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>Zooming out a bit, pro-life people see abortion as a modern analog to slavery in the US (where enslaved African-Americans were viewed as 3/5 of a person), except that unborn babies are viewed as not a person at all -- and this framing is used to justify killing them, not merely enslaving them and denying them the right to vote.

I would argue the better slavery analogy is taking away the bodily autonomy of one individual and forcing them to go through an unwanted and dangerous process for the sole benefit of another individual. That would be like making it a legal requirement for us all to regularly donate bone marrow. Even if we acknowledge the fetus as a person, my rights over my body should still supersede anyone else's rights over my body.

Parental responsibility doesn't stop there. Parents can be jailed for failing to take care of their children; imprisoned for life if their children die through neglect or abandonment; or almost literally enslaved, told what jobs to take and have their earnings confiscated.

I haven't heard anyone seriously challenging the extent of parental responsibility, only when it begins.

Except we don’t force this on people. We give parents the opportunity to opt out through adoption.

Only if that's considered to be in the child's best interests. For example, older children can't be given away without their consent, fathers generally can't terminate their responsibility without the mother's consent, and it must be done in a manner that protects the child (not simply abandoned).

>Only if that's considered to be in the child's best interests.

I don't have to argue against you. I can just point to the leaked draft that argues against you. It specifically cites safe haven laws which allow people to anonymously put their child up for adoption. These laws have no consideration on what the child's life would be like with their biological parents or after they become a ward of the state. The mere existence of those laws is legal precedent that it is acceptable to abdicate care over a child post-birth. Why shouldn't that be possible pre-birth?

Safe haven laws don't do that. They just provide an exception to child abandonment laws. They don't directly affect parental responsibility. If a child has two parents and one of them drops the child of at a safe haven location and the other reports the child missing, the child will most likely be found and given to the parent who did not abandon the child. Nobody will be prosecuted, but the parent who dropped the child off will be ordered to pay child support.

I think this is wrong too, but I think banning abortions is much worse because it's a more direct interference with an individual's body. One is like a a tax, money is taken from you without consent but you are mostly free to get the money however you like. The other is like a mix between forced organ harvesting and slavery where somebody else asserts direct ownership/control over your body.

>Safe haven laws don't do that. They just provide an exception to child abandonment laws. They don't directly affect parental responsibility.

If you can abandon a child without repercussion, how is that not directly affecting parental responsibility?

Whether there are specific exceptions to these rules is irrelevant. Almost no one is pushing for unrestricted abortions up to birth. The analog is that we give people potential outs so they are not forced to be responsible for another person.

The rule is just that it's not a crime to leave a child in that location. It doesn't legally affect parental responsibility or anything else outside of criminal law.

I'm 100% in favour of unrestricted abortions up to birth. Bodily autonomy doesn't have a time-limit and it doesn't suddenly become okay for another person to decide what someone can do with their body just because they waited past a particular deadline.

> The analog is that we give people potential outs so they are not forced to be responsible for another person.

I wonder if you take the same position regarding fathers and child support.

You can't equate a purely financial obligation with all the responsibilities of being a legal guardian let alone the process of going through a pregnancy.

I don't think it is fair for one parent to bear 100% of the financial responsibility for a child. I would be in support of a system that allowed a parent to relinquish any financial obligation to a child in exchange for forsaking any familial rights parenthood would traditionally grant them as long as the state would step in and assume that financial obligation. Until the state does that, I think expecting the father to contribute to supporting the child is fair.

If someone advocates for a parent to not have an obligation to pay child support without a way for the other parent to receive the money that child support would traditionally provide them, then they aren't truly concerned about the wellbeing of the child. I therefore will ignore any anti-abortion argument they make that places the wellbeing of the unborn child above the wellbeing of the mother.

> as long as the state would step in and assume that financial obligation

Do you mean a system that provides for the needs of poor children (based solely on financial need)? That already exists, and I'd support expanding it.

Or do you mean a system that reduces the financial burden on a wealthy woman who can afford to provide for her children but simply doesn't want to? I don't see the compelling need for a system like that.

