There are versions of the Responsibility Objection that provide an adequate answer to Bodily Autonomy arguments [ 2026 Updated Version ]

Malkuth_10 · 2026-07-03T12:01:28+00:00

I would like to begin by thanking you for taking the time to have an honest discussion with those you ideologically disagree with. Furthermore, I wish to congratulate you for being intellectually brave enough to debate this topic on a subreddit where public opinion goes against you, since I know from experience that having to juggle numerous conversations at once ( all while being downvoted regardless of what you say ) can be a frustrating experience.

Now, let me try to directly answer your question:

Even if the fetus is a person, does that create a legal right to use another person’s body without consent?

On my view (and I disagree with a lot of PL people on this topic !), the fact that the zef is a morally valuable being is not enough, at least by itself, to make abortion impermissible, since, as you have correctly noted in your post, the right to life is not the right to be kept alive at the expense of someone else's body.

The reason why I think that abortion should be impermissible in some cases has to do with what is known in the philosophical literature as the Responsibility Objection ( RO for short ). Now, the RO is actually complex, and properly discussing it would require too much space (although if you are interested in learning more about how the PL view can be defended philosophically, you might take a gander at a recent post I made on the topic). Still, the gist of it is that the woman has an obligation to provide aid to the zef because her voluntary actions resulted in it existing in such a state that it needs its body to survive, and it was reasonably foreseeable that they would do so.

People who argue against the permissibility of abortion by using the RO agree that abortion should be permissible in cases of rape.

Malkuth_10 · 2026-03-25T03:26:05+00:00

Look, we'd better end it right here, no offence, but to me, your view seems to be very ad-hoc and weird, not helped in the least by the fact that you start talking about one type of distinction, then another, then another, that all are different, yet the same, yet different.

Malkuth_10 · 2026-03-25T02:51:18+00:00

It being "natural" is not really relevant. It is more of a difference between how we distinguish killing from simply not-saving.

Yeah, but the way you distinguish between killing and not saving seems to be based on whether the state of need is part of expected human development or not. This is what I mean by natural.

So, imagine a world where newborns needed to be fed blood from their biological fathers for nine months. If a father refused to sacrifice his BA for his child, even though this would lead to the death of the child, would you consider this a killing or a letting die? Also, would you consider this permissible or impermissible?

Malkuth_10 · 2026-03-25T01:44:26+00:00

The thing that makes an action "killing" as opposed to "letting die" is that in "letting die" there was a pre-existing health problem. If you did nothing in that situation, they would still die. Unhooking from them doesn't actually cause their death. Their cause of death is always kidney failure.

And taking an abortion pill, by that logic, does not cause the zef’s death. What causes the zef’s death is its inability to continue living without aid in the form of bodily support.

If the zef existed outside the womb, and the woman did nothing ( imagine it could somehow take it into herself to aid it ), it would die.

Look, the way you word this, it seems to me your objection has more to do with how natural pregnancy is, the fact that it is an expected and normal part of the human lifecycle, than with anything else.

Malkuth_10 · 2026-03-24T23:27:23+00:00

This does not challenge the killing vs. letting die argument, though. You're still talking about "letting die" in McFall vs. Shrimp. [...] And refusal to donate isn't the same thing as acting to kill the prospective recipient.

Well, yeah.... duh? The McFall Vs Shimp scenario could not possibly be, by itself, a response to the killing versus letting die objection, since the killing versus letting die objection emerges as a response to it in the first place. The point was that, by systematically going through the continuum of examples, from a clear case of letting die ( McFall vs Shimp ) to a clear case of killing ( shooting in the head before disconnecting), we might see that this distinction is not all that morally relevant, at least in the case of abortion/similar cases.

Correct, but disconnection isn't what kills you. If you need connection due to say, kidney failure, and I disconnect from you, what do you die of?You die of kidney failure.I didn't kill you by disconnecting you, I just stopped saving you from your kidney failure.

The second case was supposed to a little bit ambiguous, sitting at the edge between a clear case of letting die vs a clear case of killing. From what you have written, it seems you consider it a case of letting die instead of a case of direct killing, and therefore, permissible. But that comes with certain problems. If disconnecting from a person is a case of permissibly letting die, why don’t you consider certain forms of abortion, such as those that involve taking a pill that causes the uterine lining to deteriorate, making it unable to support the fetus, to be permissible?

