Your comment actually made me think of something I had never considered: perhaps the mother's right against the child is self-defense.

The child is literally feeding off the mother until birth, taking energy, nutrients, maybe even killing the mother. I don't necessarily want to frame it this way, because I want to view the relationship as mutualistic or commensalistic, rather than parasitic, but I could see how it might be biologically a parasitic relationship.

However, a quick search shows that people against abortions say that biologically it must be "an organism that attaches to a member of a different species and feeds off that organism in a manner that is physically injurious to the other organism."

While it may not fit the dictionary definition of a biologically parasitic relationship, I believe it still can "feed off that organism in a manner that is physically injurious to the other organism."

So I think there could be an argument for self-defense.

Our (now healthy, five year old) son was definitely killing his mother from the womb; her liver was about to shut down due to HELLP syndrome when we did an induction. 50 years earlier and she and my child would be dead. This does actually kill people today: https://www.propublica.org/article/die-in-childbirth-materna... is an account of a neonatal ICU nurse who died from HELLP five years before my wife's doctor caught it. Childbirth can be really scary and dangerous.

I feel grateful you shared that story to talk of the dangers of pregnancy and also really really grateful that the medical field is improving with dealing with that condition and that both your son and his mother survived.

Arguments like this don't win the hearts and minds of people (maybe not your intent). Calling fetuses/babies parasites may sound to you like a clever analogy but to most other people it just sounds crass.

Oh I don't like the argument at all. I felt disgusted even writing it. I also don't like the argument of using self-defense as a reason to shoot people or the death penalty or frankly the assumption that other people have evil intent. I think the vast majority of us are trying our best and accidentally hurt people (EDIT: and that people feel hurt after our actions, not necessarily caused by them but more likely correlated).

But I do believe that some people who are pregnant and would like abortions may perceive the child as being parasitic (not a parasite, as I also don't like to attach strict labels of badness to one's identity but to focus on behaviors).

So I agree it sounds crass and yet think if others want to use self-defense for other arguments defending their harm to others, I don't see why that same argument couldn't apply here.

You're right, but I hold hope for an enlightened electorate that makes careful decisions when prohibiting other peoples' rights. This analogy is useful in exploring that space.

100%. The court took this decision away from human beings. You no longer get to choose when you procreate. At some point, the court says no longer your choice.

> The court took this decision away from human beings.

No, the court remanded the lawmaking decision to the states, as it should be.

There's this section of the CA-NV border known as "state line", which has a litany of casinos just right on the NV side of that border. The notion that different states have different laws is a fact we've accepted since the founding of our country.

When AZ bans abortion, Arizona women will be mildly inconvenienced by a three hour drive to the CA border, as other matters of state law divergence have always been. Nobody has lost their rights.

Cynically, I'd suggest that abortion rights aren't even the issue at hand - lots of people seem very angry/afraid that after a century of DC slowly arrogating all available power and authority to itself, that this power might flow back the other way.

> No, the court remanded the lawmaking decision to the states, as it should be.

I'm ok with this argument, as I believe that legislatures, national and state, should write laws to address these issues, not rely on court precedent.

> Cynically, I'd suggest that abortion rights aren't even the issue at hand - lots of people seem very angry/afraid that after a century of DC slowly arrogating all available power and authority to itself, that this power might flow back the other way.

I disagree that this is the main reason, because SCOTUS just basically said the NY state law against guns in public was unconstitutional, and Congress is passing a national gun law as we speak.

So I find it hard to believe that it's just about state's rights, because it's giving states some rights in one week while also taking away other rights.

Not everyone owns a car. Plus, that's just AZ women. A woman in Miami will likely have a 14+ hour drive to get an abortion.

When you find yourself explaining an ordinary biological process, especially one that millions of people regard as wondrous and miraculous, in this manner, does it not inspire you to take any sort of pause and wonder if you're engaging in a kind of special pleading? Intellectually and emotionally, is this really how you want to characterize pregnancy? I think one should be careful not to arrive at monstrous conclusions in service of political ends.

I have a child, and will likely be having another. I love them dearly. But to pretend that the birth process was "wondrous and miraculous" is papering over reality. It was bloody and gruesome. My wife was given an epidural to help control the very significant amounts of pain. During the birth, there was blood everywhere. While the newborn was being attended to by nurses, my wife had her vagina stitched back together. And to this day she deals with prolapse, which is where her organs drop out of her vagina. Among my friend groups, this was one of the easier/more routine pregnancies.

I agree with you. I felt disgusted writing it. For me, pregnancy inspires feelings of wonder and magic and awe. Yet for others, pregnancy may cause them to feel fear, pain, and hopelessness.

I don't want to characterize pregnancy this way, I also don't want to characterize almost any human interaction this way. I prefer to believe that we all have good intentions and sometimes accidentally hurt people and that most of us are trying our absolute best to minimize pain and maximize joy, especially to those around us. So what can hurt me is how so many mothers may feel pain whether they keep the baby or abort, and we often demonize them for making one of the hardest and most gut-wrenching decisions in their lives. That's not to say I don't feel pain for the unborn child, I also feel the pain of the lost life. But I also feel the pain for the child who is born and kills the mother, or who is born and is resented by the mother or abandoned.

I feel pain all around the situation and it hurts me that we can be so quick to demonize the unborn child or the mother.

> Your comment actually made me think of something I had never considered: perhaps the mother's right against the child is self-defense.

I doubt that argument would get far in the case of most abortions, but it might work in cases where the mother's life is at much more risk than is normal for pregnancy, especially where the pregnancy has gone so wrong that there is almost no chance the baby is going to make it.

Yeah, I think it'd be more obvious in cases of extreme physical harm, but harder to argue in cases of lesser physical harm or even in terms of emotional harm, regardless of how extreme.

The mother's choice to have sex creates the organism in the first place. That adds complexity to the topic not addressed in your argument.

Many of the abortion bans going into effect soon/now have no exception for rape

Woman's choice is removed in circumstances of rape and I agree that that very much changes things. Rape accounts for less than 0.5% of abortions though, so while very important to consider, it'd be incorrect to assume that all abortions are due to rape.

https://abort73.com/abortion_facts/us_abortion_statistics/

Banning abortion except in the cases of rape would, however, result in many fewer abortion providers and make it inaccessible for many victims of rape. There's also implementation difficulties: do you need some kind of certificate from the legal system saying you were raped (way too restrictive), or is it just a matter of self attestation (for pro-lifers, likely a big enough hole to make it meaningless)?

