Suppose this physically dwarfed, stunted person lives in its mother’s belly for decades, fully aware of who it is and where it is—it is trapped in its mother’s belly. Suppose it wants to get out and live something like a normal life, but she won’t let it. She says “it’s my vagina, and I don’t have to let you through it.”

Suppose, even, that the woman chooses to do all of this on purpose, because she likes the idea of having a helpless small person stuck inside her body for its entire life. She lives to a ripe old age of 90, at which time the person inside her has lived a full 70 years of fully aware helpless misery—and then she dies and her 70-year-old “child” dies with her—because right up to the end, it’s her body and that’s how she wants it.”

Sigh. You really do have a problem with this “bodily integrity” thing, don’t you? No doubt it’s a horrible tragedy for the theoretical 70 year old dwarf fetus who likes to stalk people in cars while watching them die and cackling, you’ll never, never, never get my liver, but um, no. You can’t force someone to undergo a medical procedure against her will. You can’t do it, because she’s a human being, she has basic human rights, all of the rights which accrue to an individual AFTER BIRTH. (Think of it this way, as long as he’s in her body, he’ll live by hER rules, young man!) She has a fundamental right to her body and she can’t be forced to submit to medical procedures that will adversely affect her health to benefit anyone else. Not even to protect the innocent dwarf and unleash him on unsuspecting pedestrians does the state have the right to strap her down and force her to give birth or strap her down to release the elderly dwarf from his wombly prison. Hell, they don’t even have the right to go around and preemptively force women who are more likely to give birth to liver witholding vultures to abort. It doesn’t so much matter what he is, as it matters where he is. If he’s INSIDE HER, then his rights, to the extent that they exist, are trumped by hers.

“Assuming that your analogy is correct (which it is most definitely not), you would be right. We have a right to get rid of unwanted people from our property. I celebrate that right. *Nonetheless*, we don’t have a right to kill unwanted people while they are on our property, even if it is in the process of booting them out.”

That’s not true in many places, and it’s also irrelevant. You may not have the right to kill the unwanted person, but you’re still allowed to eject him even if he can’t possibly live outside of your residence. If your house is the only place on earth where he can live, and he’ll die if he’s escorted outside, that does not mean you have a legal responsibility to allow him to stay or to nourish and sustain him. He has the right to live, he just doesn’t have the right to live inside you without your continuing consent, and you have no responsibility for what hapens to him after he’s ejected, which you have every right to make happen.

This argument doesn’t make any sense. Why is the onus put on the driver? Wouldn’t it make more sense to tell the pedestrian, hey, look, if you walk around willy nilly, you’re liable to get hit by the only person who would then be able to save your life. Only problem is, we can’t force him to save your life, so if you want to live and avoid this horrible but predictable risk, basically if you’re incapable of staying out way of the only car driven by someone who could injure/save you, stop walking around. Stay inside. Drive. In that scenario, the pedestrian’s personal autonomy would be violated, but that seems like a fair trade-off since the other scenario involves both a loss of personal autonomy AND a sacrifice of bodily integrity on the part of the driver. Of course that argument makes no sense either…

Effects of pregnancy:
These are the normal, frequent or expectable temporary side effects of pregnancy:

– exhaustion (weariness common from first weeks)
– altered appetite and senses of taste and smell
– nausea and vomiting (50% of women, first trimester)
– heartburn and indigestion
– constipation
– weight gain
– dizziness and light-headedness
– bloating, swelling, fluid retention
– hemmorhoids
– abdominal cramps
– yeast infections
– congested, bloody nose
– acne and mild skin disorders
– skin discoloration (chloasma, face and abdomen)
– mild to severe backache and strain
– increased headaches
– difficulty sleeping, and discomfort while sleeping
– increased urination and incontinence
– bleeding gums
– pica
– breast pain and discharge
– swelling of joints, leg cramps, joint pain
– difficulty sitting, standing in later pregnancy
– inability to take regular medications
– shortness of breath
– higher blood pressure
– hair loss
– tendency to anemia
– curtailment of ability to participate in some sports and activities
– infection including from serious and potentially fatal disease (pregnant women are immune suppressed compared with non-pregnant women, and are more susceptible to fungal and certain other diseases)
– extreme pain on delivery
– hormonal mood changes, including normal post-partum depression
– continued post-partum exhaustion and recovery period (exacerbated if a c-section — major surgery — is required, sometimes taking up to a full year to fully recover)