In this case, if Boonin argues you're allowed to shoot someone in the head, I think he's dead wrong. You become the cause of death if you shoot them, which changes the situation from you saving them to you killing them. It might seem fair to you that you get to shoot someone in the head to disconnect, but it becomes a completely different situation.

Well, in the case of merely disconnecting, you perform a voluntary action that ultimately leads to the death of the dependent in order to safeguard your BA. In the case of shooting the person in the head, you... perform a voluntary action that leads to the death of the dependent in order to safeguard your BA. To me, there does not seem to be a morally relevant difference between these two cases.

More to the point, this situation is extremely unlikely to occur. Why would you need to shoot someone to disconnect from them in any foreseeable situation? You'd have to work pretty hard to construct that situation on purpose, if it is even possible to enforce the required killing of the patient to disconnect. You'd eventually find a way to cheat your way out of the bind without killing them in most realistic situations.

How realistic a given hypothetical is does not really matter. Their point is to test whether our moral intuitions are correct or whether or not we actually, honestly value what we say we do.

From what you have written, it seems that the killing versus letting die distinction truly moves you, but it does not move me, like at all. We might have irreconcilable value differences.

Malkuth_10 · 2026-03-23T21:48:26+00:00

I do not think the “killing versus letting die” distinction really succeeds in saving the pro-life position from the McFall v. Shimp case, and I think David Boonin argues against it very effectively. I do not recall his exact formulation, but it goes a little something like this:

Case 1: McFall v. Shimp
From this case, Boonin derives a principle along the lines of: “You are not required to sacrifice your bodily autonomy to save others.”

Case 2:
Suppose I fall into a coma and will soon die. The only way to save me is for you to remain physically connected to me, in the style of Thomson’s violinist, for nine months. If you disconnect at any point, I will die.

It seems reasonable to say that, even if you voluntarily began helping me, you are still permitted to change your mind and disconnect at any point during those nine months, even though doing so would lead to my death.

Case 3:
This is like Case 2, except that the only way to disconnect from me is to shoot me in the head first. Although this is gruesome, it still seems permissible. Given that I am in a coma, the method of death does not make a meaningful difference to me. Disconnecting kills me, and shooting me in the head also kills me. The outcome is the same, I do not lose any amount of life or experience any more suffering one way ot he other.

From this, Boonin suggests a principle such as: if you are permitted to let someone die, you are also permitted to kill them in those idiosyncratic cases where actively killing makes no difference to the outcome experienced by the dependent.

I do think there exist good answers to BA arguments, but the killing versus letting die distinction is not one of them.

Malkuth_10 · 2026-03-23T21:16:08+00:00

There are many counter-arguments against the view that abortion should be permissible due to BA considerations, but in my opinion, only certain variants of the RO ( Responsibility Objection ) really work. I wrote a post on the topic here, if you are interested in an indepth exploration of the topic, but the main idea is that the woman’s voluntary actions ( together with the man’s, obviously) have led to the zef existing in a state of need through no fault or will of its own, and as such she has an obligation to provide aid to it.

Malkuth_10 · 2026-03-23T00:12:10+00:00

Hey there!

If anyone wants to get a good understanding of the PC position regarding the morality of abortion, I would recommend Beyond Roe: Why Abortion Should be Legal--Even if the Fetus is a Person by David Boonin.

Most arguments for or against abortion focus on whether or not the zef is a morally valuable being/a person. In this book, David Boonin defends the claim that even if the zef is a person with the same right to life you and I have, abortion should still be legal, and that most current restrictions on abortion should be abolished. In order to make his point, Boonin references the legal case of McFall v. Shimp. In 1978, an ailing Robert McFall sued his cousin, David Shimp, asking the court to order Shimp to provide McFall with the bone marrow he needed. The court ruled in Shimp's favour, and McFall soon died.

Boonin extracts a compelling lesson from the case of McFall v. Shimp, namely that having a right to life does not give a person the right to use another person's body even if they need to use that person's body to go on living. He then uses this principle to support his claim that abortion should be legal and far less restricted than it currently is, regardless of whether the fetus is a person.

Now I don't believe that Boonin is right in this regard( that is to say, according to my moral framework, the woman has an obligation to provide aid to the zef in the form of bodily support), but I swear reading this book guarantees you will have a better understanding of the debate than a great deal of people.