Ah yes, a website like that wouldn't cherry-pick statistics, would they? Considering it is literally an anti-abortion website?

"What's best for the child" is often the argument used there - since the child did not commit the rape, the argument goes, it shouldn't be punished for it.

Notably the same argument has been used to set the precedent that male rape victims are also compelled to pay child support to their rapists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermesmann_v._Seyer

The case you linked does not support your argument.

There the alimony decision was based on the rape victim giving consent from the standpoint of the civil laws which also govern parental relationships. That did not matter for criminal law because the victim was underage.

Not that I agree with the court here, but it is completely different from what you described.

That's part of the logic (basically overriding the definition of statutory rape to be "not rape" if the underage child enjoyed it)

But there are a bunch of similar decisions here: https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...

And the common theme is just because the parent is raped, doesn't override the rights of the child.

It's easy to see how that logic would be extended from child support to abortion.

So states that ban abortion are also pushing for easy access to contraceptives, right? That would be logically and morally consistent, no? Unless, perhaps, the motive for such laws is unrelated to the welfare of the humans (child and mother, both) involved.

Why is the mother's choice to have sex relevant?

If you believe that abortion is murder, how the child came to be is irrelevant.

The only way that the mother's conscious choice to have sex factor's into the equation is if the intent of abortion laws is not to protect children, but rather to punish women who choose to have sex.

It's a weird self-defense argument when the reason the child exists at all is because the mother and some dude brought it into existence in the first place. That seems a key piece the metaphor should include.

Fair point. I don't like the self-defense argument in general, as we will often put ourselves into a dangerous situation and then claim we were acting in self-defense when someone attacks us, e.g. the Kyle Rittenhouse situation, being unaware of how our actions escalated the conflict.

But just strictly going from the legal sense, I imagine there's a lot of leeway in defining self-defense with regards to whether one chooses to enter into a situation where one is likely to be attacked.

Yeah, there's a lot of complication for sure, even in "real" cases of self-defense (e.g., if you talk a bunch of shit to someone, and they attack you, and then you shoot them, how self-defensy is that?) I would prefer not do weird metaphorical gymnastics in discussing abortion -- it's pretty straightforward what the relevant tradeoffs are. I wish the nation could just battle it out over those, facing the hard choices directly.

I agree I don't want to do metaphorical gymnastics, and yet law and the interpretation of it can be exactly that. I mean often SCOTUS is trying to extrapolate meaning from 1-2 sentences in a Constitution written over 200 years ago, using many metaphors to do so.

I also don't feel very clear on what are the relevant trade offs, but maybe it's more clear to you. What do you see as the relevant tradeoffs?

You could decompose the issues many ways, but it seems like some of the principal components are:

Component 1: human life is valuable, and ending a human life is a serious matter not just for the individual, but for society

Component 2: personal autonomy, esp wrt control of one's own body, is one of the most profound of freedoms, and one of particular importance to the American people

Most Americans would probably agree that these two components explain the majority of the 'moral variance' on the issue. So then it's a matter of making an uncomfortable choice between them: when do we value human life less than autonomy? Answering that question will almost certainly require some further difficult reckoning:

Sub-component 3: what really counts as a human life? A person born without a brain? A brain dead patient? A patient reduced to the level of an animal due to Lewy Body Dementia? A 8.9 month old unborn baby? A 4 week fetus? A fetus that isn't viable outside the mother's body?

Sub-sub-component 4: what do we count as viable? What amount of medical intervention is allowed for a fetus to be considered viable?

And then things like:

Intersection {1,2}: What about when a person wants to exercise autonomy to end his own life, but is unable / unwilling to do so by himself? Should it be legal to enlist someone to help?

Etc. Tradeoffs all the way down. Seems more productive to admit that they exist and that you're taking a position. I agree with you that when making a legal ruling metaphor may be required (e.g., saying that the right to commercially transact is a kind of free speech), but in the current context it seems totally gratuitous. Specifically, if we're talking about making exceptions when the mother's health is at risk, that's easy to discuss explicitly -- human life is important, but the fully realized adult life is more important than the nascent life of the fetus.

I really appreciate how you broke this down, including the components you chose, and agree I'd rather have discussions based on such a structure than on more abstract metaphors. Thank you.

>> If the fetus is a life, none of this stuff matters.

> This is irrelevant to my personal views on abortion because I believe that individuals have rights over their own body which supersede anyone else's rights to their body.

It absolutely is relevant, because you view collapses into nonsense unless you believe a fetus is a not an individual and that it has no rights. If the fetus is a person, then you're in a situation where their rights to their own body are getting superseded by another's right.

> We hold this as true in all other facets of bodily autonomy.

No, not all. You totally have the legal obligation to provide for your children, if you have them, and that almost always involves using your body in some way.

> You totally have the legal obligation to provide for your children, if you have them, and that almost always involves using your body in some way

You are not legally obligated to donate your organs to your children, fwiw.

I think the discussion of ethical and legal obligation cannot possible be given broad swath of "no one is obligated to anyone" nor "you are entirely obligated to someone in every way". This isn't how reality works. Parents are considered obligated to their children, unless they choose not to parent their children and withdraw their parental responsibilities under existent legal frameworks. At the same time, parents are not entirely obligated to their children, as parents are not fined or jailed for not donating their blood or organs.

I completely agree with the comment you are responding to, but it is an argument that actually changed my position relatively recently. I used to believe in the "well, if you believe it is a person, then abortion is murder" argument, but I believe the bodily autonomy argument is much stronger.

If you have a child, and you are the the only good potential donor match, and that child will die without, say, a bone-marrow transplant, you are not forced to donate your own bone marrow. Saying "You totally have the legal obligation to provide for your children, if you have them, and that almost always involves using your body in some way" is a poor analogy that really doesn't encompass what it is to have another being living inside you.

That's why I think the "viability" standard is the only one that makes sense, and also why that as technology has improved that I think the cutoff date for abortion should be lowered to the new age of viability. Any human should have the right to remove another from their own body. In the case of a child, if we have no technology to allow that child to survive outside the mother, so be it, but I think the much better analogy to forced birthing is actually slavery.

You don't have a legal obligation to feed your children from your own flesh.

> You don't have a legal obligation to feed your children from your own flesh.

What a bizarre and morbid misunderstanding. You have the legal obligation to use that "flesh" to acquire food to feed your children.

