#politicalinconsistency — Public Fediverse posts

On the Fundamental Inconsistency of The Pro-Life Argument

I believe there is considerable evidence that most people who proclaim themselves pro-life are not actually even remotely consistently pro-life.

And this is generally the case even for people who are pro-life and also vegan anti-war pacifists opposed to the death penalty (and even this alone would be a veeeerrry small number of people).

The reason? Well, I'm going to give the most robust argument I know of regarding forcing the birth of a fetus based on preserving their life, and then show that this argument is generally considered unacceptable in other relevant contexts.

The most robust argument I know of for the pro-life position is this:

1. The risk of pregnancy to the life of the pregnant person is considerably less than the risk of abortion to the life of the fetus (often true).

2. Since life is being valued above all else, including bodily autonomy, denying the the pregnant person their bodily autonomy to force them to birth the fetus is therefore the lesser evil.

Here's why this argument is fundamentally inconsistent with what most people consider morally acceptable in other contexts:

Say someone has lost both kidneys. This person is not able to stay on dialysis indefinitely, and dialysis is determined to be far more risky for them than having a healthy functioning kidney. They need a kidney, or they will die. It should be easy to find a healthy donor. You just need to force a bunch of people to come in and do some testing to determine compatibility, find the lowest risk donor in that group, and then force that person to donate one kidney. Problem solved, right?

Except you might have trouble finding many 'pro-life' people who would advocate for this position...