Abortion: I'm a civilian, not a ship's captain

No matter how trifling the inconvenience of having your blood taken, no government has yet dared to declare that all citizens should be forced to donate their blood for the common good. And if one did, it would set off a massive debate about how far the state and medical profession has a right to intrude upon the bodily integrity of its citizens, even in a good cause. So far, all but the most repressive of states have always come down on the side of allowing individual citizens bodily integrity even at the cost of the lives of the vulnerable.

The idea that human beings should be forced to put the health and welfare of another human being before their own, is absolutely counter to any idea of individual liberty. The only instances that I can think of where human beings are supposed to prioritise other people's safety and welfare before their own and can be subject to criminal charges if they don't, are the captains of ships and the pilots of aeroplanes.**

And of course women who are pregnant with potential human beings they don't want to carry in their bodies and give birth to.

Forget all the arguments about when life begins. They're all irrelevant. It doesn't matter if life begins at birth or at 12 weeks or at quickening, as the Catholic church used to say before women frightened the Vatican horses by getting a few voting and property rights. It doesn't matter if the baby can survive outside the mother's body at 28 weeks, 24 weeks or 2 weeks. I don't care about whether you think what's in the womb is a clump of cells, a zygote, an embryo, a foetus or a baby. It is utterly irrelevant. The main issue, is not whether that's a real human being in there: it may well be, I don't bother to argue against that. My argument is that if you believe in women's essential humanity and if you believe that we have have the same rights to bodily integrity as men, then you have got to believe that we have the right to put our lives and long term welfare first, even before those of a cute little baby, if those are the terms you want to argue on.

If you don't believe in safe, legal abortion, then in effect you believe that women have a responsibility that no man ever has, unless he signs up for it, to put someone else's right to life, before her own. What clearer signal can there be, that you simply don't believe that a woman's life, is worth as much as that of a man?

The difference between captains of ships and pilots of planes and ordinary civilian women, is that the men with the uniforms get paid fortunes and have mountains of kudos and social status as part of the deal of being responsible for the lives they carry in their vessels AND THEY HAVE CHOSEN IT. Not even firefighters, police officers or soldiers in armed combat are expected to actually risk or give their own lives and safety for their comrades, though some do. And when they do, men give them medals for doing it (no-one gives a woman a medal for putting her long term health on the line by going through a pregnancy and birth she chooses, much less one she didn't choose). But no-one ever says to men in a combat or emergency situation, that they are not actually allowed to put their own lives, welfare and long-term health first and it will be a criminal offence for them to do so, because the law says that another human being has first dibbs on any safety, health and welfare available.

But that is exactly what anti-abortionists are saying to women.

this sums it up nicely