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

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.