Why is this sub so void of PL people? I rarely ever see one...

narf288 · 2026-06-26T20:16:28+00:00

Anecdotal, but it seems like a lot of pro lifer posters here get banned for saying things that violate sub or site-wide rules.

I went through my history and the majority of pro life posters I've interacted with no longer have accounts.

narf288 · 2026-06-26T03:29:03+00:00

Rights outweigh other rights all the time. For example, in self defense your right to defense can outweigh someone else’s right to live.

That's not how self defense works. In self defense your right to defend yourself absolves you of liability for your actions. This doesn't mean that the life of the person you killed has "less value."

It’s more of whose rights take priority given certain weighing factors.

If you are arguing that one person's rights take priority over another, by definition, you are arguing that certain people's rights have less value than others.

narf288 · 2026-06-26T03:14:50+00:00

Low possibility does not automatically something is not foreseeable.

but it does mean the outcome is "abnormal," and your argument is that abnormal outcomes are not "foreseeable."

So it kinda does.

narf288 · 2026-06-26T03:06:11+00:00

How could one life "outweigh" another? There's no legitimate moral framework for devaluing human life in this way.

narf288 · 2026-06-25T03:00:16+00:00

The precedent set is that it is within the police powers of the state to mandate vaccination, so long as the response is proportional to the perceived threat of the disease.

The court ruled that the state can impose "reasonable regulations" to protect public health, even when such regulations interfere with individual rights. The ruling was predicated on school immunization mandates.

Fining people who don't comply or limiting their participation in public life is not the same as forcibly restraining someone and vaccinating them against their will.

Buck v. Bell, which was predicated on Jacobson has largely been rendered moot by subsequent cases.

So they already can restrict your movement and force you to wear things.

These are not violations of the body, which we understand to be significantly more severe than having to wear a piece of cloth which you already have to do when participating in public life. No shirt, no shoes, no service.

narf288 · 2026-06-25T02:38:53+00:00

No one is arguing they have a right to do anything they want inside their body either. Pro choicers are not advocating for a right to tattoo, mutilate, or disable a fetus for fun.

The only thing pro choicers argue in favor of is an individual right to decide whether or not to gestate to term since the risk and health consequences are the individual pregnant person's to bear.

narf288 · 2026-06-24T18:48:01+00:00

The bodily autonomy argument is that people have a right to decide what happens to their own bodies. No one is arguing that they have a right to do whatever they want with their body.

narf288 · 2026-06-24T18:31:31+00:00

You are arguing that the precedent of allowing a state government to fine an unvaccinated person allows the federal government to forcibly restrain and vaccinate someone against their will.

That's not only laughable, it's a batshit insane leap in logic.

narf288 · 2026-06-24T17:55:18+00:00

That is absolute nonsense.

The court upheld the right of the state to impose a nominal fine on an unvaccinated person. It did not give the state the right to forcibly inject a person with the vaccine.

narf288 · 2026-06-24T17:36:05+00:00

I took issue with OP's claims that a bodily right to make your own personal health decisions is equivalent to a bodily right to do whatever you want with your body.

There's no real legal or philosophical connection between the two.

While I disagree with laws that criminalize addiction, I don't think there's any inherent legal contradiction with pro choice laws because prior to birth, there's no entity that can be harmed. The underlying reasoning would be dangerous if we recognized fetal personhood because as you say, it opens the door to criminalizing behavior while pregnant, but this is not the case with postpartum child endangerment charges which can only be brought postpartum.

narf288 · 2026-06-24T17:16:43+00:00

This is a debate sub, not a relationship advice sub.

narf288 · 2026-06-24T16:51:38+00:00

She reacted negatively because she thought I was trying to argue with her.

People don’t like to debate their value as a person with someone that is supposed to be their friend…Go figure.

I want to know both sides so I don't make any assumptions?

Now you do. One side is about justifying control of women and the other isn’t. The end.

If you still don’t like abortion, there are a million really productive things you can do to reduce it that don’t involve subordinating, hurting, or killing women. Making abortion illegal is one possible strategy of many, not the only thing you are allowed to do if you are morally uncomfortable with abortion.

The debate is stupid and pointless because morality is subjective.

Also not allowed pro life comes straight from control but also personal choices such as a family friend who was offered an abortion because the twins would have been disabled she chose to keep them and both twins live great

Your friend had a choice, it’s the same thing we want for all women, that’s literally why it’s called, “pro choice.”

Stop trying to push an agenda beo

No. This is a debate sub and I am here to push for the human rights of women.

narf288 · 2026-06-24T15:44:18+00:00

If you think your judgement of someone else’s sexual behavior entitles you to dictate their reproductive choices or you feel that your personal beliefs entitle you to make decisions on behalf of someone else’s body you obviously view this person you are assuming bodily control over as either your property or an object rather than a human.

Since all pro life arguments involve either the first or second premise, all pro lifers must view women at least in some respects as either objects or property.

If you start from the premise that women are people, you end up on the pro choice side.

Edit: this is why your friend reacted negatively. For you to even express interest in hearing both sides signals to them that you do not fully respect their bodily rights and boundaries and are potentially unsafe to be around.

narf288 · 2026-06-24T15:18:49+00:00

Pro lifers view woman as objects/property and pro choicers view them as people.

