Abortion is morally wrong

[Esquilax]

Assuming the fetus is a person (which I don't think he grants), Esquilax uses the analogy of should anyone be forced to be an organ donor, or to hook their body up to anyone else to provide life support. I would say not. There is no such moral duty.

But, I think it a false analogy. After all the fetus didn't demand the mother take it in at gun point. A better analogy might be this. You are clutching a rope in danger of falling into an abyss and certain death. You caught the rope. Someone else caught your ankles. You can't support both of you. Is it moral to kick them loose. I would say yes.

The point is that it doesn't matter how the situation came about. You could spend every day of your life specifically causing someone to have organ failure so that they require a transplant, and you still wouldn't be forced to give up one of your own. That's a situation in which there's a direct, intended causative link, and still we respect a person's right to their own body. There's a reason for that.

But suppose someone has grasped your hands and will not let got and you are now both sure to be saved. Is it moral to kick the person clutching your ankles loose now? I would say not. Sure, your arms might hurt more and it might even dislocate your shoulders but the inconvenience is temporary.

A fetus will take up more time than it will take to be pulled up off the rope, but while you might suffer from some bodily changes, it's a temporary inconvenience and nothing like having your shoulders dislocated.

Could we not try to minimize this, here? It's a little dishonest to characterize this as "temporary inconvenience," as though there aren't significant health repercussions involved in pregnancy and childbirth.

I would go even farther than this though. The hypothetical person clutching your ankles didn't get there because you did something. The fetus is something the woman (absent rape---which might push us back to the organ donor analogy) was complicit in causing the fetus' dependent position. That changes things. Failing to provide this temporary loan is more like child neglect.

And I'm so goddamn tired of hearing these arguments too, which, I'm sorry, are no different from "well, the little slut should have kept her legs together if she didn't want to get pregnant!" except that the phrasing is nicer. We don't take this attitude with any other situation, and yet now I'm suddenly supposed to accept this "there are never any mistakes, and you have no right to mitigate the consequences on yourself now," attitude when it comes to abortion?

We don't leave drunk drivers dying on the side of the road near their crashed cars, we don't just not accept police reports from mugging victims if they were flashing their cash around dark alleys, we don't refuse to treat self inflicted wounds, we don't go with this "now you must face the worst case scenario for your actions no matter what!" nonsense anywhere else, so why does the argument suddenly become valid with abortion?