Rex Kerr
2 min readAug 30, 2022

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You keep ascribing to me positions that I do not hold, and you keep coming up with scenarios that avoid the key point.

The only relevant scenario is this: a woman is healthy, her fetus is healthy, and she is at N weeks of pregnancy. Should she ever be required to deliver the child instead of have an abortion? If yes, at what N?

This is what is required to establish the principle.

I think your answer is: she should never be required to deliver the child. She can have an abortion whenever she wants. As a practical matter, when N gets close to 40, the baby will be delivered by C-section, at which point it'd be infanticide not abortion if you then wanted to kill it. However, if she could find someone who would use another technique that resulted in the death of the fetus, that would be perfectly fine, because the woman has an absolute right to decide what happens to her body, and as an extension, gets to decide whether a fetus presently dependent on her survives or is terminated.

But your answer also might be: if it is as safe as any other option, she should be required to deliver the child, and then the child can survive or not, but if the mother doesn't want that to be her concern, it isn't. If a provider were to offer to kill rather than deliver the child, that would be murder.

You've never really been clear enough. I think one time when you said you had answered the question (you hadn't), you clarified by giving the first answer (maybe).

Anyway: would I be okay with some things that might require me to give up my bodily integrity? Yes. Absolutely--if there was good reason. That would be fine. Having responsibilities, even major ones, is part of being an adult in a society. The immature, selfish, or anti-social might not think so, but there's really no other way to make a robust society work. If there were good reasons for those responsibilities to include things that impeded upon bodily integrity, so be it.

Mandatory blood donation sounds like a decent candidate. It's quick, low-risk, and important. If we were unable to get enough volunteer donations, and consequently people were dying, it would be a good candidate for a mandate. And, unlike terminating a pregnacy, this would be violating a negative right, which is generally considered much less acceptable.

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Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

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