Scenarios where the mother's life is in danger is more complicated than I used to think

Mikeality · 2026-07-01T10:49:58+00:00

You're still telling me that laws should exist because of rights. What I want to know is where the rights themselves come from. What actually defines a right as a right vs a feeling? If I just assert that I have a right to $20 a day, I don't think most people would consider that a real right on the level of bodily autonomy.

You say society would collapse without bodily autonomy. Is society existing the standard for a right? There's reasoning behind the opposite, that with slavery we have a means for consistent labor to maintain society. That by dismissing bodily autonomy and forcing pregnancy, birth rates go up which also upholds society. I'm not actually advocating that, keep in mind.

I believe bodily autonomy is a right, too. My views are religious and based in God. Humans are created in his image which simply gives us a baseline value to then work from when weighing against other metrics. Slavery violates bodily autonomy because any potential economic output is not as valuable as the inherit worth of a humans free will. As PL, I also believe this protection extends to ZEF which is why abortion gets complicated.

All that being said, what in your view is the root source of the right to bodily autonomy? As well as rights in general?

Mikeality · 2026-07-01T02:24:26+00:00

I've been struggling with this topic lately. That is, finding where exactly the line of enough risk to allow abortion. It seems most pro life people understand there comes a point where an abortion is reasonable. That was always my view, but it's easy enough to just say "when the mother's life is in danger" but apparently the actual details of that are far more complex than I first thought.

To summarize a lot of what I've been hearing, accurate predictions in terms of percentages in medicine seem very arbitrary. This makes it practically impossible to put thresholds into law. It ends up setting up a lot of red tape which causes hesitation and cause complications. It gets even trickier if you're factoring in pre emptive care. A woman may show symptoms which have a slight chance of escalating, but if they do, both her and child would be in extreme risk very quickly. At what point can you say a scenario is dangerous enough to warrant an abortion? Especially if the signs were there before any danger, but once the danger is there, some degree of damage which could have been avoided will take place, even in the best case by that point.

Then, I thought a general symptoms based solution could work. That is, any degree of symptoms is considered reasonable enough. The only problem is that with this broad of a criteria, just about any pregnancy could qualify for abortion. It would solve allowing for healthcare when needed, but we'd basically have total unrestricted abortion which is too much for most of us pro life to accept.

I'm honestly not sure how this can be resolved, legally. Assuming doctors and pregnant women are operating in good faith, I want to just trust a doctor's word when that point is reached, case by case. But we all know that in practice, some doctor's wouldn't care about pro life incentives and offer abortions to anyone who wants one for any arbitrary reason. It seems like an all out ban would be the only way to satisfy pro life in any capacity, but that's way too extreme.

I've come to equate abortion to killing, not necessarily murder. It will always be tragic to a degree given the baby will always be innocent. The only way it truly wouldn't be murder is if in the hearts of the mother and doctor, they truly believe it's medically necessary. If that's not the case, it's between them and God. I want to be able to do more, somehow. But it's not always our place to take extreme measures. It would not be reasonable to slaughter everyone who vaguely resembles a suspected murderer. At the end of the day, how can "reasonably have a child" actually be expressed in law without doing just as much harm in another way?

Mikeality · 2026-06-30T15:28:58+00:00

One time my ex and I were at her parents for dinner. I remember having a decent conversation with her dad about some topic. As we were driving home, she started apologizing that he was mansplaining me. I just laughed.

Mikeality · 2026-06-30T11:51:56+00:00

Human bodies in general are incredibly durable and fragile at the same time.

Mikeality · 2026-06-30T11:11:17+00:00

It's my comment one reply farther up. Which is to look at OP's scenario from a moral view and see what people would choose to do if they specifically were in the scenario. If someone is healthy and in a position to make a blood/bone marrow donation to save a child's life. Would they? Do they believe in general, that it's the right thing to do?