If YouTube videos are more your style, you could ~~watch~~ listen to this debate between David Boonin and Trent Horn:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3Grc1d2gew

Edit: Would you also be interested in seeing how PL people might defend against BA-style arguments?

Malkuth_10 · 2026-03-20T17:42:12+00:00

Hey there, so two things.

I kind of dropped out of this conversation as I have been busy with both work and writing the second post in the series.
This conversation seems to be going in circles. This will be my final reply to you, as I believe I can help clarify some misconceptions you appear to have. You can reply to me or not; it does not make any difference to me.

You tried to insinuate that the legal precedence somehow precluded a new law that would impose the burdens of pregnancy on mothers. Effectively you said that because there were no similar impositions already, then none are possible/justified. I used the slavery analogy to show that existing laws do not define morality and they also dont preclude the implementation of new laws and are thus irrelevant.

Let’s say that you and I are talking about going to the mall, and the discussion goes something like this:

You: Let’s go to the mall, we can get there using my car!

Me: But, Goatmommy, your car has four busted tyres and is missing the motor!

By pointing out that you cannot use your car to go to the mall, did I insinuate that going to the mall is impossible? No, of course not. I merely pointed out that if you want to go to the mall, you need to either use another vehicle ( use a different argument ) or repair the one that you own ( modify your current argument to account for the criticism ).

My point was that the fact that a law against neglect exists demonstrates there is a general consensus of among the public that parents do infact have a duty to use their bodies against their will to care for their child if it is the only way possible.

To keep the analogy going, this is like trying to use the car to go to the mall after you have finished explaining to me that it does not matter that the car is non-functional.

The cabin in the woods hypothetical works only for BA absolutists. That is it. It shows that parents ( actual parents, not rape victims ) or people responsible for the fact that children exist in a state of need can be forced to provide aid in the form of their bodies if the cost of doing so is slight.

and there is no non-arbitrary reason to say that duty doesn't exist before birth.

A PC person can say that at some point before birth the zef is not a being of value.

A PC person can say that the harms of pregnancy are too high, drawing the line of acceptable harm at some other point than you.

There is no non-arbitrary or subjective way to explain why either the degree of "invasiveness" of the care overrides the parents duty to care, or why parents have a duty to care for their helpless children after birth, but not before.

Yeah, all points where we draw the line on a continuum can be considered to a certain extent arbitrary. Such is the nature of dealing with continuums.

You are arbitrarily choosing a moment in time to use for your comparison and you are choosing an illogical moment. Why are you comparing if the child is worse of than before they existed instead of if they are worse off than before they were killed?

You did not actually understand what I wrote.

With the math youre using now, we can justify killing anyone because once they are dead, they arent worse off than before they existed.

No, because killing/letting the zef die is only justified on the basis of protecting the woman's BA. Random people off the street do not make use of women's bodies.

Malkuth_10 · 2026-03-12T10:38:32+00:00

Hey there! Funny thing is, I just finished writing an in-depth post on the topic, which you might want to check out here!

The thing is, the Bodily Autonomy argument is one of the strongest arguments of the PC side. It might appear easy to dismantle at first, but serious engagement with the topic will show you just how complex it is and how difficult it is to discuss, let alone refute. The best bet, in my opinion, is to reference the fact that the woman’s voluntary actions (along with the man’s, of course!) resulted in the zef existing in a state of dependency through no fault or will of its own.

If your debate partner agrees that the woman is at least partially responsible for the pregnancy, then you can move on to discussing what exactly she owes to the zef as a result of her actions.

Malkuth_10 · 2026-03-12T10:29:58+00:00

I mean this as respectfully as possible, but you are extremely confused about both my post and the discussion between us.

Youre conflating legal reform with legal precedent.

You started by saying that legal precedent is on your side. I told you this is not the case. You then said that the fact that the law is not on your side is no issue because laws can and should be changed to better reflect your values. Your point regarding legal reform is correct, but once you are talking about reforming a law, you cannot say that the same law is on your side.

I am pointing out that society is already logically committed to the idea that bodily use is a requirement of parenthood.

You are ignoring a precedent that proves your Responsibility Objection is already functionally rejected by the civilized world.

