It Doesn't Matter When "Life" Begins, No Person Can Force You To Use Your Body to Save Their Life. Spoiler There are many arguments for why abortion should be safe, legal, affordable, and readily available to any person who needs one, for whatever reason, at nearly any point in a pregnancy. Spoiler ** I use the word “nearly” because in the last dozen to 15 weeks of a pregnancy, the fetus is approaching viability on it’s own and no longer needs to use the mother’s body to survive. The number of abortions that happen in the third trimester are very rare and almost by definition occur because the mother’s life is in imminent danger. Emergency c-section is the fastest and safest way to remove/deliver a third trimester fetus/baby to first and foremost, save the mother’s life and with NICU care, hopefully save the life of her premature baby. The vast majority of abortions happen in the first trimester which is at the end of twelve weeks. The second trimester which goes from 13 weeks to the end of 26 weeks, marks the second time-zone that abortions happen and often occur after prenatal testing shows that there is something seriously wrong with the fetus, often a severe genetic abnormality. Many second trimester abortions are often difficult, deeply personal, heart breaking decisions because a woman knows she doesn’t have the emotional strength, family support, or financial resources to care for a disabled child. It is often out of mercy and love for her growing baby to NOT bring it into a world where it will only know pain, suffering, hospitals, surgeries, severe disabilities and create a lifelong financial burden on her, her family, and older or future siblings. Or maybe she lives in a red state where abortion access is deliberately impeded by numerous insidious GOP-laid roadblocks and she wasn’t able to get one in her first trimester. Whatever the reason, it should always be her choice, and her choice alone, if she wants to proceed with a pregnancy or terminate it for any reason. It is after all her body that she is granting permission to be used as a life support system and it is her right to withdraw her permission, aka “decide to pull the plug” when and if she wants. The Government cannot force you to donate blood to save another person’s life, even if they are bleeding out and die in front of you. And it doesn’t make you a murderer, punishable with years or even life in prison if you refused to donate blood to save someone’s life. Forced-birth Republicans have rapidly radicalized to believe they have a Christian religious right to insist that a fertilized egg is “life” and no matter how it was conceived, even by rape or incest, that zygote is “innocent life” so it is “pure” and even more deserving to live than it’s mother — to terminate that “life” is murder. They are forcing their religious beliefs on the rest of us. Christians are so twisted and repressed in their views of sex that any woman who is pregnant is a “sinful slut” because she “opened her legs” to have dirty, sinful sex. Even if she is married, she knew the “consequences” of having sex and those consequences must be exacted upon her, even if she herself is a child or was gang raped at gunpoint. She is no longer a virgin and as such, she is impure and deserves to pay the price, the consequences of her sin, no matter if it kills her. BTW, Republicans do not care if women and girls die from back-alley or botched self-induced abortions because they think they are murderers who deserve to die. Don’t even bother with that argument with them, it is a losing argument. In our society, it is 100% your choice if you want to donate blood or bone marrow or even a spare organ like a kidney or lung to save someone else’s life. Your organs cannot be removed from your dead body to save another person’s life without your expressed, written permission prior to your death. As such, a dead American woman has more bodily autonomy than a living American woman. I have seen many valid arguments online to protect the bodily autonomy of women, to enshrine that it is your body and you alone get to choose if and when you will allow another being to use your body to live. I think one of the best argument is not to argue “when life begins” as that is a philosophical argument that is based in radicalized, fabricated religious dogma. It’s a red herring. So let’s assume for argument's sake a fetus is a full person, no different from a baby or child. No baby, no child can force you to donate blood, bone marrow, a kidney to save their life so how can a person force you to donate your uterus for nine months to save their life? And yes, I am calling the fetus a person for the sake of this argument. They can’t. They shouldn’t. It’s wrong. Because it doesn't matter when "life" begins, no person, not even a fetus person, can force you to use your body against your will to save their life. Period. Monday, May 23, 2022 · 10:38:10 AM CDT · Liberal in a Red State Thanks for the fantastic discussion on this topic. In reading through all the comments here are a couple additional thoughts: 1. We all need a better variety of concise, effective messaging and arguments beyond the tired “my body my choice” that right-wingers co-opted for not wearing masks or the infuriatingly lame “banning abortion won’t stop abortions”. No, it will create a new class of “murderers” and women and doctors rotting in prison because people, their purchases and their travel can be digitally tracked in ways they couldn’t be tracked 50 years ago. This argument; No person, not even a fetus cannot force another person, against their will, to use any part of their body to keep themselves alive ... and variations thereof, should be at the top of everyone’s list. It strips away the “when does life begin” loop that people always get stuck in. 2. This is a very effective argument when engaging with people who are already pro-choice or lean pro-choice to reinforce their position. It can even reach fence-sitters who are concerned about rape or the life of the mother or severely deformed fetuses. I suffer no illusions that this will convince radicalized Republicans but at least we are armed with better arguments when we engage with them and don’t get lost on their religious “when does life begin” loop. 3. The 13th Amendment that prohibits involuntary servitude is also an excellent argument to use in tandem with this messaging. It gives the strong one-two punch. 4. It builds on “bodily autonomy” or “agency over our own body” in an effective manner that people can relate to. Please continue to pass the message along in your conversations with other pro-choice people as well as people who are further away on the spectrum. We all agree that Democrats must get better at our messaging and it starts with sharing an effective messages among ourselves, refining it, making it part of your quick-reaction, go-to messaging when defending our rights.