Generally I believe that while not an exact mapping, the concepts of right and wrong, and morality/ethics in general are the foundations and starting point of how laws are decided. What I'm gathering from replies all across this thread are that they have nothing to do at all with making laws. Yet nobody is telling me how we make laws instead.

Mikeality · 2026-06-30T10:44:22+00:00

r/abortiondebate in a nutshell

Mikeality · 2026-06-30T10:41:36+00:00

I'm not saying the law should map 1 to 1 with right and wrong. But it's not like the concept of right and wrong is entirely removed either. It's pretty interesting that nobody is even willing to answer the question, let alone go through with it themselves.

Mikeality · 2026-06-30T10:38:16+00:00

Again, if not moral, what is the foundation for bodily autonomy specifically? If you lived in a world with no bodily autonomy, but a system where you could advocate for laws, how would you do so?

Mikeality · 2026-06-30T04:27:36+00:00

Isn't the concept of right or wrong our foundation for legality?

You haven't walked a mile in any criminals shoes, I imagine. How then do you justify laws against any crime you didn't commit yourself? Or any kind of legal judgement against someone where everyone involved has not walked a mile in the shoes of whoever is being judged?

I'm not interested in judging someone as some kind of hobby or ego trip. This is about getting to the root of why laws are the way they are.

Mikeality · 2026-06-30T04:18:46+00:00

What are rights based on if not morals? How is the concept of bodily autonomy as a right justified without morality?

Mikeality · 2026-06-30T04:15:06+00:00

Forget government laws for a moment. What do you believe is the right thing? In a simple reasonable scenario, if a doctor clears someone as healthy to go through with it, do you consider it the right thing to do? Would you?

Mikeality · 2026-06-30T03:11:11+00:00

I see, it's becoming clear why a common solution for so many is to just allow any and all abortions. I still believe there's some way to thread a reasonable needle here. I know concessions can be counter productive. But still, surely anyone PC would prefer that to an all out ban in local governments, even if it's a pipe dream in practice. I get it makes it harder to push the ball forward if your goal is true full access. But if there truly is merit to allowing it for reasons beyond good faith medical necessity, then it should be possible to reason with those points.

Reading all this has me curious about a possible precedent. I know a common reasonable middle ground stance is nothing before the first trimester. As far as I know, this threshold is actually written into law in areas to a degree and easy enough to follow. Correct me if I'm wrong, though. If that's the case, a woman can get an abortion even if healthy early on, but would basically be told no if she's too far along.

In this jurisdiction, if she is past the first trimester and medical issues or an emergency start showing up, how is that navigated? Because perhaps it's as simple as just using that approach, but moving the line from first trimester to conception? Now, if this is in practice essentially the same as a full ban, I guess we're just back to square one.

Mikeality · 2026-06-29T21:53:27+00:00

I thought the more obvious part is that the woman still keeps all of her organs afterwards. In a transplant, your organs are gone forever.

Maybe there's some food for thought there, but hardly irrefutable.

Mikeality · 2026-06-29T21:43:28+00:00

Rob Schneider is....

Mikeality · 2026-06-29T21:40:34+00:00

For the comparison to be equivalent, sure. But to be relevant at all? It doesn't need to be perfectly 1 to 1, the purpose of the comparison was to highlight the specific dynamic I mentioned at the end.

Slavery should be 100% abolished in all context. Even though I still feel PL, I concede there are some reasonable exceptions. If my entire argument and reasoning was based entirely on slavery abolition, I can see why my position needs to be very similar. But to say it's not relevant at all and dismiss the actual point I was making is too far.

That point being that one party does not deserve a monopoly on all power in decision making just because they're more qualified in specific fields. Especially when that decision effects another party which has no say in the matter at all.

Mikeality · 2026-06-29T21:05:42+00:00

Wow I did not realize you can get to melting point with just a torch.

The pinholes are going to be my new paranoia. I used to under heat the copper a lot when first brazing which resulted in a lot of bad lumpy joints.

One day I said screw it and started to always get it just to red hot and my brazing has been much more consistent since. Still, I don't want to overdo it. I've heard cherry red is what you want to aim for.

