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Seems to me that in the opinion of many on this board, women have Bodily Autonomy when it comes to abortion but not when it comes to getting vaccinated.

By this I mean that the same group of people that lambast people for NOT embracing autonomy when it comes to abortion also lambast people for embracing autonomy when it comes to the COVID vaccine.

Surely if it's "my body my choice" then that should apply to vaccines as well as abortions.

Can anyone who is both pro-choice and pro-vaccine explain this selective use of autonomy?

TheMiddleWay 8 Dec 7
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3

Ummmm, who do you know, male or female, that has been Forcibly vaccinated?
But plenty of women, right now,are being forced to carry to term because abortion facilities are few & far between, or banned outright, as in Texas.
Not a good comparison at all IMO

6

One is your body and what you do for your life, the other is public health in a pandemic that affects all who come in contact with you this is established practice for over three hundred years, one hundred years ago during the Spanish flu failure to wear a mask resulted in imprisonment quarantine for whooping cough etc. Abortion affects your body alone covid affects everyone you come in contact with

@TheMiddleWay Exceptions are made for some specific birth defects such as ancephalia no brain develops and very few others religion dictates they should be born then later starved by only feeding sugar water, the brain stem is present allowing for breathing

4

I will not infect you with covid via an abortion. You just might infect me with covid by not being vaxed.

0

I cannot as I am pro choice for both issues. I'm glad albeit somewhat shocked (I say shocked knowing how pro vaccine you are, and I don't mean that in a bad way) that you did such a post, but I commend you for speaking up on a valid matter. Really does make one wonder, now doesn't it?

@TheMiddleWay On the abortion debate, I can respect your stance on the matter, and at least you know where you stand. Personally speaking, I am not exactly fond of selective abortion procedures, but in the end feel that it is none of my business about the choices women make in regards to their pregnancies.

On the last part of your reply, I agree wholeheartedly. Even the secular community has its share of biased individuals, but they will vehemently deny being biased though. Arguing with them is a lost cause, but can't blame you for trying I suppose.

8

Pretty simple really. Your pregnancy can’t kill me.

skado Level 9 Dec 7, 2021

@TheMiddleWay
We exist both as individuals and as members of groups. Epidemiology is a group phenomenon. It functions along group dynamics. The cumulative effect of multiple individuals not getting vaccinated contributes to the likelihood of my death.

The cumulative effect of women who choose abortion contributes nothing toward the likelihood of my death.

This is a real and significant difference.

The balance between individual rights and group rights is necessarily contentious, and intelligent people may differ on how to best strike that balance. My personal reasoning says that, however slight the margins might be, the scale tips in favor of the individual in the abortion issue, and in favor of the group in the epidemiology issue.
A woman’s pregnancy has no potential to threaten group health, but unvaxxed people, do.

@TheMiddleWay
I don't view the abortion issue as hinging on a definition of life or a determination of the presence of life. There is no question in my mind that an abortion prevents the furtherance of a potential life, or possibly ends an existing one. The idea that "life" is inherently, in and of itself, sacred has no rational or scientific basis that I can see.

This is not to say that I think nothing should be considered sacred, culturally. We humans bestow sacredness on objects and concepts that we individually feel and culturally think need protection. But we don't demonstrate a consistent belief in the literalness of that status. We take the lives of plants and animals for food. We use insecticides and herbicides liberally without hesitation, just for the pride of a flawless lawn. We stomp cockroaches and swat flies, just because 'how dare they' enter our livingspace.

Our species cheers the mass murder of fellow humans who have been designated "enemy" status, while most of us are pretty complacent about frying the occasional "mass murderer" because he wantonly ended the lives of four or more individuals we deem to have been 'innocent'.

Clearly neither our species, nor our society, nor our culture, nor any one of us individuals is consistent about our application of this perceived inherent sacredness of "life".

To my mind, the valid issue at stake is... when does the state (the group) have a legitimate interest in limiting another value that we tend to also hold as sacred - the right of individual freedom?

One pretty clear answer is when that individual's freedom poses some real threat to the safety of the entire group, such as in the vaccine issue. I can't imagine a clearer case.

The case loses a significant portion of that clarity when an act
A.) Doesn't pose a threat to the entire group.
B.) The subset of the group which is threatened is
1.) Minuscule in number compared to the number of the entire group.
2.) Was given its chance at life in the first place by the individual who is considering ending it.
3.) Has its entire existence inside of and dependent upon the body of the person considering ending it.
4.) May be threatening the life of the person whose body it inhabits.
5.) May not have gotten inside that body by consent.
6.) May not have long-term viability itself.
7.) May be facing a lifetime of hardship due to severe deformity.
8.) May pose unsustainable burdens upon a family unprepared to support it.
9.) Has insufficient cognitive development for self-awareness.
10.) Has insufficient physiological development to sustain even short-term viability outside the body of its host.
11.) Has no social history from the perspective of its own experience or the experiences of others with it.
12.) Forty other things I forgot.
C.) The interference of which constitutes an egregious breech of individual freedom by the state, with no clear, scientific or rational justification.

I say all of this not to pretend that there is no legitimate room for debate on the abortion issue, but rather to support my claim that the two issues have such a radical difference in clarity as to not be comparable.

@TheMiddleWay Yes it can unvaccinated people act as a reserve for mutations which can result in a super strain, more deadly than the current ones

@TheMiddleWay I support choice up to viability. Prior to viability the needs of the host should be Paramount.

Science tells me that 40% of people who have covid do not have any symptoms. Those people infect others and some of the people they infect die. If they had been vaccinated it's much less likely that they would go around infecting other people. As other people have responded to your inquiry about body autonomy, body autonomy stops when you become a potential threat to the public.

A woman's right to choose whether or not to continue a pregnancy does not in any way pose any threat to the general public.

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