These are the normal, expectable, or frequent PERMANENT side effects of pregnancy:

– stretch marks (worse in younger women)
– loose skin
– permanent weight gain or redistribution
– abdominal and vaginal muscle weakness
– pelvic floor disorder (occurring in as many as 35% of middle-aged former child-bearers and 50% of elderly former child-bearers, associated with urinary and rectal incontinence, discomfort and reduced quality of life)
– changes to breasts
– varicose veins
– scarring from episiotomy or c-section
– other permanent aesthetic changes to the body (all of these are downplayed by women, because the culture values youth and beauty)
– increased proclivity for hemmorhoids
– loss of dental and bone calcium (cavities and osteoporosis)

These are the occasional complications and side effects:

– hyperemesis gravidarum
– temporary and permanent injury to back
– severe scarring requiring later surgery (especially after additional pregnancies)
– dropped (prolapsed) uterus (especially after additional pregnancies, and other pelvic floor weaknesses — 11% of women, including cystocele, rectocele, and enterocele)
– pre-eclampsia (edema and hypertension, the most common complication of pregnancy, associated with eclampsia, and affecting 7 – 10% of pregnancies)
– eclampsia (convulsions, coma during pregnancy or labor, high risk of death)
– gestational diabetes
– placenta previa
– anemia (which can be life-threatening)
– thrombocytopenic purpura
– severe cramping
– embolism (blood clots)
– medical disability requiring full bed rest (frequently ordered during part of many pregnancies varying from days to months for health of either mother or baby)
– diastasis recti, also torn abdominal muscles
– mitral valve stenosis (most common cardiac complication)
– serious infection and disease (e.g. increased risk of tuberculosis)
– hormonal imbalance
– ectopic pregnancy (risk of death)
– broken bones (ribcage, “tail bone”)
– hemorrhage and
– numerous other complications of delivery
– refractory gastroesophageal reflux disease
– aggravation of pre-pregnancy diseases and conditions (e.g. epilepsy is present in .5% of pregnant women, and the pregnancy alters drug metabolism and treatment prospects all the while it increases the number and frequency of seizures)
– severe post-partum depression and psychosis
– research now indicates a possible link between ovarian cancer and female fertility treatments, including “egg harvesting” from infertile women and donors
– research also now indicates correlations between lower breast cancer survival rates and proximity in time to onset of cancer of last pregnancy
– research also indicates a correlation between having six or more pregnancies and a risk of coronary and cardiovascular disease

These are some less common (but serious) complications:

– peripartum cardiomyopathy
– cardiopulmonary arrest
– magnesium toxicity
– severe hypoxemia/acidosis
– massive embolism
– increased intracranial pressure, brainstem infarction
– molar pregnancy, gestational trophoblastic disease (like a pregnancy-induced cancer)
– malignant arrhythmia
– circulatory collapse
– placental abruption
– obstetric fistula

And a few more permanent side effects:

– future infertility
– permanent disability
– death.

Of course, that’s all mostly irrelevant. Even if there was an invitation initially, if I tell someone its time to leave, they have to leave.

Or consider that women abort because they both see it as an intruder and don’t want to take care of the intruder.

Just because somebody invades my property doesn’t mean I have to invite them in for tea.

Huh. Could be. To test your theory, I recommend shoving a watermelon in or out of your butt and seeing how that goes.

Good so far, but let’s widen it to her house=her body.

“You leave the door to this house open, analogous to having sex.”

