Thursday, October 22, 2015

Anti-choicers Don't Understand Bodily Rights

A pro-choice woman posted a video of her toddler daughter promoting Planned Parenthood and Lienews shits all over it.

Now, obviously the girl is coached and I don't really care, but the article had some interesting takes on the Bodily Rights Argument (See this article for a good start on it).

"Three short years ago, this beautiful little girl was an unborn fetus (as abortion rights advocates demand they be referred to) in her mother’s womb. Planned Parenthood did not recognize her “bodily autonomy” that Chin says is the foundational premise of their movement."

Most Anti-choicers DO NOT UNDERSTAND the bodily rights argument. You can tell because they do things like bring up the baby's bodily autonomy. They don't get that it's about not having to use your body to sustain someone else.


  • "Women don’t have obligations to strangers but we do have obligations to our children. Society accepts this de facto for born children but currently the law does not apply this obligation to those same children before birth."

NOPE. Parents NEVER have the legal obligation to even donate a drop of blood to born children, much less the intrusive process of pregnancy. How can we say the obligation is binding before birth, but not after? Do they lose rights? Are fetuses the most rights-having entities in the world?


  • "The child is not an intruder or stranger inflicting himself/herself on the woman. Every human must start life inside their mother. Also, for 99.5% of abortions, the mother conceived through her own choice. The mother consented to have the child inside her when she took the risk of having sex. (It isn’t a popular statement to make on Twitter but the truth is we all learned in grade school that sex can equal babies.)"

All this is is a naturalistic fallacy and sex-shaming. Sex is not consent to pregnancy. 


  • "A mother cannot simply remove support from an unborn child. She has to have the baby crushed or poisoned or dismembered in order to end her support. Instead of a passive act, like choosing not to give a kidney to a stranger, it is a violent, aggressive act that takes away the life of that “stranger.”

Actually, RU-486 and induction of labor are completely passive methods of fetal removal, but what does it matter how it's removed if it can't survive the removal? (And they don't feel pain before 24 weeks)

"Staceyann is doing a tremendous disservice to her daughter by leading her to believe that people are out there like boogeymen trying to control her body. We aren’t trying to control Staceyann’s body or Zuri’s body or anyone else’s. We are trying to stop them from controlling, from destroying someone else’s body.
Zuri’s body when it was inside your body was not your body, Staceyann."

If you strawman this badly, I'll just call you a liar. If pregnant people have to keep fetuses in their bodies, you're controlling their bodies! Just own it, already.

1 comment:

  1. How can we say the obligation is binding before birth, but not after? Do they lose rights? Are fetuses the most rights-having entities in the world?

    If you ever get someone to answer this one, I'd love to hear about it. I've never heard any of them engage with this obvious problem with their position.

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