Also, it's not like a fetus eats its mother's flesh from the inside (until I suppose it emerges from the husk like a xenomorph?).

It gets awfully close when it causes organ failure[1].

What about when the child rips open the mother's vulva on the way out? If it's a person, should it be possible to try it for assault?

[1] https://www.marchofdimes.org/complications/hellp-syndrome.as...

Should the mother be tried for false imprisonment?

I think the pro life crowd sees a significant difference between a fetus/baby/whatever and a random person.

Probably something like, you are responsible for the creating of the fetus/baby/whatever so you have more of an obligation to it than you do to other people.

If that were really the argument, it would look entirely different, as things like actual sex education, easily obtainable birth control, etc, would all be uncontentious. However, those are also very much subject to debate by the “pro life” crowd.

The fact that "pro life" is the term for, "against abortion," but can also literally be interpreted to mean, "supports social programs for people who are alive" is childish word games. This isn't a real argument. It doesn't advance any point. It doesn't even logically make sense. It's just playing on the inherent ambiguity of natural language in service of a cheap non sequitur.

I am not sure how the logic I laid out would lead people to support sex education or easily obtainable birth control.

It is mostly a personal responsibility thing, as I understand it. You are responsible for creating the baby so you must give up some of your rights like bodily autonomy.

Birth control and sex education are not really related to that at all as far as I can tell.

>It is mostly a personal responsibility thing, as I understand it. You are responsible for creating the baby so you must give up some of your rights like bodily autonomy.

If that's what you believe, then don't terminate your pregnancy. As far as anyone else is concerned, it's none of your concern.

> If that's what you believe, then don't terminate your pregnancy. As far as anyone else is concerned, it's none of your concern.

I mean, I personally agree with you.

However, there are very few true libertarians in our society and almost everyone has views that they wish to impose on other people. The pro lifers are not different than anyone else in this regard.

>almost everyone has views that they wish to impose on other people.

And more's the pity.

This may be the case for some but the Catholic worldview is both pro-life and extremely sex-positive, in the appropriate context.

If you're talking about not just "women who have sex" but "~women~ people who have sex without regard for the children whom they may conceive", then yeah I'm against that kind of sex.

The Catholic Church opposes the use of condoms[1]. Even in areas of the world where AIDS is rampant. They are not sex-positive, they are procreation-positive.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_HIV/AIDS

Edit: I suppose the Catholic Church is sex-positive when it comes to their clergy and underage parishioners. Disclaimer: I went to Catholic school for 11 years.

> Catholics oppose the use of condoms

Not really. Catholic doctrine might, American Catholics, especially, do not:

https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2016/09/28/poll-finds-...

> Even in areas of the world where AIDS is rampant.

https://www.cnn.com/2016/02/18/health/zika-pope-francis-cont...

(Benedict XVI made somewhat similar comments in 2010 regarding AIDS in Africa.)

> Catholic doctrine might, American Catholics, especially, do not

This is unfortunately true (but unsurprisingly so, especially these days). That doesn't mean that they're somehow right; they don't speak for the Church.

> The Catholic Church opposes the use of condoms[1]. Even in areas of the world where AIDS is rampant.

Correct.

> They are not sex-positive, they are procreation-positive.

They are both. "Sex-positive" doesn't mean "anything goes".

> I suppose the Catholic Church is sex-positive when it comes to their clergy and underage parishioners.

No, the Church is harshly critical of this kind of thing. The fact that individual offenders have been shuffled around for decades is to our shame and to the shame of their bishops, but nonetheless the Church is not "for" this kind of thing in any way.

> I went to Catholic school for 11 years.

At least in America, I'd say the majority of Catholic schools are only nominally Catholic.

> No, the Church is harshly critical of this kind of thing. The fact that individual offenders have been shuffled around for decades is to our shame and to the shame of their bishops, but nonetheless the Church is not "for" this kind of thing in any way.

I prefer to judge the church on its actions, not on its words. The bishops/cardinals in question got lofty appointments as their "punishment"[1].

[1] https://theconversation.com/the-catholic-churchs-grim-histor...

> Cardinal Law was neither indicted nor arrested. Instead, Pope John Paul II transferred Law to run one of the Vatican’s most cherished properties, the Basilica of Saint Mary, essentially rewarding Law for his deft cover-up of the abuses in Boston.

The Church is not a democracy. The opposition to condoms at the top is has serious consequences the world over, regardless of what Americans feel. If their stated policy is causing needless deaths, what is the value of the policy, and what is the value of the institution promoting such a policy?

> If you're talking about not just "women who have sex" but "~women~ people who have sex without regard for the children whom they may conceive", then yeah I'm against that kind of sex.

The best way to ensure that children are treated with appropriate regard is to ensure that fewer unwanted children are born.

Which is why there is often an extra focus on situations of rape and incest when little to no active choice has been made to create life.

Consentual sex happens, leading to accidental pregnancy. Now the girl's family is incentivised to claim rape so she can get an abortion.

To be clear, I agree with you. These exceptions are not good enough and can create perverse incentives like you suggest. I was simply citing the lack of these exceptions being universal as evidence that a large percentage of the anti-abortion crowd do not see personal responsibility as important to whether someone should have access to an abortion.

Actually this is not true.

The US government can compel you to sacrifice your entire body ( organs and all ) for the greater good of other citizens should they wish. [0]

https://www.sss.gov/

I think you picked the worst counter argument here, since women specifically are not required to register for the selective service.

...I'm not saying I agree or disagree with anything in this thread, I just think this particular chain of comments is funny.

Do you think it's acceptable for a mother who plans to carry their child to term to use drugs and alcohol or otherwise damage the fetus?

From a legal standpoint? Yes, absolutely. Let me turn the question around on you: do you think that bars and restaurants should require a negative pregnancy test before they serve alcohol to customers?

Requiring a negative test is a bit intrusive, but a bar that refuses to serve obviously pregnant people would be fine IMO.

What is "obviously pregnant"? How does a bar accurately distinguish someone who is pregnant vs obese? Do you really want to have that conversation with your 18 year old waiter?

"Acceptable" is a vague word. Do I approve of it? Obviously not. Do I think society should be okay with it? Obviously not. Do I think they should be prosecuted for it? No.

Should a woman be allowed to maim a fetus she plans to carry to term?

That's fair, but to be clear, you think someone should be allowed to terminate their pregnancy up until the moment of birth?