Good to see Alito’s and Barrett’s deeply ingrained beliefs on the sanctity of human life somehow didn’t taint their view that it’s okay for the state to kill adult humans.
pretty horrifying implications, that concept of the states right to kill people really took me back to the last pod on the left executions episode or painfotainment from Dan Carlin, not only is it the states right but it almost serves as a type of human sacrifice to the state
Legit lawyers on this very board got in their fucking feelings when someone posited 5 hobos off the street could be SCOTUS justices. a handful of third graders hopped up on pixie sticks could perform more justice than these ghouls
Sugar-high 3rd graders would do a better job than hobos, in my lawyer point of view. They'd definitely make better decisions than the current Supreme Court.
All it took was not getting up in your feels to see this was true when the conversation was being had just a few weeks ago. It isn't even like it was that long ago the discussion took place.
None of what the USSC is doing is any real lawyering. Thomas is just making shit up based on his own personal opinion on matters as opposed to following precedent. I agree though in its current form a panel of dogs would be better.
They've handed down plenty of good decisions as well. Guess you never read A&P. Tea Co. v. Supermarket Corp.
There have also been good decisions that covered the entire country that wouldn’t have happened but for the court. Which is why conservatives are trying to kill that whole line of cases.
yeah man it’s historically been great eyes rolling back in head Eyes rolling so far back they are behind my brain My brain exploded I die imagine stanning this fucking institution
How am I stanning for the USSC? I'm disgusted by pretty much everything they're doing and have done over the past few years. They've had a lot of awful decisions and they have had good decisions in the past as well.
The Supreme Court has done some good at times in places where Congress wouldn't or couldn't act, but maybe not having it would have lead to a more progressive Congress over the years. It is certainly a worthless bag of crap right now and has been for much of its history.
SCOTUS has always existed as a check on liberty and political power of the masses. It has very rarely in its history been anything other than an arm for the capitalist class
Why the fuck all of this is coming out now and not in say... 2020 when she was in front of the Senate, seems an important question. Another bang up job from our Democratic Party.
I once served warrants on a guy for threats against Obama. The Marshalls came and picked him up. The guy told me he’d threatened every president since Reagan. He’d get arrested, sentenced to some kind of halfway home for mental health purposes, and then he’d break out and do it all again. I never asked what the threat was but it must have been at least half way serious/plausible for the Marshalls to get involved.
90% chance he was pulled over for being on Chevy Chase streets during 4-6 PM without the neighborhood car sticker. MoCo po-po always pop me when I'm plotting to cut across those rich pricks' sundown neighborhood so I can beat the traffic on East-West Highway. smdh edit: nevermind happened at 1:50 AM.
this dude rocks and embodies the true meaning bipartisanship that biden so desperately wants every president possibly ever but certainly since reagan is a war criminal sociopath
So they caught the guy before he did any harm? Okay, looks like the Justices’ security is doing their job well. Lets turn our attention back to schools where the cops aren’t. Oh, and look, another gun being used for crime and not hunting. Maybe less guns would be good.
him, hinckley and the softball enthusiast james hodgkinson are greater and more honorable americans that every single republican in this country
Sorry to dox you, but it’s neat knowing we have celebrities here. Much better delivery on Twitter. I guess you work out your material here first.
tMB is where I do some workshopping. It’s like shit posting before shit tweeting. Like an nba shoot around
WE NEED A HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE WITH SUBPOENA POWER TO RIGOROUSLY INVESTIGATE THIS HEINOUS ACT OF THREATENED VIOLENCE AND INTIMIDATION AGAINST HIS HIGHNESS ASSOCIATE JUSTICE KAVANAUGH. WE ALSO NEED LEGISLATION PASSED TO PREVENT FUTURE SIMILAR ACTS TO PASS BOTH HOUSES IN THE NEXT 15 MINUTES.
I’ll take Mitch’s concern for the safety of 5 Republican judges seriously when he also takes seriously the safety of millions of American schoolchildren and passes meaningful gun control legislation. Deal, Mitch?