How can you justify being pro-life if you believe in bodily rights?

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Greenfields said:
Simple answer because a baby has equal bodily rights.
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If technology allowed, does it have the right (if say it is in a test tube) to be transferred into an unwilling woman’s body? Is a woman right o refuse such an implantation? If the ‘baby’ has no such right, and the woman has the right to refuse, why does this not apply to a ‘baby’ conceived naturally?
 
FiveLinden said:
The Catholic view, as I understand it as a non-believer, is that a fetus has is in the uterus ‘naturally’ in the sense that it is ‘intended’ by the divine order of nature that the fetus be there and grow.
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Don’t need the word “divine”. Plainly, the view you state is correct. This is our human nature.
FiveLinden said:
This is not at all obvious if you are not a Catholic. (If you think it is obvious, you need to ask why so many people don’t accept this).
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It is obvious (omitting the word “divine” if that’s an obstacle). People don’t want to accept what follows, therefore they reject the starting point.
 
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FiveLinden said:
If technology allowed, does it have the right (if say it is in a test tube) to be transferred into an unwilling woman’s body? Is a woman right o refuse such an implantation? If the ‘baby’ has no such right, and the woman has the right to refuse, why does this not apply to a ‘baby’ conceived naturally?
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Do you not distinguish rights such as;
  • to not be killed, vs
  • to call upon another to take extraordinary measures to rescue you from a grave situation?
 
Rau said:
  • to not be killed, vs
  • to call upon another to take extraordinary measures to rescue you from a grave situation?
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Yes, I do distinguish them. They are different statements. But I am not the one asserting the rights of the unborn.
 
I was not confused as to whether or not abortion is a sin or not. My opinion on that won’t change. I was confused whether it should be legal or not. And, personally, I live in the US, so given the separation between Church and state, the arguments for why abortion should not be legal would have to be secular.
 
FiveLinden said:
If technology allowed, does it have the right (if say it is in a test tube) to be transferred into an unwilling woman’s body? Is a woman right o refuse such an implantation? If the ‘baby’ has no such right, and the woman has the right to refuse, why does this not apply to a ‘baby’ conceived naturally?
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Well of course the woman would have the right to refuse the implantation. And that would hold to naturally implanted as well. But, unless I misunderstood, we just agreed that the woman has the choice to refuse to become pregnant, (in other word the choice to not have sex) something everyone should agree upon. But abortion occurs after the woman is already pregnant, and directly kills the child.

My question is “Does the woman have the right to passively let the child die by early-term delivery?” (I also believe that consent to sex is consent to pregnancy, so this question really only applies to pregnancy from rape.)

So far, people have mainly said that, no, she doesn’t, because pregnancy is natural and ordinary, and you are required to do the natural and ordinary means to save your child’s life.

I came up with an analogy for this when I was discussing with another pro-choice person. Imagine that a mother just had a child. But for some reason a child won’t be able to consume any food, only the breast milk of the mother for nine months. Without the mother breast-feeding, the baby will die. The mother has the right to her own body. Breast-feeding is a completely natural function. Do bodily rights allow the mother to say “no,” and refuse to breast-feed, which passively let the child die.
 
mimi05 said:
I came up with an analogy for this when I was discussing with another pro-choice person. Imagine that a mother just had a child. But for some reason a child won’t be able to consume any food, only the breast milk of the mother for nine months. Without the mother breast-feeding, the baby will die. The mother has the right to her own body. Breast-feeding is a completely natural function. Do bodily rights allow the mother to say “no,” and refuse to breast-feed, which passively let the child die.
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I personally don’t know the catholic answer to this. However at some point, as Catholics, we are culpable. Jesus talked about Lazarus at the rich mans doorstep. The rich man passed him by for years, not giving him any notice. In the end it was not viewed favorably, not consistent with a life of love. Just the situation you described, to me personally (in my opinion, as I’m uninformed about actual doctrine on this) sounds like a situation of neglect. Having a child means taking care of that child to a certain reasonable degree.
 
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mimi05 said:
Yeah, but the problem I found with that was you could just do a very early term delivery of the baby, as that would not be actively killing, just letting die, (the same way a parent would let their child die of blood loss). But very early term delivery also seems wrong to me.
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That’s like a parent intentionally putting their 6 month old infant in an alley on a cold winters night. You aren’t actively killing them, just letting them die.
 
The thing is that the “separation of church and state” argument removes God from the equation, and subsequently certain aspects of morality. Further originally it wasn’t necessarily intended to be protecting people from a church, it was protecting people’s right to worship as they chose to be infringed upon by the state. In recent times this has been moved (in the minds of some) to separation of church and state meaning that even morality from a person of faith is inadmissible in discussion. This, in my opinion, isn’t the case. We don’t live in a completely secular world, so I don’t see the need to eliminate God completely, or morality, from any debate on ethics.

The “bodily autonomy “ argument has been used often by atheists and those with a secular mindset. The problem is that it can infringe on the rights of the unborn, vulnerable, or the weak. If we utilized this mentality we would spiral in morality quickly. There are of course reasonable limits.
 
FiveLinden said:
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Rau:
  • to not be killed, vs
  • to call upon another to take extraordinary measures to rescue you from a grave situation?
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Yes, I do distinguish them. They are different statements. But I am not the one asserting the rights of the unborn.
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Good grief. The right being asserted in favour of the unborn is only the former. Your post suggested the latter. :roll_eyes:
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Montrose said:
Deliberately letting a person die IS killing!
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Not necessarily.

You could have a person at the end of their natural life, the dying process happening peacefully, then make the choice to do all sorts of futile resuscitative measures.

We aren’t obligated to save every person in every case.
 
FiveLinden said:
If technology allowed, does it have the right (if say it is in a test tube) to be transferred into an unwilling woman’s body? Is a woman right o refuse such an implantation? If the ‘baby’ has no such right, and the woman has the right to refuse, why does this not apply to a ‘baby’ conceived naturally?
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You wrote the above.

The baby conceived naturally is not in a grave situation “asking” for help. The right asserted for the child is to not be killed.
 
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It is like justifying chattel slavery because you believe in property rights.

The child in the womb is not part of the mother’s body. The unborn is a seperate human being.
 
I don’t believe in your implied but not really defined description of ‘bodily rights’

I don’t believe a teen has the right to take hormones or surgically modify their body without parents being involved. Same goes for teen birth control and abortion.

I don’t believe our body preferences take priority over harming others, be it an unborn child or my neighbors because I refuse to quarantine when I’m infectious.
 
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Because it came up in another discussion recently, ask if the pro-choicer supports universal healthcare. If so, then the child in the womb deserves healthcare, too.

If not, please share their reasoning.
 
That would be actively killing if the intention behind the early induction was to kill(or end the pregnancy) for personal reasons that don’t involve dire risk to the life of the mother. I believe personal bodily rights are in line with being pro life as long as both the intention is just and the action would not lead to the direct killing of a human being.
 
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