That strikes me as very much of a strawman argument, as late-term abortions are not just incredibly rare (this interview with a woman who had to have an abortion at 32-weeks for medical reasons gives insight into how awful the whole process is — and how expensive it was for something that was absolutely medically necessary in her case [1] as the fetus was incompatible with life and there were medical complications that would make a live birth a potential death sentence for the woman involved), but that there are very few doctors who will even perform them in cases when they are medically necessary. And very few states that even allow that to happen.

But if you’re asking directly if I think someone should be able to prioritize their own life in place of someone else’s, well yes, yes I do.

[1]: https://jezebel.com/interview-with-a-woman-who-recently-had-... anyone who wants to rail about late-term abortions without knowing the pain and suffering that is involved for the women that have to get them needs to read that interview. All of it. Then read it again. And then think about why the focus of this debate is on the extremely-rare scenarios that are not about people changing their minds and not wanting to bring a child into the world, but are terribly sad medical scenarios.

This already happens when the fetus is unviable or already dead, called a D&C. If a doctor and a patient is legally obstructed from D&C, we will have cases where someone has to birth a dead baby or, if their contractions process isn't working, become septic and die.

He was obviously asking about viable pregnancies.

He’s not though because anyone who follows this knows that late-term abortions are almost entirely situations where the fetus is incompatible with life (an actual medical term), there are ridiculous risks to the mother’s life, or other very sad scenarios. I’ve never even heard of modern cases where perfectly healthy fetuses were aborted at late stages. I’m sure that they have happened, but the rarity of it happening — not just because so few doctors do that work for medically necessary reasons and even fewer would do it for someone who just changed their mind, but because it is a prohibitively expensive procedure ($25,000 or more).

This 2016 interview with a woman who had an abortion at 32 weeks after she found out her fetus would not survive outside the womb and who then had to suffer through 24 hours of labor and have her dead child ripped from her womb (and prior brain surgery meant she couldn’t push), really paints a picture of the terrible reality for anyone forced to be in a position to terminate a pregnancy at such a late stage: https://jezebel.com/interview-with-a-woman-who-recently-had-...

That's not how late-term abortion actually works. Practically all late-term abortions are wanted children who for one reason or another don't work out. They are cases of extensive tragedy. Banning very late pregnancy termination directly means that doctors will not be allowed to save lives because it will mean ending the pregnancy.

When crafting law it is vitally important to understand how this would realistically affect people.

Who decides if a pregnancy is viable?

If we go back to coat hanger abortions and render fetuses “unviable” that way, is everything peachy keen?

If not, then are miscarriages now occasion for criminal investigations?

Pro-life logic is garbage

>If not, then are miscarriages now occasion for criminal investigations?

In several states, this is now true

Do you think you should have the right to have an abortion 1 day before the due date of a baby?

The reasonable thing would just be to deliver the baby and put it up for adoption, but don't you have the right to, say, disconnect the placenta (it's your placenta), and also not have your abdomen cut open to help out some other individual who just happens to be stuck in there?

Typically, Western culture recognizes individual rights to do what they want with their own body, such as drinking too much, going hiking when it's too hot, or getting ugly tattoos. These days, even the right to use drugs is returning. So although having an abortion one day before delivery is unwise, I hold that it should absolutely be legal.

It's hilarious to me that the same crowd that fights for gun rights under the banner of "individual liberty" is very quick to invite the government into the womb.

Thank you for this. The right to bear arms crowd always says you cannot ban guns, you can only ban legally owned gun.

Well you cannot ban abortion. You can only ban safe abortions.

This is what they want. They don't want an end to abortions. They want an end to safe abortions. If more women die in labor, they are ok with it.

IDK what you are arguing for or against, but I would like to point out that overturning Roe v Wade invited government into the womb

I think you and the person you're replying to are on the same page. They seem to be arguing that abortion should be legal in all cases due to the individual rights of the pregnant person, regardless of the scenario, because individual rights apply even (perhaps especially) when society as a whole disagrees with an individual's decision.

Lets bring up a hypothetical that has never and would never happen. You could never find a doctor willing to do this unless there was something medically wrong with the baby that likely would endanger the mother.

I do support this kind of abortion because the only situation I could imagine it happening is in a life saving one.

It's not for a life saving treatment, you just don't want to deal with a baby and you know if you wait a day you'll go to jail when you kill it.

And you can perform the abortion yourself. After all, what right does a doctor have over what operations you can do on your own body?

The irony of this ludicrous argument (who would abort a fetus one day before their due date, increasing the risk to their own life? Let alone choose to abort a fetus themselves and risk bleeding out rather than have a doctor do it safely) is that banning abortions increases the odds of this very scenario playing out because of the lack of accessibility to safe abortions.

The scenario you've described is approximately the same as a suicide. Consider that people still do that even though it's illegal. Heinous shit will happen, but if you're genuinely interested in minimizing human death and suffering, safe and legal abortion is a necessary component to that.

Yes, it is a ludicrous scenario, but OP's entire worldview is equally as ludicrous, because it allows for such scenarios("If I refuse to allow it to be used to support another life, that is my choice."). In any case, no special rules or consideration are generally needed for normal scenarios, so you are often looking at less common or ludicrous seeming scenarios when probing the limits of someone's viewpoint.

I'm not positive that allowing no questions asked abortions 1 day before the due date will minimize human death and suffering. Instead, I think it would provide an avenue to take for people who have, basically, cold feet about being a parent.

In fact, I have to wonder if OP thinks they have the right to abandon their already-birthed baby in the wilderness. After all, what right does that individual have to force another person to take care of it? I'm an individual after all. If I refuse to allow my body to be used to support another life, that is my choice.

This is a conflict between bodily autonomy and the right to life. Two rights, both important.

Wheresoever these rights meet, we have, as a society, chosen the right of bodily autonomy. No one may compel you to donate your blood or organs, even if they might die without them. Even if they are your children. Even if you will be dead when they are taken. We have made a strong cultural choice that the body is yielded only with specifically granted consent.

Abortion is a place where these two fundamental rights connect. The mother's right to control herself and the child's to exist. Under our culture's normal choice of bodily autonomy, it is an unfortunate consequence that the child will not live.

It might be entirely reasonable to frame laws encouraging that children deemed viable should rather be birthed so long as there is not risk to the mother. But this is not, of course, what they have done.

Instead we have re-opened a chapter once closed. Of horror stories with women being denied abortive procedures for ectopic pregnancies, or known failed pregnancies, forcing them instead to carry their dead child until it is naturally expelled. Horrors that would be easily taken care of by the woman simply having that natural choice over her own flesh.

