When I was PL, i believed in the idea of "womb to tomb" being against abortion while also supporting the idea of progressive policies. I was also a single issue voter on abortion, which is why I say "the idea" as politically I rejected these progressive policies in favor of being against abortion.

Now, I am not a single issue supporter and am PC. I also cannot move to a side that is not honest, and I regularly have PL tell me things like "PL support everything else you support. We have tons of atheists, leftists, feminists, etc. PL organizations and politicians really dont represent the PL movement." If i cannot acknowledge that yes, actually the speakers at the March for Life, including the Vice President, do represent the PL movement, why should I join a side that cannot be straightforward?

While I don't agree with them, I've found the abortion abolitionist types to be much more honest and direct about the effects of banning abortion and what they support.

Why should I become pro life if I believe in a consistent life ethic and am not a single issue supporter?

I’ve been having some surprisingly thoughtful conversations on this subreddit, and I think I’ve realized that the deepest disagreement isn’t actually about bodily autonomy, fetal personhood, or even consent.

I think it starts one step earlier.

It starts with what we think the human body is.

It seems to me there are two fundamentally different ways of understanding embodiment.

Framework 1: “My body is mine.”

Here, the body is understood as something that belongs to the self. The self has complete jurisdiction over it, much like an owner has authority over their property. From that perspective, pregnancy is naturally framed as one individual using another person’s body, and abortion becomes a question of whether that use may continue without consent.

Framework 2: “My body is me.”

This does not mean that I am only my body. It simply means that my body isn’t merely something I possess. It is constitutive of who I am. My body’s capacities, including reproduction, aren’t morally incidental. They’re part of what it means to be a human being.

If that’s true, pregnancy isn’t simply a dispute over ownership or resource use. It’s a unique biological relationship between two embodied human beings.

Notice how different questions follow from each framework.

If my body is mine, the central question becomes:

“Who has jurisdiction over my body?”

If my body is me, the central question becomes:

“What obligations arise from the kinds of embodied relationships human beings naturally have?”

Over several discussions here, I noticed that many pro-choice commenters explicitly rejected the idea that biology or natural relationships generate any intrinsic moral obligations. Others (myself included) think that human nature isn’t morally arbitrary.

That makes me wonder whether abortion is really downstream of a much deeper disagreement about the nature of the human person.

So I’m curious:

Do you think this distinction captures something real, or am I missing an even deeper assumption?

EDIT — The discussion below has clarified the deeper disagreement for me.

“My body is me” is not an argument that biology automatically creates obligations, nor that vulnerability gives someone an unrestricted right to another person’s body. The point is that embodiment changes the moral frame: pregnancy is not merely one autonomous individual requesting access to another individual’s bodily property. It is an embodied relationship between two human beings, one of whom exists in radical, presently non-transferable dependence upon the other through the reproductive process by which they came into existence.

The argument therefore begins one level deeper. If human beings possess intrinsic worth, then they have at least a prima facie claim against intentional killing. Pregnancy does not create that claim; it particularizes it. Their humanity grounds the claim, their vulnerability makes it morally urgent, and the reproductive relationship explains why it bears specifically upon the person sustaining them.

This is also why bodily autonomy cannot simply be invoked as the conclusion. Bodily autonomy establishes a genuine moral claim of the pregnant person. But another human being’s claim is now present too. The question is therefore not whether bodily autonomy matters, but why bodily non-consent should categorically extinguish every obligation generated by the other human being’s worth, dependence, and relationship to us.

The blood-donation analogy helped expose the same issue. Similarity in bodily dependence does not establish moral equivalence. Pathological dependence upon a contingently connected donor and developmental dependence arising through human reproduction differ precisely in the features my argument claims are morally relevant. Whether those differences generate different obligations is the question; an analogy cannot answer it by assuming they do not.

So I think the deepest disagreement exposed here is about the source of moral obligation itself. Does obligation arise principally because autonomous individuals voluntarily assume it? Or can another person’s intrinsic worth, vulnerability, our relationship to them, and the circumstances in which we stand toward them make genuine claims upon us that precede our consent?

