• joe@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    12
    ·
    1 year ago

    I haven’t dismissed anything, except religious arguments to remove choice. I’m saying that “it’s just a bunch of cells” or “my body, my choice” are not sound arguments. A clump of cells can have rights. Rights are a human invention, not a natural thing that exists independent of humans; we can literally give anything we want legal rights, including a clump of cells. So, you can’t simply dismiss the entire concept of a zygote having rights; that is something you need to defend. The zygote certainly has rights if someone attacked a pregnant person and caused a miscarriage; they could be charged with murder. No?

    However, as I go on to say, I think it’s entirely possible to grant a zygote rights, while also acknowledging that a pregnant person’s right to bodily autonomy supersedes those rights. Similar to how someone has a right to life until they try to kill someone else, in which case, we say the rights of the attacked take precedence over the rights of the attacker. Hopefully no one believes the attacker no longer has rights. Does that make sense?