This was so helpful. Thank you!! I’ve recently stumbled upon this argument, and I’d never heard a response before. This was thoroughly thought through and entirely logically sound.
Pregnancy is actually more analogous to winning the money in the casino and then rejecting it. I don't think security is gonna have a problem with that!
You make an unborn fetus a human being you have to apply all other rights to that human being and that's where it all falls apart. Self-defense means you have the legal right to defend yourself against a person who puts you in imminent danger, even if they don't pose an initial threat - therefore a woman has the right to defend herself against a pregnancy that threatens her life even if it did not post an initial threat
Is it really unfair that men can't get pregnant? Lots of human characteristics are randomly distributed. If someone has big muscles I can't demand them as a transplant. Women bear the burdens of pregnancy but also the benefits of pregnancy. Men can't experience the joy of pregnancy, birth, or nursing. Men also don't have to experience the pains and discomforts. Being the tallest person has some advantages and disadvantages and being the shortest person does too. There are many random differences in nature, and they're often balanced with some good and some bad consequences.
I also doubt if defenders of abortion would think differently if men actually could get pregnant and suffer the same burdens that women do, or if pegnancy somehow put the social status of women above men's. I suspect that they would still be fighting for abortion rights even if that were the case.
@@orange8216 exactly, and that's the point: when pro-abortion advocates say things like "no uterus, no opinion," it's simply a form of implicit sexism against men.
Overall, very well argued and researched. However, I would point out that there is a difference between the risks of abortion for an entire population of women and the risks for an individual woman. The risk of death or serious health complications caused by pregnancy or childbirth may be under 1% for the population at large and yet vastly over 1% for an individual woman with a specific health condition. Our laws on abortion should take into account specific circumstance and not merely the average risk in a population. We can distinguish between the claim of abortion itself being inherently an act of self defense in every pregnancy and the claim of abortion being an act of self-defense in particular, severe health circumstances. Self defense does not justify all abortions, but I would argue it does justify some. The boat analogy is a very useful tool to explore how serious a woman's health must be endangered before the law should allow her to obtain a termination.
That's a good point, if you're not careful about that detail you end up disallowing life-of-the-mother cases, and if we're treating the unborn child and the mother equally, we should certainly consider that as reasonable. Makes me wonder, could you use that same argument to stop the self-defense argument before it's even started? You only have a basis for self-defense if the person is actively posing a threat, so you can't kill an unborn child unless they pose an active, unmitigable risk to your life (or your health in a serious way, I suppose) just as you can't go around shooting random people in the street just because a proportion of random people in the street are murderers.
@@Sharpman76 Good point from you and OP. Just to add something further to this... in cases where a mother's life is known to be greater than 1% let's say something like atopical pregnancy where there a 100% risk to the mother... The question then becomes, what are the viable options for treatment. To use self defense, the chosen option needs to be the most morally just and most ethical of all available options. When abortion is the direct and intentional killing of a human being by means of dismemberment it is highly unlikely to ever be considered the most ethical option. The treatment also needs to be directed towards the actual medical condition. In the case of the atopic pregnancy - it is not the child that is the issue - it is the blockage in the fallopian tube that causes the issue. If the child was in the correct location there would be no problem. Removing the part of the fallopian tube with the blockage does in turn result in the death of the child - but this returns to the points made in the video regarding a threat and an aggressor. Abortion is an aggressive act whereas atopic pregancy treatment is passive towards the child even though the threat is the same in both cases.
I incountered the abortion is self defense argument for the first time today and my mind just thought... you need to defend urslef from a baby?!?!? What the actual fuck
It’s a very interesting and informative video but I’m not convinced the statement at 6:58 is true. Couldn’t contraception be seen as a revocation of consent to pregnancy? By analogy, a car is designed to move but driving one doesn’t mean I always consent to move. I revoke that consent when I press the brake. An edgier example is, putting on a parachute means that my act of leaping from a plane in flight does not imply my consent to die, even though that would be the consequence of my action under Natural Law.
So it is true that you can revoke consent. At any time. 100%. But. You cannot brake if it means killing somebody. Like the only reason you can brake is if you shoot someone in the head.
The problem would be a pregnancy is a consequence of an action performed, not an action. Plus, no contraception products advertises themselves as 100% safe method. For instance, condoms are 98% effective if correctly used.
I haven’t finished watching the whole video, so pardon me if you explain this in the end. How would you respond if someone were to say that for young uneducated teenagers, let’s say 14 and under, there really is no consent to pregnancy because they either didn’t know the biology of sex, or they were in some misunderstanding that they wouldn’t be able to get pregnant?