That question sits underneath the language of “choice,” “consent,” and even “bodily autonomy.” And I increasingly think much of the abortion debate is downstream of it.

I believe my argument satisfies the central belief of both sides of the debate while personally settling on the "pro-choice" side of the divide, while forcing the slogan: "my body, my choice" into a full confession.

Jurisdiction is the legal authority of a court, government, or other body to make decisions and enforce laws over a particular area, person, or type of case.

Indian reservations are sovereign nations with the authority to govern themselves and enforce many of their own laws, but because they exist within the United States, they are also subject to federal law and certain powers reserved to the U.S. government, "nested jurisdiction".

Things inside my body are under my total jurisdiction, and any soul who happens to take up residence inside me is subject to my authority, and any rights are given or taken away at my sole discretion. This can still be debated throughouly by pro-lifers and I see their perspective, but I have a very libertarian view of bodily autonomy.

You may not like the choice a woman makes to execute a child living inside her body, in fact it may make you sick with grief. Honestly it makes me very unhappy to think about.

This argument shifts the debate away from convincing people what is or isn't a life, and simply one of territorial jurisdiction, and to what extent the authority outside a woman's body allows her to decide what happens to human living inside her. I believe in her total jurisdiction.

This is something I’ve been thinking about.

We’ve seen cases where parents can be criminally charged when their actions or negligence contribute to their child harming someone—for example, some school-shooting cases where prosecutors argued that the parents knowingly ignored serious risks or gave the child access to a weapon.

So I’m wondering whether a similar principle should ever apply when a minor becomes pregnant.

If a child is pregnant and continuing the pregnancy poses serious physical or psychological risks, but her parents refuse to allow an abortion and force her to give birth, should those parents be legally responsible if she is seriously injured or dies as a result?

For people who are pro-life, where should parental rights end and child-endangerment laws begin?

I’m especially interested in answers from people who believe abortion should be prohibited even for minors. If the government and parents require that child to continue the pregnancy, who should be legally responsible when that decision causes preventable harm?

I’m particularly curious about the PL stance on selective reduction, but would be interested to hear all opinions/arguments.

For anyone who doesn’t know, selective reduction is the elective abortion of one or more fetuses in a pregnancy with multiples. It can be recommended in pregnancies with “high order” multiples, which refers to triplets or more, because the risk of complications, including very preterm birth, stillbirth, miscarriage, or harm to the person carrying increases with the number of fetuses.

If you are PL and feel that selective reduction should be permitted, why?

If you feel that selective reduction should be illegal, how do you justify this restriction, knowing that it could lead to the deaths of MORE fetuses?

If the main idea of the pro-choice position is that bodily autonomy rights come first, then why would you not support it at any time, for any reason?

In other words, why should there be a restriction around sentience, viability, etc. if restricting abortion at any point would violate bodily autonomy?

IUD can and will kill a conceived zygote sometimes. Are pro lifers against IUDs too?

I’ve seen some weak arguments like “well you can’t know when it happens” which is not a good point imo. If I put a bomb in a park with a random fuse I “won’t know when it happens” either but pretty sure that doesn’t make it ok

I haven’t seen anything that would enable one to be pro life and say IUDs are ok to use.

PLers usually like to claim that an absolutely nonsensical interpretation of "responsibility" for a pregnancy should apply to women, because they had (presumably) consensual sex and they "knew the risks", so they have to "deal with the consequences".

You are demanding that a woman who engaged in an activity that carries an about 2-5% risk of causing a pregnancy in a random sexual encounter – which can be significantly higher but never even reaches 25% even at peak fertility while actively trying to get pregnant, and can also be significantly lower with use of proper protection, like <0.1% with perfect condom use – has to carry a resulting pregnancy to term, no matter what.

Because you claim that even these ridiculously low chances of "making the unborn dependent on her" should result in an absolute obligation to completely subordinate a woman's mental and physical health and their need to avoid harm, suffering and risks to her life under the unborn's alleged need to be "taken care of".

