Bodily autonomy has never been and is not now “an essential unconditional liberty”, and there are plenty of less controversial examples than abortion or COVID vaccination. Authorities can detain, search and sometimes kill you under a rather loose set of guidelines, with impunity. You can be force-fed and force-medicated if you are in a voluntary or involuntary psych hold. There are plenty of other cases where your body is not 100% yours to do as you please.
The real issues, when one steps back from “using arguments as soldiers”, are basically two-fold:
that the pro-life crowd counts a potential human as a human,
and that it is not up to a human to take a life of another, except in self-defense or through capital punishment.
The difference from the vaccination stance is pretty clear, but the pro-choice crowd rarely if ever engages with those, otherwise I would hear them saying something like “Every abortion is a tragedy, a loss of a potential human life, one that we would work hard to avoid” and “We understand that for those who see a potential future baby as a real baby, whether due to their religious beliefs or for other reasons, that terminating a pregnancy is tantamount to killing a baby”. Well, you hear that, but it’s by no means a mainstream pro-choice position.
Once there is some mutual understanding, it becomes possible to work on agreeing when abortion is a tragic but a least bad choice (e.g. no heartbeat, ectopic pregnancy). There would still be plenty of sticking points, like the case of rape, but at least there would be a set of circumstances where terminating a pregnancy would no longer be controversial. Right now, this set is empty, and the fault lies with both sides. Definitely “bodily autonomy” is a weak and poorly defensible position for one seeking any kind of common ground.
Bodily autonomy has never been and is not now “an essential unconditional liberty”, and there are plenty of less controversial examples than abortion or COVID vaccination. Authorities can detain, search and sometimes kill you under a rather loose set of guidelines, with impunity. You can be force-fed and force-medicated if you are in a voluntary or involuntary psych hold. There are plenty of other cases where your body is not 100% yours to do as you please.
The real issues, when one steps back from “using arguments as soldiers”, are basically two-fold:
that the pro-life crowd counts a potential human as a human,
and that it is not up to a human to take a life of another, except in self-defense or through capital punishment.
The difference from the vaccination stance is pretty clear, but the pro-choice crowd rarely if ever engages with those, otherwise I would hear them saying something like “Every abortion is a tragedy, a loss of a potential human life, one that we would work hard to avoid” and “We understand that for those who see a potential future baby as a real baby, whether due to their religious beliefs or for other reasons, that terminating a pregnancy is tantamount to killing a baby”. Well, you hear that, but it’s by no means a mainstream pro-choice position.
Once there is some mutual understanding, it becomes possible to work on agreeing when abortion is a tragic but a least bad choice (e.g. no heartbeat, ectopic pregnancy). There would still be plenty of sticking points, like the case of rape, but at least there would be a set of circumstances where terminating a pregnancy would no longer be controversial. Right now, this set is empty, and the fault lies with both sides. Definitely “bodily autonomy” is a weak and poorly defensible position for one seeking any kind of common ground.
I have lots of thoughts on this, but would rather not turn this comment section into a debate on abortion politics.