Some states protect women's rights

Is it a human being or not?A different question is, "Should it be permissible to kill it?" We ban killing of some things that aren't human beings. It's forbidden to butcher your dog, for instance, or shoot a horse that is healthy. But where do we stand on the nine month journey from conception to birth? If an egg cell and a sperm cell are combined in a petri dish, is the result a human being with the same rights as a one-year-old toddler? Is a nine-month gestation fetus merely a mass of tissue devoid of any rights it might have an hour later after its birth? Does a fetus at five months gestation deserve more or less protection by the law than your pet cat?Here's another question. Suppose you were introduced to Sandy, an adult human being who suffered from a terminal illness that could be cured by hooking Sandy's circulatory system up to a healthy individual's circulatory system for nine months (I think there was a Star Trek episode where Spock had to save his father's life by a similar method).Suppose the day after meeting Sandy you wake up in a hospital hooked up to Sandy through a machine. The doctors tell you there is no alternative. Nobody else but you can keep Sandy from dying (You have some kind of special blood type, like Spock). If there's a possibility of damage to you, they promise they'll halt the procedure and you can go home, but otherwise you're stuck.For some reason, however, they leave the switch to the machine in your reach. Do you have the right to flip the switch to OFF?

Interesting.Do we have a moral obligation to provide for the poor? Do we have a moral obligation to remedy the lingering ill-effects of segregation? Is there a moral obligation to throw a life preserver to a swimmer in distress?I'm not talking about a matter of law, of course, but a matter of morals.

Why can't we discuss the "well-being" of the fetus? How does the fetus compare with a pet dog? How does the fetus compare with a severely handicapped Rubella baby aged one year? Does your opinion about the "well-being" apply equally to a one-month gestation fetus and an eight-month gestation fetus?Is your assertion that nobody has a moral duty to be a "life-support" machine a matter of degree? Does someone have a moral duty to tell someone to get out of the street if a speeding truck is approaching?

The question of forcing someone to keep Sandy alive is a much different question. I might, for example, think it a good thing that someone donate a kidney to someone else that they might live, but that is not the same as thinking we ought to force that person to undergo surgery to extract their kidney against their will.

It's always appropriate to discuss the ethics of any medical procedure, don't you agree?In answer to your question about my position: I take the position that just because something's morally wrong, that doesn't mean government should (necessarily) prohibit it.That's a stance most people take, even if they don't recognize it consciously. Religious people, for example, often think it's morally wrong to believe in a deity other than their preferred one. But they don't want their government to follow the Islamic example and punish certain kinds of worship!On abortion, I don't think much about the "woman's right to do what she wants with her body." It sounds nice, but it's not relevant. If she were nursing a month-old baby and decided to stop and let it starve nobody would say she has a "right" to starve it!I think about the old days, the back-alley abortions, the coat hangers, the home remedies like ergot and turpentine, the resulting injuries, sterility, infection, deaths. Nobody wants to see those days again. The pro-life people may be sincere, saying all a woman has to do is give up the baby for adoption. That only happens in an ideal world. And we don't live in an ideal world.The ethics of it still worry me. Imagine a death-penalty supporter who supports it because they believe it works (prevents crime, appropriate punishment, etc.) and makes the world a better place, but they still have qualms because . . . it's just a nasty thing to do.

I would say, yes, there is a definite difference. Childbirth is a natural procedure that women have been going through for quite a long time. Your mother went through it, probably.Removing a kidney requires a deliberate act. It won't happen if you just sit around and do nothing.

But what is the difference between allowing a one week old post-fetus to starve and aborting a 39-week gestation pre-child?

It's the difference between forcing a person to undertake a medical procedure for the purpose of keeping Sandy (the adult human who will die if you don't undergo the procedure) and requiring a person to refrain from undertaking a medical procedure that would result in the death of a fetus.

You say the procedure is "the last thing we wanted to do" and that just indicates the difficult ethical problems this entire issue involves.

I'm not saying the law should prevent a woman from having an abortion, nor that the law should require someone to donate an organ. Those are both legal questions, not moral questions (and the latter makes one think of those doctors in communist China who can schedule heart transplants weeks in advance...)But is there really no difference between allowing someone to keep a kidney and allowing someone to abort a 39-week gestation fetus?

But here's where the reality meets the philosophical. Women have, from time to time, felt compelled to seek abortions in just those situations in which you see "no justification whatever" for abortion. The results, back in the day when abortion was illegal, were often horrific.Putting aside the question of whether or not you think it is morally right for a woman to have an abortion in such a circumstance, what do you think the law should say about a woman going to a doctor and having the procedure done?

That is rather the point, isn't it? And besides, it does happen: partial-birth abortion.

For specific circumstances, just think of partial-birth abortion.

But when you say "That is at the extreme of the discussion" you are saying that it is NOT entirely a body integrity issue.

Your "last paragraph" is"There is an issue that a parent cannot harm their child through neglect, but whatever the issue involved in obligating parental care it doesn't involve bodily autonomy so isn't quite the issue here."But isn't this rather a matter of degree than of kind? That's why I don't think of "bodily autonomy" in this case.