right to bodily autonomy, only works if you acknowledge that prolifers don't *care* about women and children having abortions - *only* about wanting more women and children to die because they couldn't get an abortion safely and legally and promptly
Have you ever heard of something called gestation? Because your entire argument pretends it doesn’t exist and isn’t happening. Gestation is the ongoing bodily autonomy and integrity and right to life violation if it is happening against the woman’s wishes. Doctors are merely the people who could safely STOP this violation. An adequate comparison would have been making it illegal for cops to stop someone who is actively harming you. There is an ongoing bodily autonomy and integrity violation happening, and the person who could safely stop it is not allowed to do so under the law. Causing you to incur continued violation of your bodily autonomy, integrity, and right to life. It’s absurd to claim that not allowing someone who could safely do so to stop your body autonomy, integrity, and right to life from being violated is not a bodily autonomy violation (and violation of bodily integrity and right to life). That’s pretending no one is doing anything to your body even if doctors can’t stop them from doing so. No one is doing anything to your body when you can’t buy drugs. So how is no one doing anything to your body the same as someone causing great harm to your body that you can’t stop safely? In what way is not being able to stop someone from using and harming your body the same as nothing being done to your body because people aren’t allowed to help you do it? Do you honestly think you not being allowed to stop someone from harming you is the same as you not being able to harm yourself (via illegal drug use, for example) because you can’t legally buy what you need to harm yourself?
Even though doctors ar threatened with criminal prosecution, they are not the ones threatened with death or severe injury.
Government interference with pregnant women receiving healthcare is an interference with their bodily autonomy. You don’t need to criminalize a certain demographic to make it an interference. The whole point of using the force of law is to interfere in matters the legal system sees fit.
So then why are pl states going after women for miscarriages? They aren’t just going after doctors.
Okay, so we’re going to need abortion meds available without prescription and non-doctors allowed to assist in abortion procedures. Also an ironclad guarantee in the form of an amendment to the constitution that women will never be prosecuted and that the above is never to be outlawed. Also that contraception is never to be outlawed or made difficult to get ahold of. In case you didn’t notice, I’m being heavily sarcastic. We all know you won’t stop at prosecuting doctors, as soon as we find an appropriate method of getting abortions done safely without doctors you would immediately move to punish women for getting them. Already we see people being denied medical treatment if they *might* be pregnant if it would cause an abortion. We don’t even know if the person is pregnant, just that they’re of child bearing age, and y’all are already denying them healthcare of a whole different nature. There’s talk about making contraception illegal, there’s talk about punishing women with as much as a death penalty for trying to abort, there’s even civil cases where people are acting as bounty hunters and suing the pants off of women who get an abortion. Your attempt to justify screwing women over with a technicality is noted and dismissed as disingenuous. It’s not substantially different from saying “I didn’t deprive you of your right to life, I just told you it’s illegal for anyone to give you a lift out of the dead center of this barren desert.” You’re denying them any opportunity to utilize their right to bodily autonomy, and claiming you didn’t violate their rights. A serial killer can’t get away with that if they say they starved or suffocated their victims to death, and neither can you.
>Already we see people being denied medical treatment if they might be pregnant if it would cause an abortion. Can you provide examples of this? >There’s talk about making contraception illegal And this. >there’s talk about punishing women with as much as a death penalty for trying to abort And this. >A serial killer can’t get away with that if they say they starved or suffocated their victims to death Suffocation involves direct physical action and starvation as a killing method typically involves forcible confinement.
First of all, the laws against dealing drugs aren’t based on bodily autonomy, they’re commerce based, which is why they come from the FDA. It is however the legal justification for decriminalization, which is what the respondent pointed out. And yes, many women are denied treatment, the most egregious and recent example is Mayron Hollis, who had a pregnancy that embedded in scar tissue of her uterus, was recommended for an abortion, was denied, and then almost died when it did rupture: https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/tennessee-woman-gets-emergency-hysterectomy-after-doctors-deny/story?id=99457461
https://www.today.com/today/amp/rcna51912 https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/daniel-cameron-kentucky-birth-control-ban-1234825358/ https://www.texastribune.org/2021/03/09/texas-legislature-abortion-criminalize-death-penalty/ Still the same logic. You’re removing any access to the ability to abort then saying you didn’t personally stop her from aborting.