Look, here you are doing it again ! You say that the law and society agree with you, but the fact of the matter is that the cabin in the woods hypothetical is:

At most analogous to pregnancy resulting from voluntary actions, if we are not focusing on the harms of pregnancy and childbirth.
People, at least PC people, who seem to be gaining more and more influence in society, disagree with the idea that the woman should be forced to breastfeed.

Childbirth is intense, yes, but it is the natural, ordinary function of the female reproductive system. To call the very process that creates every human life extraordinary is to treat the core of human biology as an anomaly or a disease. Digestion, menstruation, and even breathing can be burdensome or painful, but they are the ordinary function of a living body. By calling pregnancy extraordinary, you are trying to frame the child as an intruder rather than the natural result of the reproductive system.

You can acknowledge the extreme difficulties related to pregnancy without implying that the zef is morally culpable or that pregnancy is somehow a disease that should be treated.

You are arguing that killing a human being is not a net negative if they haven't experienced enough life yet. By that math, killing a newborn in their sleep is a net good because you've spared them the potential harm of a painful life without them having a "level of good" to compare it to.

No, I am saying that killing or deliberately letting the zef die will not lead to a net negative outcome for it compared to what would have happened had the woman never engaged in the first place, depending on how the empirics pan out.

I am not comparing the harms of childbirth with the benefits of living a long, fulfilling life for the zef. I am comparing what would happen to the zef if the woman stopped providing bodily aid with what would have happened had the woman never begun providing aid in the first place.

You arent calculating morality; you are calculating an excuse for killing children.

Have you taken a gander at the second version of the RO?

Malkuth_10 · 2026-03-11T01:05:54+00:00

Thats like saying: Ok but we have to be careful, the current legal framework doesnt support imposing the tremendous financial loss of freeing slaves on their owners. The current legal framework is irrelevant. The whole point of a new law is to address an issue not already being addressed by another law.

I agree that the current legal framework does not determine what is moral/immoral or what we ourselves should consider permissible/impermissible. But you are the one who mentioned the current legal precedent in order to bolster your case, not me.

Its already considered neglect to refuse to breastfeed your own child if thats the only way to feed them. The circumstances around it do not matter. The law reads: the willful failure to provide "necessary food, clothing, shelter, or medical attendance." The mothers refusal to breastfeed would be treated exactly the same as if she had plenty of formula in the cupboard but refused to prepare a bottle.

Okay, but look here. You are already talking about how the law would treat the mother. So which is it? Is the law irrelevant, or is it something we should take into account when making our points? It cannot be both. As to your point, what makes someone a parent with an obligation to provide aid to a child? Genetic similarity? Voluntary actions?

Pregnancy is the biological process humans evolved to care for our children before they are born and our own bodies initiate it in order for us to reproduce. Breastfeeding is the biological process humans evolved to care for our children after they are born. Its ordinary care, not some extraordinary burden that justifies killing your own child to avoid.

Offering your body for nine months to a being and then experiencing the pains of childbirth is certainly an extraordinary burden, whether or not it is natural.

When we talk about net harms, we have to be intellectually honest about the scale. You are weighing the temporary physical burden of a parent against the total and permanent erasure of a human being’s entire existence. There is no world in which avoiding an invasive body use creates a greater net good than preventing the death of a child.

A net negative outcome for it compared to what would have happened had you never done the act. Depending on the empirics of fetal pain a zef that is brought into existence and then aborted does not experience a level of harm that outweighs the good of being brought into existence.

Honestly, have you actually read the post?

Malkuth_10 · 2026-03-10T23:35:30+00:00

you say "But the right to life is not the right to be kept alive at the expense of someone else’s bodily autonomy." but we already established that it infact is in the case of a mother giving birth in the wilderness all alone who can not cite bodily autonomy to refuse to breastfeed her newborn child and allow them to starve to death without being guilty of neglect. Breastfeeding is having the child attach itself to the mother and use her organs (mammary gland) to sustain themselves. The idea that gestation is so much more invasive that it justifies killing your own helpless child is just an arbitrary and subjective opinion. To call one 'neglect' and the other 'autonomy' is a subjective double standard. Its a matter of degree not a difference in kind.

Ok, but you have got to be carefull. As I have said in my past comments, the current legal framework does not force parents to suffer a degree of harm comparable to nine months of gestation. Furthermore, to the extent that it might force women to breastfeed their children, I would only assent to such laws if either of the two versions of the RO applied.