I would say that any child (or adult person with a disability) who doesn't understand sex enough to know that is where babies come from is incapable of consenting to sex. They would be in the same category for me as pregnancy after rape (the responsibility objection doesn't apply to this group because it makes an argument about consensual sex).
Honestly that really just sounds like a distraction. Abortion choice advocates love to use the exceptions to justify the rule. Most people who are getting abortions are usually in their early 20s and they know exactly what they are doing. So I'm not saying that you should ignore the objection but call the person out on their bluff.
Wouldn’t the self defense argument be protected by castle doctrine and stand your ground? With stand your ground lethal defense is justified when a person’s perception of imminent threat (including bodily impairment or significant heath risks) are considered reasonable. This is absolutely the case during pregnancy. Even in states with a duty to retreat abortion is the only means of “retreating” from the fetus therefore removing this imminent threat. You don’t have to wait until someone causes you harm to defend yourself so why then is it justified to make a woman wait until the child is born to evaluate the significance of the harm caused to her? I’m not suggesting that a fetus is some sort of violent assailant but the fact is that that pregnancy has risks that for many women can be lifelong or even fatal. How is it that the same law which declared shooting an innocent teen like Trayvon Martin to be reasonable simply because it was another man’s right to be present wherever he pleased without feeling afraid can at the same time declare a woman’s right to autonomy unreasonable simply because they happen to have a uterus?
Are you really saying that it’s impossible to determine whether abortion or pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period are safer? There were 2 abortion related deaths in 2017. Approximately 700-800 women die during pregnancy, childbirth, or in the postpartum period (or period after termination) of 1 year if that condition that causes death was caused or aggravated by pregnancy and childbirth. Abortion is significantly safer than pregnancy and childbirth. There is no denying that the risk of death or serious injury from abortion is much, much lower than pregnancy & delivery. Additionally, the risk to any woman will depend largely on her health prior to pregnancy. People of color have much higher maternal mortality rates. Someone who is 40, obese, has high blood pressure, diabetes, and a history of cesarean deliveries is at much higher risk than a 20 year old at a healthy weight with no chronic illnesses and no prior deliveries. Self defense doesn’t have to apply only when you are going to be killed or gravely injured. 9/10 deliveries result in genital damage. If someone accosted you on the street and told you he was going to cut you continuously from vagina through your anal sphincter, would you be allowed to defend yourself with the least force women necessary to stop that threat? That’s the thing, before viability, abortion is the least lethal means of stoping the threat that pregnancy entails. After viability the least lethal means is delivery. There is no other method to stop the threat of a pregnancy without abortion. Finally, while bodily autonomy, self defense and consent to pregnancy may all be different arguments, one can consistently believe all of these things at once; that consent to sex isn’t consent to pregnancy, that pregnancy requires ongoing consent and that a woman can revoke consent at any time, that no other person has the right to use somebody else’s body without their consent and giving this right to a fetus wouldn’t make a fetus equal with born people, it would give them more rights than anyone else, and that every pregnancy has inherent risks associated with it, these risks can be genital injury, postpartum depression, permanent disfigurement, permanent disability or even death. Women have the right to defend themselves from harm, even if the thing causing the harm is doing so unknowingly and without intent or malice. These arguments can all be consistent beliefs of a pro-choice person and still grant the fetus rights and recognize the fetus as both human and alive.
1. Abortion mortality/morbidity is vastly underreported/underestimated/obscured for several reasons and thus cannot be accurately compared to childbirth. 2. Even if you could verifiably claim abortion was safer than childbirth, it does not logically follow that childbirth is not also considered safe.
To explain (it’s detailed so I’m breaking it out): 1A. First, abortion reporting to the CDC is voluntary, not mandated, and even the CDC and Guttmacher call the data "incomplete and unreliable". Reporting is voluntary in many states, as well, and even many that mandate it don’t require abortion complications/deaths to be reported. And while most states do submit data to the CDC, they don’t believe they receive complete information even from the states with the strictest reporting requirements. And California - where a large number of abortions are performed - never reports. Guttmacher’s data is likely more complete, but they don’t survey annually and they don’t make their data openly available for review.
1B. Determination of maternal deaths rely on the "pregnancy" box being properly marked on the death certificate, which would apply to post-abortive, also. However, medical record linkage is not always used to know past pregnancy outcomes, which decreases reporting accuracy (one study estimated only 1% of abortion deaths were correctly identified as such without record linkage). Even with record linkage, however, it’s still difficult to know abortion history as abortion records are kept separate from other medical records (unless performed by a woman's primary doctor). Further, the standard abortion reporting form does not include identifiers such as patient name or birthdate, purposely to enhance anonymity and thus decreasing the likelihood a known past pregnancy would be properly coded as an abortion.
1C. Post-abortion ER visits are frequently miscoded as miscarriage (especially pill abortions), and deaths/complications from medical treatment are reported under the complication (i.e. sepsis) rather than the procedure (abortion). There is further difficulty in assessing morbidities due to abortion since women suffering complications go to a separate location (i.e. ER) rather than back to the abortion clinic. There has also been a noticeable increase in abortion pills purchased online, or handed out on college campuses to be done at home - making those abortions (and their complications) invisible to the statistics.
1D. It has also been suggested that when you take into account maternal deaths relating to indirect causes (i.e. suicide and drug overdose), there would be an increase in number of abortion-related deaths. Several studies have found higher rates of drug use, suicide, and other negative psychological effects among women with past abortions.
Nobody has the right to make you donate any part of your body to anyone else against your will, even if you put them in a situation where the other person would need a donor. Therefore, if the woman doesn't wish to remain pregnant, she can have it expelled. If it lives, it lives, and has thee right to remain alive.
@@EqualRightsInstitute It makes the assumption that a fetus is a person, which you can't prove. Being human =/= person. Cancer growths can have unique human dna, seperate from the host body, that doesn't make it a person. Potential? Yeah, sure, doesn't matter in the now, where the course of action has to be taken. The argument in my first post applies exclusively to parents and their kids. You have legal obligation to care for and feed your children, OR ensure that someone else does it by abdicating parental rights. Abortion is abdicating parental rights.
@@OpticalArxenal Bodily rights arguments already grant the assumption that the fetus is a person. You're just unwittingly shifting from a bodily rights argument to a personhood-type argument for the sake of convenience. Personhood arguments don't even say the same things as bodily rights arguments do. That's enough to demonstrate that you yourself don't think bodily rights arguments are that strong.
This was so helpful. Thank you!! I’ve recently stumbled upon this argument, and I’d never heard a response before. This was thoroughly thought through and entirely logically sound.
Well done. Thank you for the significant effort given to this well-reasoned argumentation!
This was downright incredible. Could you clip out and post a few of pieces of this for fast reference?
Pregnancy is actually more analogous to winning the money in the casino and then rejecting it. I don't think security is gonna have a problem with that!
You make an unborn fetus a human being you have to apply all other rights to that human being and that's where it all falls apart.
Self-defense means you have the legal right to defend yourself against a person who puts you in imminent danger, even if they don't pose an initial threat - therefore a woman has the right to defend herself against a pregnancy that threatens her life even if it did not post an initial threat
If most pregnancies don't
Is it really unfair that men can't get pregnant? Lots of human characteristics are randomly distributed.
If someone has big muscles I can't demand them as a transplant.
Women bear the burdens of pregnancy but also the benefits of pregnancy. Men can't experience the joy of pregnancy, birth, or nursing. Men also don't have to experience the pains and discomforts. Being the tallest person has some advantages and disadvantages and being the shortest person does too. There are many random differences in nature, and they're often balanced with some good and some bad consequences.
I also doubt if defenders of abortion would think differently if men actually could get pregnant and suffer the same burdens that women do, or if pegnancy somehow put the social status of women above men's. I suspect that they would still be fighting for abortion rights even if that were the case.
@@orange8216 exactly, and that's the point: when pro-abortion advocates say things like "no uterus, no opinion," it's simply a form of implicit sexism against men.
Overall, very well argued and researched. However, I would point out that there is a difference between the risks of abortion for an entire population of women and the risks for an individual woman. The risk of death or serious health complications caused by pregnancy or childbirth may be under 1% for the population at large and yet vastly over 1% for an individual woman with a specific health condition. Our laws on abortion should take into account specific circumstance and not merely the average risk in a population. We can distinguish between the claim of abortion itself being inherently an act of self defense in every pregnancy and the claim of abortion being an act of self-defense in particular, severe health circumstances. Self defense does not justify all abortions, but I would argue it does justify some. The boat analogy is a very useful tool to explore how serious a woman's health must be endangered before the law should allow her to obtain a termination.
That's a good point, if you're not careful about that detail you end up disallowing life-of-the-mother cases, and if we're treating the unborn child and the mother equally, we should certainly consider that as reasonable.
Makes me wonder, could you use that same argument to stop the self-defense argument before it's even started? You only have a basis for self-defense if the person is actively posing a threat, so you can't kill an unborn child unless they pose an active, unmitigable risk to your life (or your health in a serious way, I suppose) just as you can't go around shooting random people in the street just because a proportion of random people in the street are murderers.
