Agreed about the other disparities. But I don't think you'll find one starker than abortion.

The right to bodily autonomy is not absolute. If it were, you could (morally) deliberately drop someone you where holding off the side of a cliff. After all, they don't have a right to your arm. (But they do in this circumstance).

that's arguing semantics (about "absolute"), not addressing the overwhelming experience of the right to bodily autonomy. we live in a complicated sociopolitical world and one contrived thought experiment doesn't a refutation make.

by right, people get to choose what to do with their own bodies when harm to others is small not simply zero (e.g., smoking).

The harm in this case is death (which definitely impinges on the bodily autonomy of the child). The cost to the mother is gestation (9 months of intimate support). There is no other who could provide this support. The child did not place themselves in this position of dependence, but were placed there (by the mother and father, but most of the time this is not _intended_ either, though it could be).

there's a gradient between 'nothing' and 'human', and things toward the 'nothing' end can't invoke bodily autonomy, especially against actual humans with real, functional bodies.

The child has a real, functioning body. From the moment of conception there's a separate self-organizing organism performing processes that will improve their body. The mother also has one. Both of them are human bodies.

it's pretty clear in the real world what is and isn't a separate human. i can't hang out and play paddycakes with a bunch of barely differentiated cells in a womb. it's like calling our gut bacteria a separate being because they have their own functioning processes. some even argue that gut bacteria have some sort of community sentience, but even that doesn't make them a separate being with any claims at all on the human's body.

You must not mean "separate human" in the sense that biology does (because a distinct individual of the species homo sapiens exists from the moment of conception). What does "human" in this discussion imply if not "distinct individual of a particular species"?

it's 'separate human' whether you're speaking in terms of biology, sociology, politics, or anything else. biology happens to be the most brutal of these, considering human only those who reach viability, which for humans is long after birth unlike most animals. again, a group of cells doesn't an individual make.

I must be misunderstanding something. Are you saying that a one-week post-birth child is still not a separate human from your perspective because they are not "viable" yet?

you were making an ontological claim, which simply doesn't hold true in any practical or reasonable sense, in any and all domains.

then, i put forth a separate observation (perhaps too tersely and obliquely) that biology is the most brutal (ultra-objective, yet ultra-complex) and so the least reasonable domain to be employed in pursuing your line of reasoning (which is wholly subjective and cultural).

biology isn't subject to human reasoning, emotion, or culture, which is where ontological arguments like yours squarely reside.

Yes, I assumed that since we can talk about categories and kinds we must be able to talk about a shared truth based in objective reality. Either "human" is a category we can talk about which is based in objective reality (and our understanding of that objective reality in biology, physics, and metaphysics) or we're not going to make any progress because we're discussing "taste" using the language of "truth".

To put it another way, either there's something objective which can be said about dropping children off of bridges in the moral realm related to bodily autonomy and our understanding of the duties and rights around bodily autonomy or else there isn't an objective moral realm. I presume, from your previous comments that you hold that there is an objective moral realm. Did I mistake your meaning?

yes, objective. bodies (i.e., independent beings) are required to invoke bodily autonomy, which brings with it the direct corrollary that non-bodies cannot invoke bodily autonomy. that's rational and objective, as in, it's beyond culture, beyond 'taste', towards 'truth'.

you countered with a subjective opinion hanging off an ultimately irrelevant legal triviality (that's also cultural, not objective).

The child in-utero is most certainly an independent being (or else the mother is not unless she's living in a universe she created herself ex nihilo). Is there some way to define "independent" that isn't driven entirely by subjective desires for one outcome or the other? Or must we leave bodily autonomy as being too subjective a principle?

a clump of fetal cells is the textbook definition of dependent and inseparable. you're otherwise projecting what they might become if everything goes well, not objectively perceiving what they are in the present. if we projected every human that way, we're all dead, and therefore worthless.

neither our subjective nor objective experience of those cells today is equivalent to that of any human being around us. you just can't get to the conclusion you want with only biology and objectivity, because your key premise is neither an objective nor a biological axiom.

A zygote is most certainly independent of the mother in the sense that the child and the mother are distinct members of the species. The child is not a part of the mother, but an independent (distinct) entity. The mother and child are distinguishable by biologists, by information theorists, by Thomistic philosophers, and by nutritionists in the south of France.

The child is most certainly dependent on the mother in the sense that this distinct, independent member of the species Homo sapiens cannot survive without constant support from the environment (another living person) that the child finds themselves dependent on. They are, as you point out, inseparable. But even birth won't solve this problem. From a societal perspective, even adulthood won't solve this problem for 99.999% of the human race.

Abortion laws affect everyone in this country. Every unwanted child grows up to be a citizen here that you and I and everyone else will have to interact with. The econ literature has shown that about 40% of the reduction in violent crime since the 90's has been due to the proliferation of abortion.

first, if you truly believe that, i have a bridge to sell you in arizona. economists make unwarranted claims buttressed by biased models all the time.

second, that's ultimately a racist argument disguised behind safetyism, neither of which have a leg to stand on. every unwanted child still wants to grow up, be they poor or brown or whatever. let's welcome them rather than paint them over with disgust and wanton disposability.

besides, the point was not to debate abortion, but that it's an (wedge) issue used to distract and divide, rather than focusing the populace on the most pressing problems we face. covid, mass shootings, or climate change (as opposed to pollution) are suitable alternative distractions to consider in place of abortion.

Nothing racist about wanting less unwanted children. Mothers have abortions for a reason. They know the time isn't right.

I agree with your sentiment, but why does that coincide with stopping leaded gasoline production?

The removal of lead from gas is the other major factor.