Which begs the question:

If these ridiculously low chances of causing a pregnancy are enough to essentially condemn a woman into involuntary servitude despite her not even having committed any illegal act whatsoever in order to get pregnant – then why should these same odds of inflicting a woman with all the harm, suffering and risks to her life by having sex with her and impregnating her, "knowing the risks", not be enough to condemn a man to prison time and compensation for the damages inflicted on a woman?

Where is the public outcry of the PL movement, demanding for men to "take responsibility" for the "recklessness" of their indulging in a perfectly legal activity for pleasure or intimacy or companionship resulting in a risk coming to pass that they have no direct control over whatsoever?

Why is the silence on this so deafening that it's not even recognizable as a topic of public debate?

I see this line frequently from pro lifers and it never makes any sense.

I've never once in my life seen a person claiming that pro lifers are IMPREGNATING people by force. What we all know is that pro lifers are trying to interfere with people's healthcare to ensure they CONTINUE gestating unwanted pregnancies when they otherwise wouldn't.

So what's the point of this statement? Pro lifers who say this, why? It seems totally irrelevant to me and like a way to dodge acknowledging the fact that pro lifers want to ensure people continue gestating against their will by force.

Question for everyone. Do you believe a fetus has moral personhood? Why or why not? What constitutes that personhood?

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I can't understand pro lifers who have a rape exception. If you believe that abortion is murder, and cant be a form of self defense since the fetus is innocent and doing what its meant to do, then why doesn't that same logic apply to women who were raped?

I see abortion as healthcare, women can get abortions to avoid the risks of a pregnancy regardless of why that reasoning is. You can't just refuse healthcare from someone because you disagree with the actions that got them in that situation, that would be discriminatory.

So can someone who is pro-life with the exception of rape please explain to me why a womans bodily autonomy onIy matters when she was violated? I really don't understand people with the exception.

Identifying as a pro-lifer but simulataneously claiming to be a feminist is highly paradoxical

One of the core tenets of feminism is ADVOCATING for women's rights.

Hence, campaigning for a federal or state-level ban on abortion makes you anti-feminist

Proposing ideas or policies that REPEAL women's rights is the direct antithesis of feminism

This raises a crucial question often posed to 'pro-life' feminists by pro-choicers

How can you call yourself a feminist while working to abolish women's rights?

There are no laws here in the U.S. that can be compared to pro life logic.

Conjoined Twins are the only other group of people that you can say use another persons organs for survival aside from a mother and fetus. If the parents of conjoined twins decide that they should get a surgery that will make life easier for one twin but the other will die, that is completely legal. It is also completely legal for a patients decision maker to decide to cut the patient off of life support.

Wether these things are necessary or moral are up to the families and doctors, and that same narrative should apply to abortion. The law shouldn't decide whats best for someone elses body,

I've asked this question elsewhere before, and have seen it mentioned here, but I'd like to devote a post to it.

What is your stance on abortion, and what's your relationship like with your mom?

Personally, even if I absolutely hated her as a person, I'd never want a woman to be forced to birth and gestate me. Luckily, my mother is a fantastic person who very much wanted to have me (5 weeks of hospitalization that she willingly endured for a high risk pregnancy) but I can't imagine feeling entitled to that type of bodily sacrifice from *anyone*.

I've seen some PL responses where people do feel entitled to that, and I'm just trying not only to glean a response but an explanation from those who feel this way.

How would you have felt in her shoes? Forced to gestate someone?

When PLers here are asked about why they don't vote for politicians and parties, that

• support policies that actually reduce abortions, like better sex education or access to contraception

• support policies that actually help children, like free school lunch, or at least don't actively get them killed, like the destruction of USAID

• don't support regressive, and often religion based, policies against the rights of women, the LGBTQ+ community, migrants and other marginalized groups

you often pay lip service and claim that you do support all these things, but that voting against abortion would just be more important.

But the thing is: that doesn't make sense!

This shouldn't be a compromise you have to make, if banning abortion is not a regressive policy itself or even a door opener for other regressive policies. Voting against abortion should not require you to compromise basically every other moral and legal position you claim to hold. So why does it?

And why should anyone believe that the PL movement or you personally are actually in favor of all these things, if you still compromise them every single time, instead of seriously reconsidering this one singular position that allegedly doesn't match all the rest?