Desperate women without resources to flee oppressive laws will resort to the same sorts of dangerous remedies they did in pre-Roe days. These frequently went wrong, and many that spoke in favor of Roe when it was passed cited such stories.

Women will die and families will suffer under the laws that have become active today, and those laws that will be soon certified into action or freshly written to take advantage of Roe's absence. The people insisting on these laws will take no measure of responsibility for the terrors they inflict, insisting instead it is the fault of the victims of these laws. Many seem to take some perverse glee in it.

That one of the justices has insisted in their concurrence that we review and vacate laws enshrining similarly protected rights for millions of Americans, it seems sure the current path will lead only to more misery, bigotry, violence and horror if those pushing this poisonous legislation have their way.

>Do you think you should have the right to have an abortion 1 day before the due date of a baby?

I think it is fair to force a point of no return in a pregnancy after which we prohibit abortion (edit: beyond situations that threaten the mother's life). The most important aspect to me is that the person has the time and freedom to make that decision that is right for them. If we are trying to be scientific about it, viability occurs around 24 weeks so that seems like a reasonable deadline for a decision.

Yes, absolutely

Even if that's the case, do you understand that the vast majority of society would consider such thing absolutely psychopathic?

What I'm trying to get to is that "My body my choice" is a nice thing to chant at a protest, it's also a pretty damn bad argument, I can't believe we are still doing this AFTER covid. I'm 100% for abortion but I find it hard to argue outside a "the fetus is not a sentient being at that point" frame.

> What I'm trying to get to is that "My body my choice" is a nice thing to chant at a protest, it's also a pretty damn bad argument, I can't believe we are still doing this AFTER covid.

It's really not a bad argument if you consider acute vs routine circumstances. Otherwise how could we argue against blackout restrictions[1] in cities now that WWII has happened?

[1] http://pbchistoryonline.org/page/local-response-blackout-res...

Yes, I think people should have that right.

I don't say this lightly, but you're literally advocating for killing babies. Not in the sense that a first or even second trimester abortion is, but to kill a baby literally a day before it would be born, because you have the right to and not to literally save your own life, is just absolutely craven.

It’s not literally that at all. Read about Schelling fences. It’s arbitrary, but it’s not pointless.

You can come up with any justification you want, give it any name you want, but what you advocate for is still, in the end, killing a baby which would do perfectly fine on its own in the outside world.

Which is why I would be charged with murder if I go punch a heavily pregnant woman in the gut and kill her child.

I have yet to see a single baby that “would do perfectly fine on its own in the outside world.” A baby needs years of intense care and love to become a healthy person.

There is definitely an autistically propertarian argument in favor of abortion, which I personally consider fairly compelling, but 99.9% of people are not nearly as propertarian as I am, and I'm not willing to give people a pass to use this kind of reasoning selectively. If you support abortion rights on these grounds and you're not also 100% on board with laws that let you e.g. shoot burglars, you're not being consistent. A lot of people using this argument were also pro-vaccine-mandate, which is similarly inconsistent. (Not calling out you personally, just using "you" to refer to the hypothetical flip-flop.)

If the vaccine has side effects similar to that of an average pregnancy it would not only not be mandatory, but would have failed FDA trials and would be illegal to administer.

There's a line somewhere between total bodily autonomy and being compelled by the state to experience: nausea, swelling, muscle and back pain, weight gain, incontinence, depression, and laceration to you genitals.

You're failing the "consistent propertarian" test hard

Thanks, I think? I'm not sure why it's necessary to consider one's body "property" to advocate for having some semblance of control over what happens to it. And it's pretty obvious this right is not absolute since parents are still allowed to circumcise their children and sign off on medical procedures done to them.

My original comment is not addressed at people like you; sorry if that was not clear. You don't appear to be claiming to have a property ethic, and are instead using various ad-hoc lines of reasoning (e.g. what strikes you as qualitatively more or less onerous).

> parents are still allowed to circumcise their children

Indeed, propertarianism where parents do not own their children would also proscribe surgically mutilating them, for example. However, parents would not necessarily be obligated to take care of their children; this is also the basis by which abortion would be permitted. Propertarianism where parents do own their children (which strikes me as unreasonable) would a fortiori also allow abortion, as well as other more universally reviled practices such as post-birth infanticide.

Ah, interesting, thank you. How does propertarianism deal with my example of parents making medical decisions on behalf of children? It seems like an interesting quandary because a 1 year old can't be expected to make an informed decision on vaccination (for example) and so some control over the child's body must rest with the parents.

I can imagine several strategies compatible with western and near-eastern jurisprudence, such as considering parents to be (temporary) trustees with certain fiduciary duties to their children. I'm by no means an expert in propertarian theory; I just think it's a nice framework for bodily autonomy in particular, since it's computationally efficient, fairly unambiguous, and generally provides agreeable results.

We don't have the legal right to bodily autonomy. If we did, prostitution and recreational drugs would be legal. I think we should but we just don't. But this still doesn't get to the heart of the matter on abortion. A fetus isn't quite your body.

But your body is feeding it and keeping it alive, often at the expense of itself. That's the bodily autonomy part - a woman should not be compelled to keep a fetus alive at the risk to her own health and well-being.

> If I refuse to allow it to be used to support another life, that is my choice.

You're missing the point that your choice to have sex created the fetus/life in the first place. That changes the debate and invalidates all of your examples.

This is really the crux of the matter. Thank you for bringing it up. The issue for the pro-life is crowd is not about life, and it never has been. The real goal is socially repressive puritanism and a desire to punish women for choosing to have sex.

By your logic, if a person drives a car and has a crash, the doctor should refuse to treat their injuries, because after all, it was their choice to drive.

> By your logic, if a person drives a car and has a crash, the doctor should refuse to treat their injuries, because after all, it was their choice to drive.

I'm pro-choice but this does not follow from that logic, which is that choosing to take action that might result in another living thing temporarily being dependent on you to survive, does come with at least some level of obligation not to rip that support away such that they die. Your analogy doesn't address that at all.

First of all, as others have pointed out, laws that prohibit abortion even in cases of rape and incest overlook the "choosing to take action" part. In that case, a person is pregnant without ever having made a choice to engage in any action at all.

Moreover, "living thing" is the key word here. A fetus IS a living thing. So is a cow, a cockroach, an intestinal parasite. We kill those, and we support industries that kill them, without thinking. And while there are extremists who support protecting a broader segment of "life," that is not what the pro-life movement is about. If I breed cows for a living, I have a legal and ethical right to kill those cows. And if I have a baby attached to my uterus, I should have the legal right to do what I want.

