Misanthropic feminism

Fun fact: If my younger sister was in a car accident and desperately needed a blood transfusion to live, and I was the only person on Earth who could donate blood to save her, and even though donating blood is a relatively easy, safe, and quick procedure no one can force me to give blood. Yes, even to save the life of a fully grown person, it would be ILLEGAL to FORCE me to donate blood if I didn’t want to.

See, we have this concept called “bodily autonomy.” It’s this….cultural notion that a person’s control over their own body is above all important and must not be infringed upon. 

Like, we can’t even take LIFE SAVING organs from CORPSES unless the person whose corpse it is gave consent before their death. Even corpses get bodily autonomy. 

To tell people that they MUST sacrifice their bodily autonomy for 9 months against their will in an incredibly expensive, invasive, difficult process to save what YOU view as another human life (a debatable claim in the early stages of pregnancy when the VAST majority of abortions are performed) is desperately unethical. You can’t even ask people to sacrifice bodily autonomy to give up organs they aren’t using anymore after they have died. 

You’re asking people who can become pregnant to accept less bodily autonomy than we grant to dead bodies. 

Commenting on this statement, Christian philosopher Tim Hsiao said:

There are at least two problems with this line of argument.

First, the relationship between a parent and a child is very different from a relationship between siblings. Parents have a special responsibility to care for their children in a way that siblings do not. Why? Because they are the ones who are responsible for their children's existence. More specifically, they caused their children to exist in a state of great vulnerability, need, and dependence. In doing so, they incur an obligation to provide for the well-being of their children. That's why parents are often referred to as the guardians of their children.

If I push you into deep water as part of a swimming lesson, I owe it to you to make sure that you don't drown. The reason is because I have done something to put you in a position of great vulnerability. The same thing is true of the parent-child relationship.

Second, abortion is not just the mere withholding of treatment or refusal to act. It actively seeks out the death of the unborn. I may not have an obligation to give my blood to my brother, but does that mean I can go ahead and blow out his brains? Of course not. The fact that I may refuse to assist someone does not allow me to do some positive action that brings about his death. So even if the message is correct, it does not give the mother the right to actively seek out the death of her child.

This graphic takes a very low view of women. It treats pregnancy as if it were some kind of disease or pathology. But that is not at all the case. Reproduction is a natural part of the human experience, and to treat something so wonderful and joyous in such a negative light is dehumanizing.

Speaking for myself, I'd add that:

i) I think there's certainly a moral obligation for one sibling to donate blood to another sibling. I'd go beyond that: as a rule, a sibling has a duty to donate a kidney or half their liver to another sibling (unless the sibling has abused their health).

ii) Or take someone unrelated to me. Suppose I find an abandoned child at a rest stop. Minimally, I have a duty to temporarily care for it until I get hand it off to the authorities. But suppose there's no one else to care for it. That was commonplace in the ancient world. Children exposed to die. Foundlings. Even though I didn't create the situation, even though I'm not responsible for the situation, there are circumstances in which I can have social obligations despite the fact that it's unfair and burdensome.