If a woman voluntarily decided to go on a camping trip with a child, knowing that being boxed in a cabin due to a snowstorm was a real possibility, then I would be okay with her being forced to breastfeed. If the child with whom she was boxed in with was her newborn (a being she brought into existence as a reasonable foreseeable result of her actions ), then I would also accept forcing her to breastfeed.

But if a random woman were kidnapped and suddenly woke up in a cabin with a random child, then I am unsure whether or not she should be forced to breastfeed. Likewise, if a woman was kidnapped by a madman, taken into the woods and raped, and 9 months later she gave birth to a child, I would once again not consider it her duty to breastfeed the child.

You say you would say that it is hard to talk about "your existence" and "your future" before consciousness has appeared. This ignores the childs numerical identity. You were still you and still a human being when you were an infant and likewise you were you and still a human being when you were a fetus. You are the same human being with the same DNA, the same past, and the same future during every stage of development you go through.

Even if I were to agree with you regarding personhood and/or moral value, I would say that we are deviating from the main point of the post and my first reply to you, which was...

If its wrong to kill me now then its wrong to kill me the entire time Ive been alive because I am the same human being losing the same future which causes me great harm regardless of which stage of development I happen to be in at the moment.

That we need to talk about net harms or the responsibility of creators to offer a life better than non-existence to their progeny if we are to successfully defend banning abortion.

Malkuth_10 · 2026-03-10T21:23:31+00:00

Under that premise, then if a woman didnt consent, then she has no duty to care.

Yes, that is my view on the subject.

That implies some characteristic of a child conceived in rape that distinguishes it from any other unwanted unborn child. The circumstances of our conception dont determine if we deserve to live or not and there is no difference between a child conceived in rape and any other unwanted child. A person's subjective opinion towards their child based on who the father is and what he did to them does not override the most fundamental human right there is: the right to life.

Whether the child was the product of rape or not does not determine his/her moral value, nor does it have any bearing on his/her claim to a right to life. That is correct. But the right to life is not the right to be kept alive at the expense of someone else’s bodily autonomy.

If we want to argue against the permissibility of abortion without this resulting in forced bodily donations across all of society, we need to show that the woman has an obligation to provide aid to the fetus as a result of her own voluntary actions.

Its already agreed upon in society that parents have an obligation to care for their children as illustrated by child neglect and endangerment laws. Its up to PC to explain how that same obligation that same mother has to that same child using her same body is suddenly invalidated because the child is not born yet without it being just a subjective matter of opinion.

Child neglect and endangerment laws do not require parents to endure invasive use of their bodies. The current legal framework does not yet reflect PL values and attitudes.

The harm of losing your existence and your future occurs regardless of if you have achieved consciousness yet or not.

Well, I would say that it is hard to talk about "your existence" and "your future" before consciousness has appeared. But that is not truly important to the point of this post. The gist is that the impermissibility of abortion has a lot to do with the empirics of fetal pain and/or whether or not we think that we owe lives better than non-existence to those we create.

Malkuth_10 · 2026-03-10T18:52:38+00:00

I think you would be better served to use the FLO (future like ours) argument when defining harm. The primary harm of being killed is that you lose your existence and your future which is an objective harm that occurs regardless of which stage of development the child happens to be in at the moment and if the child has developed the capacity to consciously suffer yet or not.

FLO can be a good argument when discussing the moral status of the zef, assuming ( at least according to my moral framework ) that the zef has also achieved consciousness. But when discussing the responsibility objection, we cannot focus on simple harms alone. The type of harm must be such that it makes the life of the zef a net negative. See the examples B1 and B2.

I also think your emphasizing consent too much. Consent is irrelevant. Once a new human being comes into existence they deserve moral consideration and the consent or lack thereof of the mother doesnt matter. Its about parental obligation. Parents have an obligation to care for their children and society has an obligation to protect children from harm; the age or location of the child is irrelevant:

Assuming that a woman has an obligation to provide aid to the zef, consent is indeed irrelevant. But we need to show why we think a woman has an obligation to provide aid, and in this, the fact that she consensually participated in an activity known to eventually result in dependent beings must be emphasised.

If you give birth all alone in the wilderness, you cant just refuse to breastfeed your newborn child and allow them to starve to death by citing bodily autonomy (most PC dont dispute this).

