Mexico’s supreme court has decriminalized abortion across the country, two years after ruling that abortion was not a crime in one northern state.
That earlier ruling had set off a grinding process of decriminalizing abortion state by state. Last week, the central state of Aguascalientes became the 12th state to decriminalize the procedure. Judges in states that still criminalize abortion will have to take account of the top court’s ruling.
The supreme court wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that it had decided that “the legal system that criminalized abortion in the Federal Penal Code is unconstitutional, [because] it violates the human rights of women and people with the ability to gestate.”
Seems like big government overreach. Next thing you know they’ll be forcing everybody to have an abortion. That’s probably why so many people are fleeing that country to come here where we have the freedom to let states decide.
Why would a state - any state - have anything to do with letting a woman control her body?
Because bodily autonomy is a complete farce? Society can force conscious action and everyone cheers and thinks it’s grand (because it is), but saying that you can’t take certain actions is abominable merely because it has a slightly different psychological effect.
Controlling people’s actions is literally a core function of society. Taxation, or even contracts are all vastly more extreme violations of bodily autonomy than a state simply prohibiting a conscious choice.
Not sure about the anatomy (though I can agree that some of it is rather funny, when you think about it), but the ability to control your own body is, as I see it, one of the core liberties that can never be taken away from an able person. The ethics of “supporting” people with some mental disabilities is much more convoluted, I do not have a strong opinion there.
Would be curious to see how you do your tax returns if that violates your anatomy!
“Autonomy” not “anatomy”, very different things.
“I’m curious to see how you do your taxes if that violates your autonomy”
Easy, as I pretty clearly laid out violating autonomy is a requirement of society. Social norms require forcing people to engage in certain actions or face punishment (either literal imprisonment or social repercussions like faced by rude people.) If this is permissible, then why is merely prohibiting certain actions to be considered an unacceptable violation of bodily autonomy? Prohibiting something is no where near as severe as forcing someone to do something.
Ultimately nobody actually cares about bodily autonomy, it is simply a post hoc attempt at justifying that people ascribe moral value based solely on how they personally feel.
(A good example of this is forced blood donation, everyone apparently thinks it’s somehow reprehensible (on principle not by making medical risk arguments) even though it is only temporary harm and arguably less harmful than income tax).
That said, I do my taxes just fine, even though the state violates my bodily autonomy by forcing me to do them.
FYI, when people talk about a right to bodily autonomy they aren’t saying you aren’t allowed to mind-control people, they are saying you aren’t allowed to coerce someone since all norms and laws are enforced by coercion rather than rendering people physically incapable of violating the norms.
Oh, my bad, apologies. Scan reading sometimes leads to mistakes like that, and that one was too funny for my brain to let go.
But now it makes even less sense to me with the body thing. I would never accept someone else forcing me to do (or not do) something with my own body - and i see no reason whatsoever for anyone to accept that.
There is an issue of vaccination where some enforcement is justifiable, as there is a true risk for other people in you not doing it. How does someone’s decision of not having a child threatens you?
Any and all restrictions or instructions should be based on a rational argument, otherwise it is just a limitation of your freedom.
And given that the argument in favor of imposing the limitations in question lies in the area of someone else’s beliefs - that becomes even more ridiculous.
On the taxes side - there i can see a strong argument for it in principle, as it allows the society as a whole to do better. You want to use infrastructure built by society - you pay. Now, there is a whole other problem of how exactly the monies collected on the basis of a rational idea are spent. Holding the people in charge accountable is truly a big issue, not for this thread though.
“How does someone not having a child threaten you”
A serial killer that only targets blondes doesn’t pose any threat to me at all. I might even personally benefit from their actions. Why do I still want them to be stopped?
“I see no reason whatsoever to accept that”
But you already do. You even give vaccination as an example where it would be permitted.
You are perfectly fine with one bodily autonomy violation to save lives (vaccination), but are against another (weaker form) violation that also saves lives.
The logical resolution to this is to say that prohibiting abortion doesn’t save lives (i.e the fetus has no moral value or atleast insufficient moral value to outweigh personal feelings). But this renders the bodily autonomy argument worthless, because it is now the moral status of the fetus that matters not any idea of bodily autonomy. This pretty much establishes why I think the right to bodily autonomy is not actually accepted by anyone.
“Any and all restrictions and instructions should be based on rational arguments”
There is tons of academic papers on the immorality of abortion, of course there are tons that argue in the opposite of direction. I would consider most on both sides to have somewhat rational arguments it just depends on what premises you want to accept as true. I find the premises behind permitting abortion to be bit more far-fetched, things like mind-body dualism or continuity of mind as somehow granting greater moral value to be unsupported or impractical.
Blondes are people, fetuses are not - that is my view. Moral arguments can form opinions, not legislation.It is ok for you to hate me if you choose to do so, it however does not grant you a right to stop me doing my immoral in your view thing. That is, unless my immoral thing infringes your rights, then we can talk and see what can be done.
As mentioned, I am always keen to accept a rational argument (as in vaccination, where there is science behind), so can i please politely ask you to point me in the direction of academic studies on the immorality of abortion? Never saw one, so forgive my ignorance.
“Blondes are people fetuses are not”
First you completely missed the point of that question. You initially speculated why people should care if it is not directly harming them, this is a clear and obvious example of people caring about something that doesn’t directly harm them. Showing that your initial objection was unfounded.
Second you immediately abandoned the bodily autonomy argument, just like I pointed out you would.
“Unless my Immoral things is infringing on your rights”
Circle back to the serial killer. They aren’t infringing on my rights, how dare I object! What right do I have to enforce my morality on them?
Obviously it is permissible to enforce morality regardless of whether or not the subject likes it. The question is simply how to determine if the morality is correct, i.e consistent and well-founded.
“Moral arguments can form opinions not legislation”.
Nope, that’s literally all that legislation is. A moral system is something that determines whether or not something is good or bad. If a law declares that some action should be taken or certain actions are to be prohibited it is enforcing a moral system. (That moral system may be wildly inconsistent and contradictory but it is still a moral system).
There seems to be this popular notion ( outside of moral philosophy) that morality is somehow empirically derived. Unfortunately no matter how much you watch someone die, you will never gain any information on whether that circumstance is bad or good. Empirical facts may aid in classifying actions, but they do not create the requirements for the categories themselves. For instance you have a moral system that says that actions with property X are bad, you may use empirical facts to determine that action Y has property X and you can therefore determine that action Y must be bad. Without the initial premise that actions with property X are bad, you could observe Y and any other action and have no ability to determine if they are good or bad.
“In the direction of academic studies”
Not so much studies as arguments, since moral philosophy is not really an empirical field, but rather a rational one. You can find them in many ethics journals. A notable paper is “Why Abortion is Immoral” by Don Marquis, and if you read any papers in favor of abortion or infanticide there is generally a paper rebutting it.
Because not letting the state choose means the federal government is telling the state what to do and that’s big government overreach
There is a world outside the US, as they say… Regardless, why would a federal government enforce the control of someone’s body? There are in general 2 people involved in this, and they should be the only ones responsible for this type of decisions. Not a state, not feds.
“They should”- Very serious moral claim there.
If we are talking about 2 consenting adults - yep, this is my take on it, only these 2 are in charge, until the baby is born. Afterwards there must be some protection for the baby, so there is a role for a government. It was not always like that, but that is how, I think, it should be at this stage of society’s evolution. Another moral claim, I know. )