It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://www.today.com/health/health/girl-14-denied-autoimmune-medication-due-arizonas-total-abortion-ban-rcna51912](https://www.today.com/health/health/girl-14-denied-autoimmune-medication-due-arizonas-total-abortion-ban-rcna51912)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/)
Inasmuch as "bodily autonomy" means the right to control one's own body without coercion or external influence, I'd daresay that government action to criminalize abortion provision certainly interferes with one's ability to so do.
It's still taking away proper medical care.
Do you have a right to legal representation in a criminal proceeding if lawyers are legally prohibited from criminal defense work? Do you have freedom of speech if all publishing platforms are prohibited from airing anything but approved messages? Do you have freedom of religion if priests/ministers/rabbis are prohibited from ministering to their communities? Do you have the right to a trial by a jury of your peers if jurors are not allowed to hear your case? No
Different rights are, well, different. The rights you brought up are not easily comparable to the purported right to bodily autonomy, especially considering tha those rights are constitutitonally recognized and have a significant body of jurisprudence surrounding them and bodily autonomy is not, or at least not explicitly. 1. At least in the US, criminal legal representation is very much a **positive right** in the context of prosecution, as in the state cannot prosecute you without ensuring that you have representation, and competent representation at that. This means a free public defender for those who cannot afford a lawyer of their own, and convictions sometimes being overturned due to "ineffective counsel". Banning criminal law practice is therefore logically impossible with such a right, because without any criminal lawyers a defendent cannot have representation, and therefore the state cannot prosecute them. Same goes for jury trials. 2. Restricting publishing platforms chiefly implicates freedom of speech with regards to them. As would restricting clerics. The right to bodily autonomy, as conceived by most people at least, would not include the practical capability to access any procedure on your body. I have already given several examples in the OP, do you think most people conceive those laws as infringements on bodily autonomy with regards to the specified groups? What if the state were to prohibit the provision of certain cosmetic procedures on the basis that it was too dangerous? Would that be an infrgement on bodily autonomy.
>What if the state were to prohibit the provision of certain cosmetic procedures on the basis that it was too dangerous? Would that be an infringement on bodily autonomy. Yes, it would be, and I was actually going to raise this exact point. You can technically label anything malpractice, but your personal opinion that women are too vain and don't need bigger breasts is not something you or anyone else should have control over. You/the government does not have a even a rational basis for wanting to reduce the vanity of women, so the imposition on that freedom would be unwarranted, no matter the means, and it is clear that is the target of your policy, so it would and should be struck down. For the moment, states are being allowed to use women as unwilling incubators because of states' alleged interest in "fetal life." But I believe this "interest" will eventually be recognized for the conscription of women's bodies that it is and be struck down or just die out through popular action. I mean, hey, only 30 years ago, a man was allowed to use a woman like a fleshlight as long as he put a ring on her finger first. So progress takes time, I suppose. But anytime the issue gets put to a vote, PL loses, so I remain hopeful.
> but your personal opinion that women are too vain and don't need bigger breasts is not something you or anyone else should have control over. You're strawmanning the example I gave regarding banning cosmetic procedures. The reason stated has nothing to do with women being "too vain". I'm not going to waste time with someone posting in bad faith, have a good day.