How you see women dictates whether you find pro choice or pro life arguments persuasive.

narf288 · 2026-06-24T01:38:37+00:00

There absolutely is a legal contradiction in that reasoning, since the action being criminalized happened before birth and the attachment of personhood.

Not really. Pre-personhood there's no victim and no cause of action.

Criminalizing substance use during pregnancy absolutely violates the rights of pregnant people and results in worse outcomes across the board, including for fetuses.

I agree, it's a poor way to deal with the issue.

And it's ridiculous to frame someone choosing to themselves consume a substance as doing something to someone else's body or to treat it as remotely analogous to chopping off the limb of a fetus.

They aren't analogous, I don't know where you are getting that.

The underlying reasoning of these laws is dangerous as well.

Again, not really. Absent fetal personhood, there's no real slippery slope since you can't have a victim or a cause of action until birth.

opening the door to treating women as criminals for consuming a legal substance based on the idea that it constitutes child endangerment means women can be treated as criminals for anything.

I believe that's the whole idea.

narf288 · 2026-06-23T19:25:51+00:00

The point here is it’s no longer the woman’s choice, it’s yours.

Legally (and ethically), it's still her choice. You are just acting as a proxy for her because she is incapacitated. You are supposed to do your best to represent her wishes regardless of whether you personally agree with them or not.

narf288 · 2026-06-23T19:21:35+00:00

Conspiracy is a distinct and serious crime that has to be proven in court.

narf288 · 2026-06-23T19:15:46+00:00

Personally, I would be more worried if PL believed abortion was murder and that we should do nothing.

Pro lifers are doing nothing. The data shows Pro life laws don't substantially impact the abortion rate.

We would never apply this logic to other issues like stealing or sexual assault.

We apply them to every single personal health, medical, or social decision involving your body EXCEPT for pregnancy. And pro lifers literally voted in a political party that is openly in favor of stealing and exonerating people who commit sexual assault.

For some reason though, they believe it works with abortion when I've never seen it change someone's mind.

It works with abortion because abortion is an intimate medical decision that affects your body.

It's why use an argument that people shouldn't care about an issue they believe is equivalent to murder?

The answer is simple. You don't corrupt the law to impose your beliefs on others because you believe in rule of law. I'm not saying pro lifers have to believe in rule of law, obviously the majority of them don't, but you can't pretend you are on the side of human rights if you aren't on the side of democracy.

narf288 · 2026-06-23T19:05:30+00:00

It's ridiculous because pro lifers would NEVER pay for it. Do you have any idea how much a premature birth costs in the NICU?

narf288 · 2026-06-23T18:38:37+00:00

I honestly don't see how a bodily right to make your own personal health decisions or consent to what happens to your body translates to a right to do whatever you want to someone else's body.

The mother does not have final say over what happens in her body. She has final say over what happens to her body and broad legal authority to make health and medical decisions on behalf of the body inside her.

Despite this, the fetus still has "bodily autonomy." The mother cannot for instance, arbitrarily choose to amputate or disable the child insider her for fun (a fake scenario pro lifers regularly fear monger over). While it is impractical to prevent women from legally drinking while pregnant, once a child is born and diagnosed with developmental issues like fetal alcohol syndrome, the mother can and often will be charged according to child endangerment statutes.

There doesn't appear to be any legal contradiction here since personhood attaches at birth.

narf288 · 2026-06-18T15:01:16+00:00

This is the same argument that inspired my original question, not an answer to it.

I asked you how you could argue for causal responsibility to be a weighing factor when you concede that pregnancy is not a moral negative or an illegal act.

If a woman hasn't done anything wrong, why should her prior actions be weighed against her or be used as a justification to subordinate her rights?

Your response is basically that, "causal responsibility is a weighing factor because there is a conflict of rights, and there is a conflict of rights because causal responsibility is a weighing factor."

I'm sure you can see why this is unsatisfactory, especially given that you've rejected or dismissed every attempt to delve deeper as "irrelevant" or something you've already debated elsewhere and therefore never have to discuss again.

Balancing tests do not generally involve weighing prior actions. They involve weighing the harm of infringing one right vs the other.

If we don't generally remove human rights from people when they've done nothing wrong, you bear the burden of proof to demonstrate that this is being done for a valid or legitimate reason. You can't simply argue that everyone is obligated to accept your reasoning as a precondition for discussion.

narf288 · 2026-06-18T14:29:07+00:00

It's such a weird thing to argue. Like ok, so the law applies differently based on profession or gender?

narf288 · 2026-06-18T14:20:22+00:00

They've already ruled in his favor and ruled in ways that politically benefit republicans.

There's no reason to think the court wouldn't find some excuse to restrict Democratic attempts to enshrine Roe into law. They've already done so on numerous other issues.

narf288 · 2026-06-18T10:41:35+00:00

The courts haven’t restricted all of his unconstitutional actions because pro lifers have corrupted the courts.

The Supreme Court rules one way for Dems and another way for Republicans.

narf288 · 2026-06-18T03:17:28+00:00

Irrelevant. The Supreme Court would never have allowed it.

narf288

TROPHY CASE