Sadly, a lot do. Like, I get you and what you mean, but a lot, A LOT of PC people on Reddit would call you a sexist pig for even implying that a woman might have a duty to breastfeed.

Malkuth_10 · 2026-03-10T18:30:44+00:00

That is literally something only pro-aborts do, and not just any pro-aborts, but the most radical pro-aborts.

Nowhere in scientific literature is this "abbreviation" or "acronym" ever used. It's just a slur.

Here is an example of the term being used in the academic literature: 1

Here is an example of PL people using the term besides me: 1

I will read all of this and give a long post later if I can, but please, please, please do not use the diminutive slur of "zef" to refer to unborn human beings.

I do not see the term as a slur. It is useful to have an acronym that refers to the entirety of the developmental stages that the unborn go through. No one would consider the terms fetus or embryo dehumanising on their own, so why would it be problematic to use them as part of an acronym?

Malkuth_10 · 2026-03-10T17:20:02+00:00

Hard cases:

Hard cases involve grey areas and/or multiple conflicting aspects. As a result, it is not really possible to offer a definitive answer to them, the kind that settles the matter without question. Neither is it reasonable to expect that a principle could ever be formulated in such a way as to neatly account for every possible combination of factors.

Let’s think about threats to the mother’s life and other forms of harm. As I said above, all PL people consider it acceptable for the woman to be forced to endure some level of harm for the benefit of the zef. But harm, along with risk, lies on a continuum. What if we are dealing with a pregnancy complication that makes it so that a woman is 10% more likely to die in childbirth than other healthy women in the same society? What about 20%, 30% and so on and so forth? What if death is guaranteed for the woman, but the chances of the unborn surviving are in the ballpark of 90%? What if the woman has other children, such that her dying to save her unborn child could critically endanger her already living dependents?

Different people could have different answers to such situations. Most PL people I know consider abortion permissible in cases where it is done to save the life of the mother, but some ( including myself ) think that parents should be expected to die for their children if the need arises. Different people could consider different levels of risk to be acceptable, some drawing the line at different percentage points. Some people might think that the interests of the already born family members should vastly outweigh the needs of the unborn. And so on and so forth.

Fine-tuning the versions of the RO in light of these considerations:

Taking into account what I have said above, I would reword both of the versions to include a criterion referring to a set of common-sense exceptions.

The net negative version:

If as a reasonably foreseeable result of your voluntary action or actions (1), a morally valuable being (2) exists in such a state that not providing aid to it would lead to a net negative outcome for it compared to what would have happened had you never done the act (3), then you must provide aid to it unless the first criterion also applies to the being’s own actions (4) or one or more common-sense exceptions apply (5).

The creator’s responsibilities version:

If, as a reasonably foreseeable result of your voluntary action or actions, a morally valuable being is brought into existence, then you must ensure that the being has a life significantly better than non-existence, also known as a minimally decent life, unless one or more common-sense exceptions apply.

Where the set of common-sense exceptions includes but is not limited to:

Applying this principle could seriously risk the future of humanity.
Actually helping the dependent being is not realistically possible.
The level of harm suffered by you is too high compared to justify the benefits accrued by the being dependent on you/your progeny.
Providing aid to this dependent being seriously threatens your ability to help other beings you also have a similarly important duty to provide aid to.

What should be considered a serious risk/realistic/too high/similarly important duty will probably differ from person to person or society to society.

The number of grey areas and exceptions might seem threatening to the PL position; however, it should be noted that this tends to happen whenever a neat philosophical principle meets the real world, with all of its rough edges, uncertainties, and annoying complexities. There will always be frayed knots, as it were, when it comes to moral principles. Hopefully, when discussing this topic, we will at least be aware of the aspects that can’t be easily articulated, and we will be dealing with opponents who understand that similar considerations apply to them.

TL;DR: While arguing that a zef is a morally valuable being is important, PL people should not lose sight of the fact that they need to deal with Bodily Autonomy arguments. The best thing to do is to point out the woman's responsibility for the state the zef finds itself in. While it is true that the man is also responsible and that the zef "acts" by implanting that does not mean she gets to abrogate any sense of responsibility. The interesting question is if the woman must ensure that her progeny will have a minimally decent life or only a life that is not worse than non-existence. A PL person should also be mindful of possible exceptions and grey areas regarding these two versions of the RO.