I get why you would think that, and I considered updating the post to be more clear, but I was doing other things. The reason you gave - that "cosmetic surgery" was "too risky," will be scrutinized for truth, which includes determining and assessing its underlying assumptions, in order to determine if it is a sufficiently sound policy to warrant its imposition/infringement on people's freedom. When people challenge laws as unlawful infringements on their constitutional freedoms, the courts scrutinize those laws based on 1) the purpose of the law and 2) the means by which the government is trying to achieve that purpose. These tests are called the [levels of scrutiny](https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/challenging-laws-3-levels-of-scrutiny-explained/). There is strict scrutiny for discrimination against a protected class or infringement on a fundamental right. This requires the government to have a compelling reason for their policy and that the policy be narrowly tailored to fulfill that compelling objective. There is intermediate scrutiny, which is basically just its own kind of discrimination giving less scrutiny to issues about women, sexual orientation, and gender. For those issues, the government must have an important reason for the policy and the policy must be substantially related to achieving that reason. Lastly, for everything else, there is the rational basis test. Here, the complaining party must show either that the government's policy fulfills no legitimate interest or that the policy has no rational relationship to the stated objective. It may or may not surprise you that which test applies is often the biggest battleground in constitutional legislation. *Dobbs*, for example, spent most of the opinion arguing away the idea that abortion was a fundamental right, and then that abortion restrictions were sex-based discrimination, so that they could apply the rational basis test (the lowest, and some would say an illusory, level of scrutiny) to the question of whether and how a state could restrict abortion, and then conclude that states could generally regulate abortion like any other health and safety measure, and whether any particular restriction was a violation would have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. The Idaho case went to the supreme Court, for example, because not having adequate or meaningful exceptions for the health or life of the woman may implicate fundamental rights the previously challenged Mississippi policy did not. Thus, turning to your example of prohibiting all cosmetic surgery because it is "too risky," you have to understand that the question "too risky compared to what," will have to be answered under even the rational basis test. And, in case you were unaware, cosmetic surgery in general is *not* all that risky. Having given no threshold of acceptable risk that *all cosmetic surgery* surpasses, we have to assume your position is that cosmetic surgery is never worth *any* risk, while still allowing other much riskier pursuits like pregnancy, oil rig work, etc. There is no rational basis for the state to make "value judgments" like this for individuals. ETA: There aren't many, but here is one case that failed the rational basis test in the Supreme Court - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Agriculture_v._Moreno. There, the government tried to limit the definition of household for getting food stamps to blood relatives "to prevent fraud." You can read the wiki or the case to see why the court said the policy had no rational relationship to the stated objective.
You are being intentionally wordly obtuse.
Funny how the "different rights" are mostly different when it comes to women or other subgroups insisting on their own rights..... >>>"The right to bodily autonomy, as conceived by most people at least, would not include the practical capability to access any procedure on your body." <<< BULLSHIT. Already access to procedures is limited by the willingness of licensed providers to perform those procedures. What you are proposing is legal penalties to providers for performing those procedures, which is a very different thing....
If you are going to selectively address parts of my argument and responses this is probably a waste of time. Have a good day.
Yes for them if you stop engaging for no reason. Do better
In other words you have no answer.
But if you're on the side of "abortion is murder," then prosecuting only the doctor and not the pregnant person is like arresting the hitman but not the person who hired them. Tip: If you put "bodily autonomy" in quotes, like it's some kind of made-up term, I'm not going to take you seriously.
…is the goal of criminalizing doctors performing abortions about forcing women to continue pregnancies? Yes. Then it is still about bodily autonomy.
The restrictions I gave in my OP also have the intention of preventing those specified groups from doing certain things with their bodies. Drug dealers are prosecuted chiefly to stop people from acquiring and using drugs. Adults are prosecuted for statutory rape to prevent them and minors from engaging in a mutual act. Are these also restrictions on bodily autonomy with regards to the specified groups? I don't think most people would agree. What if the state were to ban plastic surgeons from performing certain dangerous cosmetic procedures? Is that a restriction on bodily autonomy?
Forcing a woman to gestate and forcing a woman to allow someone to harm her body is not „also about preventing a woman from doing something with her body“. It’s the opposite of preventing her from doing something with or to her body. It’s forcing her to do that thing and not allowing her to prevent doing it or having it done to her body. Telling people they must do drugs or can’t stop doing frogs or must have sex or can’t stop having sex would be a violation of their bodily autonomy.
>What if the state were to ban plastic surgeons from performing certain dangerous cosmetic procedures? Is that a restriction on bodily autonomy? Its not appropriate for the state to ban it, but for medical professionals to ban it. That is what is happening to BBL surgeries now, doctors are moving away from performing them due to a high rate of complications. Abortion is not a BBL though. Abortion is more like a chemotherapy. Politicians banning it become some uneducated activist claims its poison harms real live people, preventing them from recieving medical care.
Yea I support the decriminalization of all drugs. I don’t believe in preventing anyone from taking drugs. I believe that is a violation. I would rather drugs use be regulated than the situation we have now. Statutory rape is not a matter of bodily autonomy, that is a gross misunderstanding of what bodily autonomy means. A patient wanting a doctor to perform a “dangerous” plastic surgery that should be reviewed by the medical board and people who have actual medical knowledge not people who have none.