@@Sharpman76 Good point from you and OP. Just to add something further to this... in cases where a mother's life is known to be greater than 1% let's say something like atopical pregnancy where there a 100% risk to the mother...
The question then becomes, what are the viable options for treatment. To use self defense, the chosen option needs to be the most morally just and most ethical of all available options. When abortion is the direct and intentional killing of a human being by means of dismemberment it is highly unlikely to ever be considered the most ethical option.
The treatment also needs to be directed towards the actual medical condition. In the case of the atopic pregnancy - it is not the child that is the issue - it is the blockage in the fallopian tube that causes the issue. If the child was in the correct location there would be no problem.
Removing the part of the fallopian tube with the blockage does in turn result in the death of the child - but this returns to the points made in the video regarding a threat and an aggressor. Abortion is an aggressive act whereas atopic pregancy treatment is passive towards the child even though the threat is the same in both cases.
Also, you consent to rules in the casino. There are no rules with sex. Only outcomes.
I incountered the abortion is self defense argument for the first time today and my mind just thought... you need to defend urslef from a baby?!?!? What the actual fuck
It’s a very interesting and informative video but I’m not convinced the statement at 6:58 is true. Couldn’t contraception be seen as a revocation of consent to pregnancy?
By analogy, a car is designed to move but driving one doesn’t mean I always consent to move. I revoke that consent when I press the brake.
An edgier example is, putting on a parachute means that my act of leaping from a plane in flight does not imply my consent to die, even though that would be the consequence of my action under Natural Law.
So it is true that you can revoke consent. At any time. 100%.
But. You cannot brake if it means killing somebody. Like the only reason you can brake is if you shoot someone in the head.
The problem would be a pregnancy is a consequence of an action performed, not an action. Plus, no contraception products advertises themselves as 100% safe method. For instance, condoms are 98% effective if correctly used.
Love this.
I haven’t finished watching the whole video, so pardon me if you explain this in the end. How would you respond if someone were to say that for young uneducated teenagers, let’s say 14 and under, there really is no consent to pregnancy because they either didn’t know the biology of sex, or they were in some misunderstanding that they wouldn’t be able to get pregnant?
I would say that any child (or adult person with a disability) who doesn't understand sex enough to know that is where babies come from is incapable of consenting to sex. They would be in the same category for me as pregnancy after rape (the responsibility objection doesn't apply to this group because it makes an argument about consensual sex).
Honestly that really just sounds like a distraction. Abortion choice advocates love to use the exceptions to justify the rule. Most people who are getting abortions are usually in their early 20s and they know exactly what they are doing. So I'm not saying that you should ignore the objection but call the person out on their bluff.
Wouldn’t the self defense argument be protected by castle doctrine and stand your ground? With stand your ground lethal defense is justified when a person’s perception of imminent threat (including bodily impairment or significant heath risks) are considered reasonable. This is absolutely the case during pregnancy. Even in states with a duty to retreat abortion is the only means of “retreating” from the fetus therefore removing this imminent threat. You don’t have to wait until someone causes you harm to defend yourself so why then is it justified to make a woman wait until the child is born to evaluate the significance of the harm caused to her?
I’m not suggesting that a fetus is some sort of violent assailant but the fact is that that pregnancy has risks that for many women can be lifelong or even fatal. How is it that the same law which declared shooting an innocent teen like Trayvon Martin to be reasonable simply because it was another man’s right to be present wherever he pleased without feeling afraid can at the same time declare a woman’s right to autonomy unreasonable simply because they happen to have a uterus?
Would you be open for a live debate?
Excellent
Not quite as convincing as you would hope. Although we’ll put together.
Are you really saying that it’s impossible to determine whether abortion or pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period are safer? There were 2 abortion related deaths in 2017. Approximately 700-800 women die during pregnancy, childbirth, or in the postpartum period (or period after termination) of 1 year if that condition that causes death was caused or aggravated by pregnancy and childbirth. Abortion is significantly safer than pregnancy and childbirth. There is no denying that the risk of death or serious injury from abortion is much, much lower than pregnancy & delivery.
Additionally, the risk to any woman will depend largely on her health prior to pregnancy. People of color have much higher maternal mortality rates. Someone who is 40, obese, has high blood pressure, diabetes, and a history of cesarean deliveries is at much higher risk than a 20 year old at a healthy weight with no chronic illnesses and no prior deliveries. Self defense doesn’t have to apply only when you are going to be killed or gravely injured. 9/10 deliveries result in genital damage. If someone accosted you on the street and told you he was going to cut you continuously from vagina through your anal sphincter, would you be allowed to defend yourself with the least force women necessary to stop that threat? That’s the thing, before viability, abortion is the least lethal means of stoping the threat that pregnancy entails. After viability the least lethal means is delivery. There is no other method to stop the threat of a pregnancy without abortion.