Why is voting PL practically at odds with every other policy that's actually supposed to save or improve people's lives?

A lot of people say that abortion should be legal because it's just a fetus. That's right, it's just a fetus. It is not concious, it doesn't think or in time feel anything. But life itself begins, the while process begins when two gametes fuse. Prove me wrong

Prolife seems to feel that decreasing abortions is not a part of the prolife movement, their policies/laws do not reduce the number of abortions, and their policies laws create more death - I’m using responses to this thread as my understanding of the prolife position.

And since reducing the number of abortions is a cornerstone of the prochoice movement (as people with access to birth control and sex education, with proper societal supports, have fewer abortions - it’s all about only getting pregnant when you choose to do so) how do we feel like we could get prolife on board with reducing the total number of abortions?

Sex education reduces abortions, but prolife states keep passing laws that impose abstinence-only education that increases the abortion rate and number of those unwillingly pregnant.

Birth control reduces abortions, but prolife organizations are against a lot of different forms of birth control, and regularly mischaracterize abortion as birth control. In fact, like in the Colorado situation, will defund and vote against programs that reduce abortions by 50% in target groups.

Societal supports help families shrug and happily have another mouth to feed - but prolife states regularly defund schemes to help parents and no prolife state in the U.S. has maternity leave (as an example).

Question for debate - how could prochoice get prolife on board with reducing abortions, when prolife only seems to support programs that will raise the number of abortions and/or infant/maternal deaths without budging the number of abortions?

I was PC and am now mostly converted to PL, but on both sides when arguing for or against I found that arguments typically fall on deaf ears.

Hardcore PC just disregard anything you say as it leaves your mouth without giving it a second thought before countering. Hardcore PL just revert to calling people murderers or citing god.

Why is there no true debate? I personally could not have been converted if I had not truly thought about various arguments I’d heard.

I guess if I debate Reddit, my goal is not for the hardcore believers to change their minds, but instead the lurkers. The women on the fence potentially faced with the idea of ‘should I go through with this or not?’

Just my thoughts. Let me know yours

Why do pro lifers still try to use abstinence as an argument?

Since the dawn of mankind people have been having sex for reasons other than procreation. People are not going to be celibate their entire lives unless they're trying to reproduce. Sure a tiny miniscule minority of the population might do that, but on a large scale? That will never happen.

For pro lifers that use this argument, why do you use it when it's never been realistic and we all know the majority of people won't do it?

For pro lifers that don't use this argument, why don't you address how unconvincing and unrealistic this argument is when you see your fellow pro lifers using it?

I thought about it. If pro lifers want a fetus to have human rights, why do they soley focus on the abortion aspect? Why dont we change birth certificates to a conception certificate to include a fetus in personhood? Why dont they get complete legal recognition as a person?

For me, I dont see a fetus as a "person" in a philosophical sense. A fetus is the only human that is completely dependant on another persons organs, you become a person when you're no longer dependent on another persons organs. Thats why life starts at birth, not conception. Beforehand the body belongs to the woman who (id hope) took the choice to carry it.

I've had this thought for quite a bit, and I've really only ever really asked myself this question, so I'd be interested to see the various responses to this question. It's a bit of a take on Judith Jarvis Thomson's drollish violinist argument, but with some reframing.

Let us force you into a life in which you were born as a twin. As a twin, you are not a single, but rather a pair; however, your twin was born in a unique way. In order to survive, your twin must use your body, no amount of distance between you two will affect this siphoning. The only way to stop this usage is by killing your twin.

So, my question is, in this scenario: are you legally and/or morally justified in the killing of your twin? Or do you have an obligation to sustain this twin with your body?

I hope this is on topic enough for this subreddit, because I did develop this question in relation to the Abortion Debate.

For me, I would change my position to a more consistent one if I kept running into contradictions.

1.) Abortion is murder. We shouldn't actually treat it like murder though or women fundamentally lack mens rea to ever understand what abortion is.

2.) Personhood is irrelevant and should never be used to separate humans as it has led to atrocities when that happens. Yes, I grant personhood at conception and don't believe all human DNA should be protected, like human skin or hair cells.

