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Comment by ch4s3 | Hacker News Reader

> Donating blood != killing a fetus

I don't think that's the argument the earlier post is making. They are arguing that you cannot be compelled to do something to save some else's life even if it won't harm you, and doubly so without due process.

However, I think viewing someone's body as their own property is a better way to frame this. If you decide a fetus is trespassing in your body, where should the state intervene? The state couldn't force you to harbor someone in your home during a winter storm, even if you left your door unlocked and kicking them out would surely result in them freezing to death. If you believe that a fetus has adverse rights against the body it's growing inside of, then you need to make that case.

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> I don't think that's the argument the earlier post is making. They are arguing that you cannot be compelled to do something to save some else's life even if it won't harm you, and doubly so without due process.

Choosing not to kill a fetus != saving someone else's life

Using the two interchangeably is like building a house on top of sand

Following the viewpoint of the parent commenter, you are not choosing to kill the fetus. You are choosing to stop letting the fetus have residence inside your body (your property) and choosing to stop providing it with free nourishment. It's the lack of the fetus's ability to fend for itself that causes it to perish.

This is in line with my argument, but I actually mean something more direct than that. I mean you have the right to kill someone living inside of you, because you have property rights over your body and rights to the security of your person. Before viability, the only means of evicting a fetus, or in other words securing your person, is to kill the fetus. I think that is a fundamental right.

Just as you have the right to defend your home with lethal force, you also have the right to evict by lethal force a fetus.

I don't think it does us any good to shy aways from the uncomfortable aspects of t he free exercise of these rights.

That's precisely why I think an argument from property rights and self-ownership is more morally, legally, and philosophically sound, as I said. Your body is the most intimate and important property you have, to be secure in your person is one of the most fundamental rights. Being forced to host another life within your body and an infliction of suffering by the state, and in my view a violation of the right to security in one's person. I think that is a right that supersedes the rights any fetus may have, as unfortunate as we may feel the outcome to be.

Moreover, there are a lot of places where we morally and legally permit people to kill, that doesn't mean that we like killing or condone it in general.

As an aside, I appreciate that you’re engaging in good faith. I’m sure you arrive at your position through conviction, even though I strongly disagree.

> If you decide a fetus is trespassing in your body,

I think I remember the UN Charter on the Rights of the Child stating that (1) children are not the property of their parents and (2) parents have a responsibility for its well-being.

I’m not arguing that children are property, but rather your own body is. When a born child leaves your body, then they can no longer infringe upon your right of self ownership. I don’t see a conflict here.

I think you mean this document:

https://treaties.un.org/doc/Treaties/1990/09/19900902%2003-1...

A couple of comments on this:

1. The Convention document doesn't expressly address it, but instructs in several places that the rights enumerated exist for children 'from birth', implying they do not apply to a potential child before it's born.

2. The United States is a signatory, but did not ratify this, and is not subject to it.

I would add that rights don’t flow from documents but rather need to be built up from philosophical argument. Perhaps they’re natural, discovered, or achieved but in any case I think we have to reason towards expansive and philosophically sound rights.

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