Government support for children should be provided based on their financial need, not an alternative to child support based on the father's income. That's how the available funds can most improve children's welfare.

Neither.

During pregnancy a woman should be able to terminate her pregnancy to avoid obligation to the child. The rights of the woman supersede the rights of both the child and the father because it is her body that needs to go through pregnancy.

After the birth the parental rights should be equal. Both parents should be able to renounce their obligation to the child. In this situation, the state should step in and assume that responsibility. That applies to both guardianship and financial obligation. The state will only take over guardianship if both parents give up their obligation. The state will step in financially if one parent gives up their obligation.

It is acceptable to put limited restrictions on these such as establishing a reasonable cutoff for abortions as Roe v. Wade allows or the short windows of time that safe haven laws usually establish. What is important is that the parents at least have a choice at some point in the process. Once the parents make that decision, I am fine with them being held to it.

> The state will step in financially if one parent gives up their obligation.

Always? Like, if two millionaires have a child and one gives up their obligation, the government would pay child support to the other millionaire parent?

I couldn't support that. I think whether the state steps in should be based on the child's financial need, not the number of responsible parents.

Too many benefits in the US are gate kept by means testing. It adds unnecessary bureaucracy and causes needless division and animosity among the population.

"So the legal question is whether a baby that hasn't yet been born is a person"

That's not the important question. The question is can one person be compelled to use their body to sustain another persons life. We can't even force DEAD people to use their body to sustain life (i.e., a person has to consent to donate organs before they die).

> That's not the important question.

This debate hinges entirely on a disagreement over which moral question is the most important.

It isn't really about which is "more important" morally. Both sides agree that infants have some legal rights, the questions are whether one of those legal rights is having their mother to bear them to term against their mother's will and if so, when that right begins and how much risk the mother can be required to accept in doing so.

Edit: One thing I don't see mentioned is how a ethically consistent Pro-Life stance seems to require support for state sponsored healthcare. Requiring people to bear the costs of pregnancy to achieve the state's moral obligations seems unreasonably cruel and counter productive if the infant's well being is the priority. Banning abortions without covering pregnancy costs seems more interested in imposing culture than in protecting the helpless.

On the other hand, the stance that one person cannot be forced to support another would seem to forbid universal healthcare. It's rare to see a 100% ethically consistent position in politics, where most decisions are based on self-interest.

> On the other hand, the stance that one person cannot be forced to support another would seem to forbid universal healthcare.

Nobody is forced to support anyone with universal healthcare. We won't (and shouldn't) send people to jail for not working. Taxes are a part of participating in the economic activity of your country and the amount you pay back into the system is mostly proportional to the amount you get out of it. Disputing the fundamental role of taxes is morally inconsistent in a Kantian sense as the income that is taxed relies on the economy enabled by the government those taxes support. There is plenty to debate about how much to tax and what to spend it on, but I can't take anyone seriously who claims taxes and government shouldn't exist.

While there is room for a range of opinion on what government should be doing, d

If you’re attached by an umbilical cord and that dependent on the womb’s environment, you are in no way individual.

If I hadn’t made it out alive, I wouldn’t care about a thing, same as I won’t care 70 years or so from now. Would have been fine with not experiencing the life I’ve had.

> If you’re attached by an umbilical cord and that dependent on the womb’s environment, you are in no way individual

A newborn is completely dependent and isn’t meaningfully any more of an individual. Also can be killed at will?

Missing the umbilical cord. Feeds via mouth, not via nutrients taken from someone’s blood. Breathes air, not oxygen taken from someone’s blood. Physiologically separate. Didn’t kill mom in childbirth.

A newborn is dependent on society. Anyone willing to take on its care can do so.

A foetus is dependent upon its mother. Specifically. One person to whom it is biologically attached. Not society generally.

Technology is advancing, but costs of transferring care are extraordinarily high, and outcomes quite uncertain.

The problem is, even if a fetus is a person, by all philosophical definitions of a person, pregnancy is only an ethical arrangement if the mother consents to the pregnancy.[1] If she does not, the fetus is, perhaps ironically, violating her human rights.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion