If I attacked someone. With a knife.
Let’s say I did some damage to their liver
real bad.
And they were on life support.
Waiting for a donor liver.
100% my fault. So sorry about your liver, I’m an asshole.
(In this hypothetical)
And then the next day,
I slip in the shower and die
from a sharp blow of porcelain to the head.
Or I try to eat a cuban reuben without chewing enough and choke
on a blob of pastrami.
Or a dozen other ways I could die unexpectedly.
(I think about those a lot. Don’t you?)
So I die. Near Instant karma.
And let’s say I’m not registered to be an organ donor,
(asshole, remember)
but my liver is a perfect match for my victim.
My stab victim, waiting for a liver.
The rules say they can’t have mine.
No matter what.
Even though their injuries are totally my fault.
Even though I’m already dead, and what difference will it make.
That.
Is What Bodily Autonomy Means.
It means you can’t make someone do anything with my body I don’t consent to.
Even if I’m dead.
Even if it’s my fault it’s needed.
This is a simple, uncontroversial fact about organ donors.
We respect the bodily autonomy of corpses.
As a society.
It’s just a thing we’ve agreed on.
Bodily Autonomy.
So when someone tells a woman she isn’t allowed to terminate.
That she must incubate a baby to term
Whether she wants it or not
Whether she’s able to provide care for it or not
Whether it’s has hope of ever fully forming a brain or not
Whether it is already dead and starting to rot.
Whether it might kill her without ever having had a thought
She is being given less rights than a corpse.
It’s not about whether adoption is an option
If you force a being to gestate offspring against their will,
We have a word for that.
Livestock.