This is where your analogy fails. The act of having sex facillitates the existence of another organism. In state of fact, the man is dropping baby parts off at her house. The woman has reproductive material as part of the basic structure of her house.

In this situation, both parties are responsible because they both put the new person (her offspring) they have created in a position of vulnerability inside the woman’s house. As such, the woman has a moral responsibility to keep her offspring within her house until such time as it can live outside. In the meantime, the man has a responsibility to help the woman maintain her house (I think child support should extend prebirth).

Stepping outside of the analogy for a second: it is called parental responsibility.

“Someone enters your house, analogous to becoming pregnant.”

No, because

1. that someone didn’t ‘enter’ the house. It came into existence in the house because of what the woman and a visitor (the father) did.

“Now, do you want this person there?”

Irrelevant. Consider first of all that most women don’t abort because it is an ‘intruder’ but because they don’t want to have to take care of it later. Second, it’s irrelevant for the reasons I expressed above.

“This stranger was not invited, analogous to an unwanted pregnancy.”

Oh, but the woman did invite that stranger’s creation within her house. That changes your analogy dramatically, since for about six to seven months, the stranger *cannot* leave without being killed.

“You have a right to get rid of them.”

Assuming that your analogy is correct (which it is most definitely not), you would be right. We have a right to get rid of unwanted people from our property. I celebrate that right. *Nonetheless*, we don’t have a right to kill unwanted people while they are on our property, even if it is in the process of booting them out.

Recently in the news, a man had confessed to murdering a boy who frequently trespassed on his property. He claimed that it had gone on for years and it had reached his breaking point. Abortion is like that. It almost always involves killing the trespasser while he is on your property. Having a right to boot an unwanted trespasser is massively different from having a right to kill an unwanted trespasser. That man was wrong for killing the boy, and most women are wrong for killing a fetus.

“If in fact they are harming you, intentionally or not, you have a right to defend yourself.”

Unfortunately for you, most women survive pregnancies unscathed.

Either way, the reductio ad absurdam still works.

You know how stuff goes from funny to hilarious to eyeball-scratchingly awful to funny again? Thanks for the round-trip, Paul.

If you haven’t see how this isn’t true by now, well, then, I am truly sorry. Best of luck to you.

I’d agree that it applies to the dwarf. The thing I still don’t get—pardon me if I’m being really dense—is why you think that it wouldn’t similarly apply to the fetus rather than the woman, in the other case.

That’s really a fundamental idea (as I see it) behind choice. A person choosing to give up a part of their body is not being violated of their autonomy, but rather exercising that autonomy. Likewise a person choosing not to give up part of their body is exercising their autonomy. If a woman does not choose to give up her body for a fetus, then that fetus is violating her autonomy. If the dwarf/fetus does not choose to be inside the woman, she is violating his/her autonomy.

In the case of abortion, the fetus may be having its autonomy violated, just as the woman may be having her autonomy violated to free the dwarf/fetus, but that is after the fact that the woman having an abortion had her autonomy violated.

To illustrate, I’ll make a whole new pristine analogy. You own a house, analogous to a womb. You leave the door to this house open, analogous to having sex. Someone enters your house, analogous to becoming pregnant. Now, do you want this person there? This stranger was not invited, analogous to an unwanted pregnancy. You have a right to get rid of them. If in fact they are harming you, intentionally or not, you have a right to defend yourself. And because we want to be analogous to a pregnant woman, they are harming you. So, you have the means to remove this person and do so, analogous to having an abortion.

To make it analogous to your dwarf/fetus scenario some things would be fundamentally different. First, the door was opened and the person invited inside or at least welcomed once inside. Then, quite the opposite from trying to get rid of the person, you force them to stay, kidnap them. Now it becomes the right of the kidnapped person to flee or be rescued as the case may be.

Now I’m under no illusion that this argument will convince certain people that believe the fetus is a human person with self and agency. But I hold no illusion that they’d be more easily convinced the fetus is not a person either. I do think this revelation of logic can help some, just as arguments at to why an amorphous ball of cell isn’t a person will help some.