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Comment by native_samples | Hacker News Reader

Here's the thing. It's easy to believe that one side truly believes in the right to life, at least for innocents. Being against killing, at least for non criminals/enemies, is pretty common.

The right to bodily autonomy is not believable because there weren't a whole lot of people campaigning against vaccine mandates because they were pro-bodily-autonomy.

As for your examples, surely even pro-life people don't care about "abortions" of babies that are already dead? If laws are interpretable in that way it seems like an easy wording fix. Not many people would care about that even if religious.

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There have been explicit cases of republicans holding public office saying that abortion bans should explicitly not make exceptions for ectopic pregnancies or even cases where the mother’s life depends on it in general

The people who passed the laws know damned well what they are banning. They are intentionally and explicitly banning the procedures by name. Medical professionals and the people these would affect pointed out to them the impact of banning the procedures. They don't care, they passed the laws anyway.

As for bodily-autonomy, most people I know who are pro-choice are also in favor of the vaccine because - same as abortion - they view it as a life saving medical procedure. Those who weren't did protest about bodily autonomy in relation to the vaccine mandate.

Doesn't matter if it's life saving, right? If you argue based on bodily autonomy, and then support vaccine mandates, you're not consistent regardless of what you think the vaccine does.

One doesn't have to take extreme positions to be consistent. In order to believe that someone should have bodily autonomy over continuing a pregnancy (something potentially life threatening, and definitely life altering) I don't have to believe that bodily autonomy is absolute.

Vaccines are something that touch on community health. When one person chooses not to get vaccinated they are putting everyone around them at risk. At the most extreme extent, abortion affects the potential parents, the potential life, and their families. It's a different risk calculation. A woman pursuing an abortion is making life and death decisions for (at most - because not everyone believes the fetus is a life with rights) two people. Someone not getting a vaccine in a deadly pandemic is making decisions that impact life and death for their whole community.

COVID vaccines never affected other people because they don't reduce transmission, and even if they did, the point of a vaccine is individual protection. If you think it works then it didn't matter what other people choose. And this holds true for many vaccines.

Yet, again, odd silence from the pro-choice crowd. Clearly they don't believe in choice nor bodily autonomy.

Abortion on the other hand does always affect other people, if you believe the fetus is a person.

But most importantly, yes you do have to be consistent. If you can't be consistent because you feel it requires adopting extreme positions then you need to rethink your moral code, because clearly, you may find that your position isn't as morally clear as you thought.

> Being against killing, at least for non criminals/enemies, is pretty common.

Ok then, the fetus is my enemy.

Ok, but that means that you are the fetus's enemy, and society has an obligation to choose a side in that fight to the death you are proposing, to make sure that the correct side ultimately wins.

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