If you were raped, and it wasn't your choice, then yes I agree there's an argument that you should have the legal right to decide for yourself what the moral/ethical thing to do is.

But if you instead put the baby in your uterus, of your own free will and choice, you are responsible for it.

Rape accounts for less than 0.5% of abortions. While it's important to consider, it doesn't remove the responsibility in the other 99.5%.

I acknowledge that a person is responsible for what happens in their own body. The key point is that getting an abortion IS taking responsibility, not its abdication. If you are pregnant and do not want to give birth, getting an abortion is the only responsible choice. It would be far more negligent to give birth, risking additional medical complications, and bringing an unwanted person into the world.

I am under no more ethical obligation to preserve the life of a fetus in me than I am to preserve the life of an intestinal parasite that I've ingested.

> First of all, as others have pointed out, laws that prohibit abortion even in cases of rape and incest overlook the "choosing to take action" part. In that case, a person is pregnant without ever having made a choice to engage in any action at all.

Yeah, obviously, but it barely matters for the overall argument. It's misdirection, not a substantive refutation. Is anyone on the pro-choice side happy with only allowing abortions in cases of rape and incest? I'm not. I'm pretty sure that falls under the pro-life umbrella, in fact. All this shows is that one part of the pro-life camp may have a better-reasoned position than another.

> Moreover, "living thing" is the key word here. A fetus IS a living thing. So is a cow, a cockroach, an intestinal parasite. We kill those, and we support industries that kill them, without thinking. And while there are extremists who support protecting a broader segment of "life," that is not what the pro-life movement is about. If I breed cows for a living, I have a legal and ethical right to kill those cows. And if I have a baby attached to my uterus, I should have the legal right to do what I want.

This still doesn't address the argument. In fact your keying in on "living thing" and trying to build on that as an argument is pure semantic mumbo-jumbo. Replace that phrase with "baby" (which I avoided so we wouldn't immediately have that other ridiculous, pointless discussion) and all that junk about cows is irrelevant, which it was anyway.

Again: I'm pro-choice, to be clear. I just find most arguments from "my side" totally fail to address the "other side"'s actual positions, which is frustrating if, like me, you hope for your position to gain support. Bad arguments just make us look like we're wrong.

1. There are certainly more and less extreme flavors of the pro-life movement. I reject your assertion that the more extreme side is negligible, as there are laws on the books, and now enforceable, that prohibit abortion in all cases, such as in Louisiana.

2. Fetuses are not babies. Babies are people, from a legal and ethical perspective; fetuses are not. If it were otherwise, we wouldn't even be having this conversation, as abortion would already be considered murder. So yes, fetuses are living, but that does not afford them any rights, any more than cows have rights by virtue of being alive, and it certainly doesn't afford them rights that supersede those of an actual person.

In other words: in our society, we give rights to people, not to mere "living things."

> 1. There are certainly more and less extreme flavors of the pro-life movement. I reject your assertion that the more extreme side is negligible, as there are laws on the books, and now enforceable, that prohibit abortion in all cases, such as in Louisiana.

It's not that that faction's negligible, it's that the argument isn't helpful for refuting "the mother does have some obligation to a life that was created and became dependent on her through her own actions" because someone who holds that position probably doesn't disagree with you that rape and incest are exceptions. It's a distraction not from the broader debate, but specifically from substantively addressing this particular position.

> 2. Fetuses are not babies. Babies are people, from a legal and ethical perspective; fetuses are not. If it were otherwise, we wouldn't even be having this conversation, as abortion would already be considered murder. So yes, fetuses are living, but that does not afford them any rights, any more than cows have rights by virtue of being alive, and it certainly doesn't afford them rights that supersede those of an actual person.

This is precisely the point of contention, and it is far from clear-cut even on the pro-choice side. That's why 3rd trimester abortion rights are far less popular than the rest—even to many pro-choicers, the is-/isn't-a-baby question is settled at some point before birth, but after the 1st trimester.

I think it's extremely relevant to discuss the extreme pro-life position opposing all forms of abortion, because it's the only form that's logically consistent. If one truly believes that abortion is murder, then it doesn't matter how the baby was conceived. On the other hand, what is pro-life's ethical justification for allowing abortion in cases of rape or incest? Are you saying that murder is okay in some cases? In my opinion, it's just another example of the right's crippling hypocrisy.

The argument that abortion is tolerable in cases where the women does not choose to have sex shows your hand: the pro-life movement was never about protecting life, it has always been about punishing women. You are okay killing fetuses as long as the woman didn't actually have the temerity to enjoy sex.

You have #2 backwards. The reason we're even debating this is because we can't agree on when the fetus becomes a person with rights. Pro-lifer's are very much arguing that it is murder. 43ish? states currently prohibit abortion after a certain point in pregnancy prior to birth [0][1]

[0] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/what-states...

[1] https://www.axios.com/2022/05/14/abortion-state-laws-bans-ro...

Pro-lifers may SAY that they think that abortion is murder, but there is no law, even a proposed law, that literally treats it as such.

I just want to jump in and say that even though we don't agree on the issue at hand, I nonetheless appreciate you trying to clear up bad arguments and present only the strongest arguments.

It's often exhausting trying to get people to think with their brains rather than with the tips of their tongues, and all the bad arguments muddy waters.

> The real goal is socially repressive puritanism and a desire to punish women for choosing to have sex.

Just because you believe this doesn't make it true. I struggle to believe that a single pro-lifer would say this is the reason behind their beliefs. As a pro-lifer, I can attest that it has nothing to do with my beliefs. Believing it may "demonize" prolifers, and help you feel good about fighting for your stance on abortion. But the reality is, blind beliefs like this are the cause of division and hate that seems to be ever increasing.

> I struggle to believe that a single pro-lifer would say this is the reason behind their beliefs.

Of course they wouldn't say it out loud: that would be giving the game away. Instead, judge them by their actions. The same crowd that wants to prevent abortions also wants to prohibit contraception, allow unrestricted gun ownership, and cut back on any social programs that support families.

These actions are consistent with a puritanical, anti-sex society; they are not consistent with a "commitment to life."

So... you get to decide what I believe and why I believe it? Then you convince yourself that you're beliefs about what I believe are more accurate than what I attest them to be?