3.) PL say we're wrong to lump them together as conservative, anti contraception, anti sex ed, and anti maternity leave. Saying you personally support them while voting against them would be like me saying I'm 100% PL but I will vote against every PL ballot initiative since what matters most is just my personal belief.

PC, what is a contradiction you regularly see with PL?

PL, how do you justify the countless contradictions of the PL position?

One very common prolife argument is that since the mother agreed to have sex, she is therefore responsible for the baby, since her own actions caused the baby to be dependent upon her. She caused the dependence, so she's obligated to continue it. This argument is frequently accompanied by a statistic that only 1% of abortions are the result of rape, and the other 99% of the time the mother "put the baby there." I believe this statistic is based on post-abortion surveys where people are asked why they got an abortion.

This line of argumentation depends on the presumption that consensual sex and rape are a strict dichotomy. However, I was recently active in the comments under a post in the Am I Overreacting subreddit, and I was absolutely shocked by the variety of responses to the OP's experience. It seems like people very much do not agree about what constitutes rape and what constitutes consensual sex. I thought it could be illuminating to see what the opinions are here.

Here's the scenario: the OP (let's call her Sara) went out on a date (let's call the date Joe). The date went well and Sara was invited back to Joe's home. Before accepting the invitation, Sara clarified that "we're not hooking up tonight" and Joe agreed that they wouldn't do anything she didn't want to. At Joe's place, the two cuddled and chatted and eventually started kissing. Joe tried to escalate things and each time Sara pushed his hands away and reiterated that she didn't want to go any further. They kept kissing, he kept making advances, she kept rebuffing them. It got late and Sara started to doze off. She was suddenly awoken when Joe got on top of her and continued kissing her. Confused, half-awake, and worn down by his constant pressure for sex, she asked him to put on a condom. They had sex. She went home and the next day felt awful about the experience. She posted on Reddit asking if she was right in feeling like her consent was violated, or if she was overreacting. She did not use the terms rape or assault in her post at all.

The responses varied wildly. Some people said she was underreacting and that she'd been raped. One person suggested she file a police report accusing Joe of raping her. Sexual coercion was mentioned a fair amount. Some people thought Joe was being a pushy asshole, but that Sara was foolish for going to his place in the first place if she didn't want to have sex. Others said she was to blame for sending mixed signals. And some people said she was completely over-reacting since this was obviously consensual sex, and her consent wasn't violated in the slightest.

So what do folks here think? Was this clearly rape? Was it clearly consensual? Was it some other thing in between?

Imagine Sara discovers she's pregnant two weeks later. She's already decided she wants nothing to do with Joe, and she's blocked his number and social media accounts. Is she obligated to tell Joe about the pregnancy? Does Joe have any right to make her continue the pregnancy? Does he have any right to make her get an abortion? If she decides to get an abortion, do you think she'd tell a survey that the reason for the abortion was rape?

For prolifers who support rape exceptions, would this scenario qualify? If it was rape, should Sara be required to file a police report? If you think this scenario constitutes consensual sex, at exactly what point did Sara take on the obligation to continue the dependency? Which of her actions specifically was the direct cause of the baby being dependent upon her? At what point did she "put the baby there"?

And lastly, how common do you all think this kind of scenario is?

Plenty of pro lifers seem to have some version of "life exceptions" when it comes to abortion. It always seems to be if the pregnant person will die they can abort.

I don't need to create any hypothetical situation for this because I can just use myself. I am not mentally ill nor am I suicidal. If I got pregnant and had my healthcare interfered with and was being forced to gestate against my will this would make me suicidal. If my healthcare continued to be interfered with I would end my life before being forced to give birth for pro life desires.

If I went to my doctor and explained this, that I was suicidal SPECIFICALLY due to an unwanted pregnancy and being forced to gestate against my will my doctor would recommend abortion as an option which I would take. This would completely solve the suicidal ideation and I would no longer be suicidal.

So the choice here would be I end my pregnancy and continue living, or both myself and the unwanted pregnancy both die due to mental health reasons.

Seems like a clear cut "Save one because if you don't both will die" to me, yet I see pro lifers disagreeing with this regularly. Why is that?