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“My body, my choice” only makes sense when someone else’s life isn’t at stake.

Fun fact: If my younger sister was in a car accident and desperately needed a blood transfusion to live, and I was the only person on Earth who could donate blood to save her, and even though donating blood is a relatively easy, safe, and quick procedure no one can force me to give blood. Yes, even to save the life of a fully grown person, it would be ILLEGAL to FORCE me to donate blood if I didn’t want to.

See, we have this concept called “bodily autonomy.” It’s this….cultural notion that a person’s control over their own body is above all important and must not be infringed upon. 

Like, we can’t even take LIFE SAVING organs from CORPSES unless the person whose corpse it is gave consent before their death. Even corpses get bodily autonomy. 

To tell people that they MUST sacrifice their bodily autonomy for 9 months against their will in an incredibly expensive, invasive, difficult process to save what YOU view as another human life (a debatable claim in the early stages of pregnancy when the VAST majority of abortions are performed) is desperately unethical. You can’t even ask people to sacrifice bodily autonomy to give up organs they aren’t using anymore after they have died. 

You’re asking people who can become pregnant to accept less bodily autonomy than we grant to dead bodies. 

reblogging for commentary 

But, assuming the mother wasn’t raped, the choice to HAVE a baby and risk sacrificing their “bodily autonomy” is a choice that the mother made. YOu don’t have to have sex with someone. Cases of rape aside, it isn’t ethical to say abortion is justified. The unborn baby has rights, too. 

First point: Bodily autonomy can be preserved, even if another life is dependent on it. See again the example about the blood donation. 

And here’s another point: When you say that “rape is the exception” you betray something FUNDAMENTALLY BROKEN about your own argument.

Because a fetus produced from sexual assault is biologically NO DIFFERENT than a fetus produced from consensual sex. No difference at all.

If one is alive, so is the other. If one is a person, so is the other. If one has a soul, then so does the other. If one is a little blessing that happened for a reason and must be protected, then so is the other. 

When you say that “Rape is the exception” what you betray is this: It isn’t about a life. This isn’t about the little soul sitting inside some person’s womb, because if it was you wouldn’t care about HOW it got there, only that it is a little life that needs protecting.

When you say “rape is the exception” what you say is this: You are treating pregnancy as a punishment. You are PUNISHING people who have had CONSENSUAL SEX but don’t want to go through a pregnancy. People who DARED to have consensual sex without the goal of procreation in mind, and this is their “consequence.” 

And that is gross. 

^ THIS. This is this this THIS THIS THIS. THIS!!!!!

This is probably the strongest and well worded/supported argument for abortion that I have ever read.

WHY THE FUCK HAS TUMBLR FLAGGED THIS?! i’M FUCKING FURIOUS!!!

Yep, this was flagged for me too. Which is why I’m going to reblog it several time until Tumblr implodes.

This!!!!

This explains it all pretty well. My take on abortion has always been “why the fuck are you asking me? I am not capable of getting pregnant? I shouldn’t really have a say in this argument because it is none of my damn business? Also I do think that taking bodily autonomy away from women is kinda fucked.”

*very, extremely fucked

Personally for me, I think abortion should be allowed in case something happens. Not because you get pregnant, but because a complication like the baby dies in you or something. Or a cancer. I could be wrong, and I’ll accept when I am wrong, but this is just my personal standpoint right now.

I’m gonna say this as gently as I can:

You’re very statement has already killed since Roe vs. Wade was overturned. It is because these very situations came up and, because abortion is denied “except in special cases,” nobody would perform the very much needed procedures until pain, suffering, and death had already resulted.

Want something closer to what can happen to you? Imagine finding out you had cancer and lawmakers telling you doctors can do nothing until it’s stage 4, a “special circumstance”. When it’s terminal. When your odds of surviving are so low that they won’t even try to save your life.

That’s what having “special circumstances” does. They have no purpose other than to control and kill.

Now I feel horrible, thank you for telling me! I can understand that I was wrong and I never meant any harm when I said what I said. I hope I can be forgiven and I hope I didn’t come off and cruel or uneducated. I will defiantly research the topic more!

Hey, it’s hard to take new information like this gracefully, so kudos for that.

I just want to say that your gut feeling of “abortion should be available in case someone needs it” and feeling uncomfortable with the idea of it being used when it’s “not needed” isn’t a *bad* instinct. It feels very grounded and logical and compassionate.

But the devil is in the details. Who gets to decide when it’s needed? How do you prove that you qualify? Who do you need to prove your qualification to? How long will that take? What happens if different authorities disagree on whether or not you qualify? Every barrier to access prolongs ANYONE getting this care, and makes it more likely for people to get caught in the cracks and suffer. And that’s what we’ve seen in places where these restrictions have been put in place.

But there ARE ways to help reduce the number of abortions *other* than restrictions to access. Improved access to contraceptives, improved access to prenatal health care, more resources for people in domestic abuse situations, better parental leave policies, more funding for child care, Medicare, low income housing, foodstamps. When you make pregnancy (and parenthood) less dangerous, more affordable, and less potentially damaging to a person’s quality of life, then fewer people will feel like abortion is their best option.

Making pregnancy a *better* experience for *more* people is the way to reduce abortions while still making it accessible to people who “need” it (and trusting that each individual is capable of deciding what choice is best for them.)