I guess it wasn’t clear from my post, I am pro-choice and this position is so obvious to me that I sometimes have difficulty engaging with pro-lifers at all. The argument I laid out was of course intended to be a pro-choice argument (I’m surprised it could be read as a pro-life one!)

Ha! Well I guess that something got confused along the way, somehow :)

guess the only way out for the pro-lifer is to suggest that, unlike donating a kidney, enforced pregnancy is not dangerous, painful and invasive enough to qualify as violating a woman’s civil liberties.

But of course that’s not true. Pregnancy an be dangerous and painful and certainly is invasive. I understand that I speak as someone who never, ever wants to bear children, but to me having another living creature (“person” with rights or not) live inside you is pretty much the definition of invasive!

The alternate route is of course to claim that women have brought pregnancy upon themselves and now have to bear the consequences.

To which I follow up with the car crash analogy. If I crash into someone else’s car due to my own negligence/drunkeness/etc., and the person I crash into is seriously injured, no one can force me to give that person a blood transfusion or whatever, even though I’m clearly responsible for their injury.

I asked for opinions on it because it seems to me to be a pretty shut-down argument against the pro-life position. The nice thing about it is that whether “life” is defined to begin at conception becomes irrelevant. Hell, you can grant that life is the glint in the postman’s eye and banning abortion is still unjustified.

No one can be forced to act as a life support system for another human being. It violates our most basic civil liberties.

This is a succinct way of putting it. I guess the only way out for the pro-lifer is to suggest that, unlike donating a kidney, enforced pregnancy is not dangerous, painful and invasive enough to qualify as violating a woman’s civil liberties. This is the way John McCain went in the debates. He sneeringly said: “…health for the mother. You know, that’s been stretched by the pro-abortion movement in America to mean almost anything.” The contempt on his face when he said it was pretty despicable.
(http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/oct/08101601.html – near the end)

The alternate route is of course to claim that women have brought pregnancy upon themselves and now have to bear the consequences. This of course leads us to the topic of the original post. Anyway, I’m sorry I wasn’t strictly on topic. I just wanted to get some good feedback on this argument so I can be as prepared as possible when I have to explain to someone why abortion access should be considered a basic human right.

Serendipity, also note that under common law in general there is no legal obligation to save someone from any sort of danger even if you can do so with no danger to yourself. (The one big exception is if you were the one who created the danger.) This is a L-O-O-N-G tradition we’ve had.
Exactly. This is why I feel the argument is convincing.

Forgive me if this is a tired argument, but I haven’t heard it before and would appreciate your views on this:

Say person A is dying of kidney failure and needs a kidney. There is only one person (person B) who is an appropriate match as a kidney donor. Person A will die without the kidney. Can the US government force person B to supply the kidney?

Why not?

Well it’s only a “tired” argument in the sense that it’s one pro-choice people use in reverse. And it’s not hugely related to this thread. But for some reason I’m in a playing along mood, and will assume that you’re commenting in good faith.

Of course not. The U.S. government cannot — correction, seeing forced c-sections, should not be able to — force surgery of any kind. It can’t force a Christian Scientist to undergo medical treatment to save their own life, so who the hell could think that the government has a right to force anyone to save someone else’s life with their own body parts?

I have trouble answering “why not” because the very concept of “why” so boggles my mind. But: surgery is dangerous. Though a person can live without their kidney, they can die during surgery or from complications. It can put them out of work for months. It can be a highly traumatizing experience. They’re screwed if someday something happens to their other kidney. And because it’s their body part. No one can be forced to act as a life support system for another human being. It violates our most basic civil liberties. Each and every person has the right to life and liberty, but it ends at another person’s right to life and liberty (except of course in cases of self-defense from violence). Each person does, or at least fucking should, have sacred rights over what happens to their own body.

You can think that Person B is a major, major asshole for refusing to save Person A’s life. But Person B is under no reasonable terms a murderer. And the same applies if Person A is a fetus (“baby”) and Person B is the pregant woman carrying it.

Say person A is dying of kidney failure and needs a kidney. There is only one person (person B) who is an appropriate match as a kidney donor. Person A will die without the kidney. Can the US government force person B to supply the kidney?

Why not?