Stop listening to what prochoicers say prolifers believe, and start actually listening to what the prolifers are saying. I (and most prolifers I know) don't have some secret agenda.

Yes, I get to judge your integrity based on your actions. Obviously. When your actions are evil, I don't care what you say.

When the cop beats you bloody while declaring that it's "For your own protection," you are justified in questioning his motives. When the right claims to care about "life," but their actions totally contradict the stated goal, I get to declare them at best hypocrites but more likely just fascists.

> The same crowd that wants to prevent abortions also wants to prohibit contraception, allow unrestricted gun ownership, and cut back on any social programs that support families.

I see this kind of thought process all the time: when some people don't get traction with their arguments on a particular issue, they ascribe other beliefs to their opponent and call those into question. This is both ad hominem and whataboutism, and it doesn't win over anybody's heart or mind, it just "others" the opponent, further entrenching tribalism.

The "crowd" is diverse and contains multitudes. If you want to change minds, engage with the arguments, not with the arguers.

The argument that the right wants to prohibit contraception is not some specious straw-man that I made up: it is stated plainly in Justice Thomas's opinion. And it's a position that I believe is supported by a large portion of the population in states where abortion is now illegal. We see more and more antagonism against gays and trans people. Moreover, because the Dobbs decision dismantled the right to privacy, it has cleared the way to destroy the legal foundation on which other important decisions are based, such a gay marriage.

If you don't want to be judged as a tribe, you need to take a stand. If you support contraception and gay marriage, then support them. Right now, though, the right is supporting more and more extreme ideologues.

> The real goal is socially repressive puritanism and a desire to punish women for choosing to have sex.

Is the intent behind child support laws "a desire to punish men for choosing to have sex"? If a man has a one-night-stand with a woman and a child is born, he could be on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of 18 years.

> By your logic, if a person drives a car and has a crash, the doctor should refuse to treat their injuries, because after all, it was their choice to drive.

If a person refuses to take a COVID-19 vaccine, and does not have COVID, should doctors / hospitals be allowed to give that person lower quality-of-service and/or refuse elective treatments? After all, the person made a choice not to get a COVID vaccine which is proven safe and effective.

> Is the intent behind child support laws "a desire to punish men for choosing to have sex"?

Irrelevant comparison. There is no procedure to legally "undo" a child who has been born, in which case one should pursue the wellbeing of the child (which may or may not be well-served by child support laws). However, if a child has not yet been born, and the child is not wanted, abortion prevents health risks to the mother, while also preventing an unwanted child from a life of hardship. If there's a procedure that helps everyone involved, why not do it?

> If a person refuses to take a COVID-19 vaccine, and does not have COVID, should doctors

Bro this makes no sense at all. If the patient doesn't have COVID, then the decision to not take the vaccine has no bearing on their elective treatments. If a woman has sex, she has not surrendered the right to her body.

Depends on the law as some laws forbid abortion even in rape and incest, which I'd argue are strong examples of someone specifically not choosing to have sex.

I don't understand why it is almost always "rape and incest", both on the part of people considering exceptions when they ban abortion or people trying to get exceptions into someone else's abortion ban.

Incest can be nonconsensual, in which it was also rape and so would be covered under a rape exception.

Incest can also be consensual, in which case what is the logic to treating conception by incest any different than any other circumstances of conception?

I think there are a few problems. First, as with statutory rape, I think incest is often treated as de-facto coercive - e.g. could you say "no" to your dad if you depend on him for food/shelter/clothing? Second, rape often requires the victim to accuse the rapist of such - which is probably less likely when family is involved. Finally, incest carries increased risks of abnormalities in the child, which makes the case for aborting to prevent suffering of the child stronger.

Fair point, I meant more for the nonconsensual aspect, although I'm unsure if incest is illegal even if consensual, I guess it might depend on the jurisdiction, at which point eve if it were two people consenting, it may not legally be considered consensual, similar to how people under a certain age have no legal ability to consent.

Very true, but that accounts for less than 0.5% of abortions. For a vast majority of abortions, they made the choice.

This doesn't matter though. If you drive recklessly and get in an accident where the victim needs you to donate a kidney you aren't forced to give up your kidney. Fault has never overiden our right to bodily autonomy.

> That changes the debate and invalidates all of your examples

Why? In what way?

This is very close to the violinist example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion

> I believe that individuals have rights over their own body

Did you have rights over your own body when you had sex and started the process of conception? Why do your choices only matter depending on the result of conception?

> individuals have rights over their own body

The argument is that at some point the fetus is no longer the same body. Arguing for "bodily autonomy" ignores the crux of the debate. A mother cannot kill their 1 year old, and parents have obligations to their young children, otherwise social services will intervene if those obligations aren't met. What obligations does a mother have to their unborn child? That is the debate that needs having.

The fetus is no more than a growth

At what point does it become human?

I'll quote someone else's response as I think it explains things well.

"""

> I also don't really agree with this definition either. This train of logic leads to the justification of euthanizing less intelligent humans.

How so? less intelligent humans have cognitive ability so they have rights.

> It also doesn't adequately address why a human with microcephaly or no frontal lobe has rights, but a dolphin or octopus or killer whale does not.

The question is not why the law is the way it is but the way that it should be. As it is now, It has rights because it is a human, we make our laws for ourselves and sometimes for other species, and I would definitely say that animals should have protections/rights (and they do). A law is also a custom or an enforced custom and certainly animals have customs. At least in america, many families take the toll of taking care of their family members with many deformities. the state should not enforce termination of these, but it should be optional for those that do take this unfortunate toll in their hands. (criminalization != decriminalization)

> It also allows for the justification of cruelty against animals who can feel pain but aren't intelligent enough to pass some arbitrary test of intelligence.

On the contrary, as a cognitive animal capable of pain. it indicates that you should not do so, I would say the capability of pain is the most important aspect to life. given that it is usually an indicator of the will to live.

> To be clear, I don't know the answer, I am hesitant to label anything as "innately valuable". I think that there is however a sliding scale of what is "ethical".

Neither do I. Abortion is euthanasia, and it certainly has merit. both economically speaking and in the sense of well being for humans. Given that human childbirth is probably one of the worst around on the animal kingdom.

It would be nice if we just relegated pregnancies to artificial wombs, but until the technology is there. I guess we'll be having this abortion "debate" forever. """

I know someone that just had a baby two weeks earlier. Other than a c-section, the baby required no incubation or anything special, or anything different than what a full term baby would require. It was fully formed and is totally able to survive outside the womb. Maybe a little a lower weight.

