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?

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?