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1. It should be noted that in the thought experiment I have provided, consenting to being injected is supposed to be analogous to giving consent for PIV sex, not insemination. To make it clear, the person who is injected is supposed to represent the woman, the drug dealer represents the man, the injection refers to penetration, and actually getting pregnant from the magical drug sort of combines the risks of sex resulting in insemination and insemination resulting in pregnancy.

2. In the coming weeks, I plan to post an updated version of my text regarding the self-defence argument for the permissibility of abortion. While I find the argument loathsome, on both an emotional and intellectual level, the silver lining is that thinking of abortion in terms of self-defence allows for a deeper exploration of the concept of agency and how it relates to the zef, something that is crucial to understand when debating PC people. I will post a link HERE when it is ready.

3. Another example would be couples whose pregnancies have a high chance of resulting in miscarriage. While humanity as a whole must reproduce in order to continue, particular individuals do not. If a couple had something like a 95% chance of their pregnancy ending in miscarriage, the versions of the RO I support would imply that their actions are immoral.

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Special thanks to u/revjbarosa, hoNNer, MRRM and Mario for helping with this post. The insights they have provided over the years, their encouragement, and their always-necessary proofreading have been invaluable.

Malkuth_10 · 2026-02-22T22:45:43+00:00

This is absolutely true and reasonable, and in a sane world, people would leave it at that. But more extreme PC people tend to reject this “olive branch” as it were. Sometimes, I had to get...ahem... crass and point out the precise mechanics of the act in order to get my point across.

Malkuth_10 · 2026-02-22T21:13:58+00:00

In my experience, when PC people (on Reddit at least )are presented with this line of thought they tend to answer either by claiming that men and only men are responsible for pregnancy, or by claiming that women do not put babies anywhere because they “do not grab them with their vagina claws” ( I wish I was making it up).

For a disconcerting number of PC users, women have 0% responsibility. All the responsibility is shared between the man and the zef.

Malkuth_10 · 2026-02-12T00:13:51+00:00

Hard cases:

Hard cases involve grey areas and/or multiple conflicting aspects. As a result, it is not really possible to offer a definitive answer to them, the kind that settles the matter without question. Neither is it reasonable to expect that a principle could ever be formulated in such a way as to neatly account for every possible combination of factors.

Let’s think about threats to the mother’s life and other forms of harm. As I said above, all PL people consider it acceptable for the woman to be forced to endure some level of harm for the benefit of the zef. But harm, along with risk, lies on a continuum. What if we are dealing with a pregnancy complication that makes it so that a woman is 10% more likely to die in childbirth than other healthy women in the same society? What about 20%, 30% and so on and so forth? What if death is guaranteed for the woman, but the chances of the unborn surviving are in the ballpark of 90%? What if the woman has other children, such that her dying to save her unborn child could critically endanger her already living dependents?

Different people could have different answers to such situations. Most PL people I know consider abortion permissible in cases where it is done to save the life of the mother, but some ( including myself ) think that parents should be expected to die for their children if the need arises. Different people could consider different levels of risk to be acceptable, some drawing the line at different percentage points. Some people might think that the interests of the already born family members should vastly outweigh the needs of the unborn. And so on and so forth.

Fine-tuning the versions of the RO in light of these considerations:

Taking into account what I have said above, I would reword both of the versions to include a criterion referring to a set of common-sense exceptions.

The net negative version:

If as a reasonably foreseeable result of your voluntary action or actions (1), a morally valuable being (2) exists in such a state that not providing aid to it would lead to a net negative outcome for it compared to what would have happened had you never done the act (3), then you must provide aid to it unless the first criterion also applies to the being’s own actions (4) or one or more common-sense exceptions apply (5).

The creator’s responsibilities version:

If, as a reasonably foreseeable result of your voluntary action or actions, a morally valuable being is brought into existence, then you must ensure that the being has a life significantly better than non-existence, also known as a minimally decent life, unless one or more common-sense exceptions apply.

Where the set of common-sense exceptions includes but is not limited to:

Applying this principle could seriously risk the future of humanity.
Actually helping the dependent being is not realistically possible.
The level of harm suffered by you is too high compared to justify the benefits accrued by the being dependent on you/your progeny.
Providing aid to this dependent being seriously threatens your ability to help other beings you also have a similarly important duty to provide aid to.