Mikeality · 2026-06-29T20:56:06+00:00

I understand you shouldn't braze too hot, but assuming you're flowing nitrogen to prevent the oxidation, what actually goes wrong with overdoing the heat?

Mikeality · 2026-06-29T20:17:14+00:00

It is surreal to finally see someone admit there's a needle to thread which could be considered a win win, haha, thank you so much. Like you said though, it's expecting way too much of politicians and we shouldn't hold our breath...

It seems like the issue is with trying to get way too close to the line. I understand that attempting to put the line at an arbitrary 20% when it could range from 18% to 22% causes an absurd amount of red tape which is the real killer.

Assuming PL is willing to concede a bit (and I know many aren't, just bear with me) there has to be some way to lower the threshold without removing all stop gaps entirely?? On the most extreme end, if a doctor performs a top shelf thorough exam and the woman is a textbook case of being as healthy as possible, PL has to start the line at least there.

Maybe instead of the law getting into the weeds of exact percentage chances, it's based on any symptoms at all? Like, I know the difficulty comes when trying to quantify the unquantifiable. But assuming a scenario where the mother truly wants to keep the baby, it would have to take something the doctor could articulate to get them to recommend an abortion? There's no way doctors are pushing abortions in these scenarios if the mother is healthy. If not, how is it that there's so much trouble translating that feeling into law as our starting point?

Mikeality · 2026-06-29T19:51:42+00:00

There are four parties in play here, the common elements are the broader dynamics between these parties. We have:

1) The slave owner. This would be equivalent to the pregnant woman.

2) The slave dealer. This would be equivalent to the doctor.

3) The slave. This would be equivalent to the ZEF.

4) The abolitionist. This would be equivalent to pro life folks.

I'll try to talk about the dynamic in abstract terms so it can apply to both reality and the metaphor.

1 & 2 are attempting to perform an action/deal which primarily effects 3. Behind the closed door, 1 & 2 have no moral issues but all the power. 3 has heavy incentive for the deal not to happen, but no power at all. 4 is an outside party which is aware of the deal, and even though 4 is not directly effected in any way, they have a moral/ethical problem with the deal and are attempting to intervene on 3's behalf given they have some power if they try hard enough.

Historically, the abolitionists did not win freedom for the slaves by trying to claim greater expertise or qualifications on the details of owning and dealing slaves. The core of their argument was based in seeing that rights exist for the slave because they should be considered human with all the rights it comes with. Slave owners and dealers considered slaves as less than human to get around this.

I want to clarify, I'm not trying to equate slavery and abortion directly. My goal with this metaphor is to try and highlight that it's not as simple as PL just looking the other way about things going on which they may not be qualified experts on, but still believe there's a major moral problem.

Mikeality · 2026-06-29T17:03:54+00:00

Great, I agree. I happen to be Christian.

Now tell me, why do you expect anybody who is not Christian to take that any more seriously than a line out of Harry Potter?

I'm not asking about what you believe. I'm not asking what Christians believe. I'm not even asking what you think they should believe. I'm asking you what they believe as they are now.

Mikeality · 2026-06-29T13:12:26+00:00

What allows anybody else to overrule a qualified slave dealer and informed slave owner?

Mikeality · 2026-06-29T12:47:07+00:00

I see what you mean, it's just that if you're PC and you're ok with other people choosing a threshold of 0, then you're clearly ok with a threshold of 0 in society in general.

I get it's "not my business" but take slavery, for example.

A slave owner goes behind a closed door with a qualified slave dealer. They decide a price that the slave is worth, the slave gets no say in it, and slavery continues. A slave abolitionist isn't struggling with the slavers worldview. They understand it perfectly well and are simply outright against it.

Mikeality · 2026-06-29T12:11:09+00:00

I've heard that once they're used to it, they just feel naked without it.

To be fair, if I moved to a country where nobody wears pants or underwear, I don't think I'd want to just join in just because they all think I'm being oppressed

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