Just seems wrong that you think that the mother could kill it up to the last moment of birth, for even the most absurd reasons.

There's a reason access to 3rd trimester abortions enjoys far less support from the public than abortion rights in the abstract—and, in fact, IIRC, Roe and subsequent decisions do not guarantee any kind of right to 3rd-trimester abortions, which is why states have been able to restrict abortion access for late-term pregnancies, despite Roe.

> rights over their own body

When does the offspring gain rights over its body?

…the entire time?

I think you’re trying to ask a poignant question, but it misses the point.

The fetus’ body is not the mother’s body, and bodily autonomy dictates one isn’t obligated to give their body for another’s survival.

Removing the fetus from the womb results in termination of the fetus if done prior to viability, but at no point does any violation of the fetus’ body need to occur for this outcome to happen.

> …the entire time?

Umm ... well, maybe.

My views on this are definitely coloured by having three kids, but watching the process of creating new humans starting off with a discussion about "shall we try and start a family", the next bit <cough>, a result on a test kit, the highs and lows of pregnancy, feeling your unborn first child kicking along to music in my wife's almost comically round tummy while we sat in a concert hall a few weeks before the big day ..

.. through to revising algebra and geometry at the breakfast table with my eldest this morning prior to an end of term maths test.

> The fetus’ body is not the mother’s body

Indeed, although the fetus survives due to the cord that connects them.

I've personally been in the room for all our three kids' births, cut the cord for two of them. #1 needed the doctors in a hurry after his birth, I just sat out of the way, watching in awed and stunned silence.

Life is wonderful, and complicated, and at times messy and confusing. Sometimes just downright awful. Pregnancy is some or indeed all of those.

Like everything we do there are edge cases and I don't think we should design our societies to leave anyone feeling they are left with no choices. "Look after those who can't look after themselves" is something that goes beyond the technical discussion of when is a fetus viable, I've spent enough time feeding and changing babies to know that just because they can breathe unaided it doesn't mean they can survive unaided.

TL;DR: I would be just as uncomfortable with a complete ban on abortion as I would be with unlimited easy access to it without any time limits.

I admire that you have such a loving connection to your children.

And I get what you mean with survival, it’s a commonly discussed point in these debates. I think for the pro-choice side, if the technology existed to incubate outside the womb or to transplant from one person to another who wanted to give birth, we’d be for it. We are not pro-termination. But when it comes to the pregnant person’s autonomy, that takes precedence.

After viability and birth, others besides the mother and father can care for the child. And society owes its children that.

I believe the vast majority of pro-choice supports a limit at viability except when the mother’s life is in danger. Only 1% of abortions happen in the third trimester and nearly all of those are due to a threat to the mother’s life.

On the other side, I believe the majority of pro-life supporters want a complete ban.

If your beliefs are between the extremes, I think only one side represents that.

Under Roe v. Wade, once the fetus is viable, so at about the 24-week mark

> I believe that individuals have rights over their own body which supersede anyone else's rights to their body

You do understand how this can be twisted for __very__ bad things, right?

actually no, can you elaborate?

If your bodily rights supersede anyone else's rights to their body, then someone with lung cancer can go ahead and murder someone to obtain a new pair of lungs.

There was a pretty nifty short story called "Dibs" by Brian Plante in the April 2004 issues of Analog that was sort of along those lines.

Whenever someone would die soon if they did not get an organ transplant the government would check the records to identify all people who would be good donors. Those donors would all receive a notification that someone has dibs on that organ. If one of those donors died while the person with dibs was still alive their organ would be used to save the life of the person with dibs.

When that happened, or when the person with dibs dies before getting a transplant, all the people who had been potential donors were notified that no one had dibs on their organ any more.

Most of the time for most people they would occasionally get notified someone had dibs on some organ of theirs and then in a week or two they'd get a notice that it was resolved and their organ was no longer under dibs.

Rarely, someone who had an organ under dibs would get a notification that a second organ was under dibs.

Most of the time that would end like the single dibs case. Two or three weeks later they would be back to normal with no organs under dibs.

Very rarely someone with two organs under dibs would get a notification that a third organ was under dibs. In that case they were required to give up their three organs to save the lives of the three people under dibs.

I think you misunderstood who the word "their" is referring to here.

The rights of the body /ended/ when a penis was inserted into a vagina.

The ONLY KNOWN METHOD OF HAVING CHILDREN IS: ::drumroll:: Sexual Intercourse.

There is no other natural method of having children; intercourse is it.

The choice lies in choosing NOT TO HAVE SEXUAL INTERCOURSE.

That is the proper framing. If the choice /not/ to have sex was followed there would be no pregnancy, and no cause to terminate a life.

The choice was prior to conception, not after.

Are you honestly of the opinion that all intercourse involves the affirmative choice of both parties? Because if you are, you are gravely mistaken.

The ONLY KNOWN METHOD OF HAVING A CAR CRASH IS ::drumroll:: driving a car. If you don't want to be forced to save someone as a result of crashing into them, whether on accident or on purpose, you shouldn't have gotten in your car.

The choice was prior to the crash, not after.

How far does this extend? To riff off the classic example, what happens if there were a hypothetical medical condition where a violinist needed to be attached to your bloodstream for nine months and would die if removed beforehand, and you sign a contract agreeing to it before deciding at month seven that you've had enough and cut her off, killing her? Have you committed a moral crime there? And if so, should you face legal punishment for it (a separate question)?

This is a contrived example, but a pretty obvious answer given PC's stance. You can enter into the contact and would need be prepared for civil liability upon breach, or criminal if you entered into the contract under false pretenses. Intent would be a major part of deciding the criminal action. If you could be shown to have the intent of someone's death, then that would be murder, otherwise no.

It is a contrived example, but it has a reason for it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion

Seems pretty heavily modified from the source, but even the source isn't super relevant because it is trying to use though experiments to determine the morality of the act, however Roe and this subsequent decision (tenuously) are based on legal justification.

Thought experiments are useful as intuition pumps, and very widely used in philosophy. And the particular argument I was responding to was about a moral argument for complete bodily autonomy.

As a violinist, I’m confused as to why the person is a violinist is relevant at all.

Going along with your scenario - you'd have a discussion with your medical professional (who you've been seeing since the start of this process) and explore the possible outcomes with their guidance. In this specific scenario, you'd line up another volunteer host and transfer the contracted host-duties over to them.