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The more I think about politics, I always end up coming back to this quote from a very good video (from a very good youtuber!).
I think in most cases, politics are about values. To piggy back off the abortion example. The go to argument surrounding this typically is bodily autonomy, and although one could argue that this isn't really consistent on a factual, legal level. If I were in the room debating a pro-choice person on the issue, here is how it would go.
PC Person
The fetus is not entitled to its mothers body, consider the court case McFall v Shimp: McFall suffered from a life-threatening bone marrow disease and his cousin, Shimp, was a compatible bone marrow donor. Shimp refused to donate bone marrow. McFall requested Shimp be compelled to donate. The Court considered Shimp’s refusal “morally indefensible,” but still ruled in Shimp’s favor, explaining,
“For a society which respects the rights of one individual, to sink its teeth into the jugular vein or neck of one of its members and suck from it sustenance for another member, is revolting to our hard-wrought concepts of jurisprudence. Forcible extraction of living body tissue causes revulsion to the judicial mind.”
Judith Jarvis Thomson tackles the issues of bodily integrity and moral obligations in her essay, “A Defense of Abortion.” Thomson asks us to imagine a famous violinist with a fatal kidney ailment. One day a bunch of music lovers kidnap you and hook your kidneys up to the violinist’s circulatory system. In nine months the violinist will have recovered, but if you disconnect yourself prematurely the violinist will die. Thomson asks, “Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation?”
When you drive (have sex), you know there’s a possibility you could crash into someone (conceive). Even when you drive very cautiously (use contraception), there is still a chance of a car accident. Should you be in a car crash in which the victim’s life is at stake, the law does not compel you to donate blood or organs to save the victim. While it would be admirable for you to donate, you are not required to do so."
Me:
"Thats cool. Lets say you, for whatever reason, are a psychopath who enjoys taking children, draining them of their blood, hospitalizing them and or possibly killing. If I was king for a day, and assuming your blood was a match, I would sentence you to life in prison, and then order that your blood be drained and given to the remaining children to save them. Fight Me"
I don't find this to be unreasonable, given that we would already use lethal injection for these kinds of people (also a violation of "bodily autonomy"). Draining someone of their blood would be no less worse than forcefully injecting them.
You are free to think I'm a crazy person, fine. But that's not my main point. The same problem exists for issues like nationalism & immigration. You can scream all day about how immigrants are a net gain to the economy, or how they commit less crime. But a ethno-nationalist will simply go "No, I value the culture and heritage of the green people, and I'd rather them go extinct than to have our way of life polluted by the purples.".
Another explicit example of what im talking about is race. A black person does not vote democrat because they are factually good for the economy (whether or not they are is besides the point). If you asked average black voter to produce a study about specific policies that cite this, they would come up short. Support for democrats comes from the idea of racial solidarity, and the fact that black people value the black race, and would like to advance black interest.
I have no clue how one would even go about resolving this. Morals & values are not empirical - you cant prove bodily autonomy and cultural heritage are good in the same way you can prove what foods are and aren't healthy. These things are based on moral intuitions that are fundamentally subjective. I don't think I could ever change my personal mind on that issue to be completely honest, but on a societal scale, this is obviously not sustainable. There needs to be some way to reconcile a difference in moral values.
Are they sure about that? To me, it looks like the difference between manslaughter (if they die) and not (if they live). You can say that the law doesn't "require" you to save the victim, but the prison sentence on the other side of that choice doesn't make it very convincing.
The assumption that babies simply appear from the ether has weirded me out since I noticed the framing. You weren't kidnapped by a music lover and forced to give life support to another human (unless you were, in which case I support the right to abortion in cases of rape). "Where babies come from" has well-understood causality. If you sign up for baby-making, then you can't act shocked when you make a baby.
Congratulations, by driving in a car you have now signed up for a lifetime as a quadriplegic due to an accident. It was a risk you knew was possible. Please don't do anything but accept the consequences of your choice.
Sex != baby-making. Sex carries the risk of baby making.
Yes, when taking part in risky activities I accept the risk. I’m not sure what the alternative would be?
In the framework you gave, abortion for an accidental pregnancy would be permissible, but one for an intentional pregnancy would not.
I fail to see how this is different than the current accepted practice? People intentionally getting pregnant don't then go get abortions. Abortions happen when pregnancy occurs accidentally (due to risks) or when the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother.
Or in cases of fetal abnormality. These span a spectrum from absolutely non-viable cases (like anencephaly) to clearly viable babies who are likely to be severely disabled (like Down's) but Christian pro-lifers want abortion to be illegal in almost all of them and normies with an ick about abortion think they are some of the good examples of legitimate abortions.
I'd assume Christians are also against euthanasia of infants in these cases, so...
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I suppose one can contrive a scenario where a woman could have an elective abortion refused because her prior actions indicate the pregnancy was intentional. For instance, if she took active steps to restore her fertility not long before the pregnancy; not just forgetting to take a pill or not wearing a condom, but something like reversing a tubal ligation or removing an IUD without a medical justification.
I have to wonder how rare those scenarios are though.
I think that would be an actually interesting philosophical question, especially if we examine our response to other situations where people engage in actions intentionally that effect other people but then change their mind. In some situations like contract law, we enforce the prior agreement, but in others like a promise to aid or a charitable donation we don't enforce compliance.
It's a question of how much bodily autonomy you have depending on the cost of your bodily autonomy on other people.
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I’m guessing some number of abortions are because the mother changes her mind, and it seems very counterintuitive to say that the intent of the parents influences the morality of the abortion.
To be clear, I’m broadly pro-choice, but I don’t think sex and pregnancy can be neatly decoupled, any more than driving and car crashes can.
I mean I don't think they can be neatly decoupled, one is a risk that is of the other. But we as a society accept other risk pairings as both legally correct and morally ok. This idea that babies are the direct and singular causal response to sex is just not based in reality. Pretending it is, is an attempt at motivated reasoning. Which I was calling out.
EDIT:
I suppose this is probably true, I do wonder what the breakdown in cases between the three would be. Regardless I am pretty pro-choice from a fairly radical bodily autonomy perspective.
Funny, from the same principle I believe the reverse: „Every child wants to be born“; the body of another human being is harmed (well, murdered) -> This is anathema.
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