Finally, while bodily autonomy, self defense and consent to pregnancy may all be different arguments, one can consistently believe all of these things at once; that consent to sex isn’t consent to pregnancy, that pregnancy requires ongoing consent and that a woman can revoke consent at any time, that no other person has the right to use somebody else’s body without their consent and giving this right to a fetus wouldn’t make a fetus equal with born people, it would give them more rights than anyone else, and that every pregnancy has inherent risks associated with it, these risks can be genital injury, postpartum depression, permanent disfigurement, permanent disability or even death. Women have the right to defend themselves from harm, even if the thing causing the harm is doing so unknowingly and without intent or malice. These arguments can all be consistent beliefs of a pro-choice person and still grant the fetus rights and recognize the fetus as both human and alive.
1. Abortion mortality/morbidity is vastly underreported/underestimated/obscured for several reasons and thus cannot be accurately compared to childbirth.
2. Even if you could verifiably claim abortion was safer than childbirth, it does not logically follow that childbirth is not also considered safe.
To explain (it’s detailed so I’m breaking it out):
1A. First, abortion reporting to the CDC is voluntary, not mandated, and even the CDC and Guttmacher call the data "incomplete and unreliable". Reporting is voluntary in many states, as well, and even many that mandate it don’t require abortion complications/deaths to be reported. And while most states do submit data to the CDC, they don’t believe they receive complete information even from the states with the strictest reporting requirements. And California - where a large number of abortions are performed - never reports. Guttmacher’s data is likely more complete, but they don’t survey annually and they don’t make their data openly available for review.
1B. Determination of maternal deaths rely on the "pregnancy" box being properly marked on the death certificate, which would apply to post-abortive, also. However, medical record linkage is not always used to know past pregnancy outcomes, which decreases reporting accuracy (one study estimated only 1% of abortion deaths were correctly identified as such without record linkage). Even with record linkage, however, it’s still difficult to know abortion history as abortion records are kept separate from other medical records (unless performed by a woman's primary doctor). Further, the standard abortion reporting form does not include identifiers such as patient name or birthdate, purposely to enhance anonymity and thus decreasing the likelihood a known past pregnancy would be properly coded as an abortion.
1C. Post-abortion ER visits are frequently miscoded as miscarriage (especially pill abortions), and deaths/complications from medical treatment are reported under the complication (i.e. sepsis) rather than the procedure (abortion). There is further difficulty in assessing morbidities due to abortion since women suffering complications go to a separate location (i.e. ER) rather than back to the abortion clinic. There has also been a noticeable increase in abortion pills purchased online, or handed out on college campuses to be done at home - making those abortions (and their complications) invisible to the statistics.
1D. It has also been suggested that when you take into account maternal deaths relating to indirect causes (i.e. suicide and drug overdose), there would be an increase in number of abortion-related deaths. Several studies have found higher rates of drug use, suicide, and other negative psychological effects among women with past abortions.
Nobody has the right to make you donate any part of your body to anyone else against your will, even if you put them in a situation where the other person would need a donor. Therefore, if the woman doesn't wish to remain pregnant, she can have it expelled. If it lives, it lives, and has thee right to remain alive.
You may be interested in our video on this argument here: ua-cam.com/video/YmBrUcpOxDw/v-deo.html
@@EqualRightsInstitute It makes the assumption that a fetus is a person, which you can't prove. Being human =/= person. Cancer growths can have unique human dna, seperate from the host body, that doesn't make it a person.
Potential? Yeah, sure, doesn't matter in the now, where the course of action has to be taken.
The argument in my first post applies exclusively to parents and their kids. You have legal obligation to care for and feed your children, OR ensure that someone else does it by abdicating parental rights.
Abortion is abdicating parental rights.
@@OpticalArxenal quick questions of it has human DNA then why is it called cancer cells
@@pancakemcgee8853 Because it's cancer? Ask a biologist why cancer is called cancer.
@@OpticalArxenal Bodily rights arguments already grant the assumption that the fetus is a person. You're just unwittingly shifting from a bodily rights argument to a personhood-type argument for the sake of convenience. Personhood arguments don't even say the same things as bodily rights arguments do. That's enough to demonstrate that you yourself don't think bodily rights arguments are that strong.