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by danaris 1452 days ago
If abortion is murder, then is refusing to donate your kidney when someone else needs it to live also murder?

Is refusing to donate blood, bone marrow, etc, murder?

Is not mandating the donation of viable organs after death murder?

None of these things are required of people, in the name of bodily autonomy. None of these inactions are considered murder. And yet you expect women to donate their bodies for 9 months to something that is not yet a person, and take the very, very real risk of injury, permanent disability, or death, and the near-certainty that their bodies will never be the same again, to support what you call a human life.

The logic does not follow. It does not matter whether life begins at conception, at first heartbeat, at differentiated brain development, or at birth: In no case other than pregnancy is a human being societally expected or legally required to give even a part of their body to keep another human being alive, regardless of how safe the procedure may be.

3 comments

Abortion is action/active/doing harm. Refusing to donate is inaction/passive/allowing harm. The distinction is significant, search 'passive vs active killing'. There is also more structural / 'algorithmic' solution for it in St. Aquinas' Double Effect Principle. Hint: doing harm is never moral.
Positive and negative rights are different. There is a negative right to life, there is no positive right to life. Ergo, you are forbidden from actions that cause somebody's death in general and you are not compelled to actions that prevent somebody's death in general. Existence of a negative rights does not imply a corresponding positive right.
Give this man a cigar!