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Yeah, I agree with that. And I think life does begin at conception.
But I just don’t think that’s a game-clinching argument like the right supposes it is. Nobody believes that a embryo is equivalent to a human. There’s a “thing” going around in a few different versions that makes this clear. Basically, it creates a situation where you have to make a choice between saving 1,000 frozen, fertilized embryos, or a 2-year old toddler. There’s a fire in the building and time to save only one or the other, or they are both on a train track and you are at the switch and have to decide which track the train goes down to inevitably kill whatever is in its path.
Nobody saves 1,000 embryos.
So deep down inside, everybody knows they aren’t equivalent.
That then leaves the decision at what point that equation changes. Obviously reasonable people can disagree about where that point is which then leaves us to the question of who makes that decision: the woman, or the government?
Here are a couple of interesting things I read on the ‘net. One is an argument that points out the moral hypocrisy of the anti-abortion position, and the second is a legal argument I find interesting.
And then…
“Reasonable people can disagree about when a zygote becomes a ‘human life’ – that’s a philosophical question. However, regardless of whether or not one believes a fetus is ethically equivalent to an adult, it doesn’t obligate a mother to sacrifice her body autonomy for another, innocent or not.
“Body autonomy is a critical component of the right to privacy protected by the Constitution, as decided in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), McFall v. Shimp (1978), and of course Roe v. Wade (1973). Consider a scenario where you are a perfect bone marrow match for a child with severe aplastic anemia; no other person on earth is a close enough match to save the child’s life, and the child will certainly die without a bone marrow transplant from you. If you decided that you did not want to donate your marrow to save the child, for whatever reason, the state cannot demand the use of any part of your body for something to which you do not consent. It doesn’t matter if the procedure required to complete the donation is trivial, or if the rationale for refusing is flimsy and arbitrary, or if the procedure is the only hope the child has to survive, or if the child is a genius or a saint or anything else – the decision to donate must be voluntary to be constitutional. This right is even extended to a person’s body after they die; if they did not voluntarily commit to donate their organs while alive, their organs cannot be harvested after death, regardless of how useless those organs are to the deceased or many lives they would save. That’s the law.
“Use of a woman’s uterus to save a life is no different from use of her bone marrow to save a life – it must be offered voluntarily. By all means, profess your belief that providing one’s uterus to save the child is morally just, and refusing is morally wrong. That is a defensible philosophical position, regardless of who agrees and who disagrees. But legally, it must be the woman’s choice to carry out the pregnancy. She may choose to carry the baby to term. She may choose not to. Either decision could be made for all the right reasons, all the wrong reasons, or anything in between. But it must be her choice, and protecting the right of body autonomy means the law is on her side. Supporting that precedent is what being pro-choice means.”
Adding the reference to the Supreme Court case upholding that police officers are not obligated to put themselves in harm’s way to save the life of another or to stop a crime in progress. Another example of body autonomy.
Warren v. District of Columbia (444 A.2d. 1, D.C. Ct. of Ap. 1981) is an oft-quoted District of Columbia Court of Appeals case that held that the police do not owe a specific duty to provide police services to citizens based on the public duty doctrine.”
