Can we agree that women are entitled to bodily autonomy?

[msrisotto]

We are allowed to impose boundaries on who we have sex with, who we get naked in front of, who we spend time with with no justification required. No one is entitled to anything from me. Women's rights are human rights.

The "world famous violinist" argument is a ridiculous point and is in no way comparable to disapproving of a woman smoking when pregnant

It's not meant to be it's about abortion rights

And in my opinion, as a supporter of the right to choose, still a fatuous argument.

You have the right to judge anyone who is doing something you disapprove of. However, if it is within the law you do not have the right to stop them.

You have the right to judge anyone who is doing something you disapprove of. However, if it is within the law you do not have the right to stop them.

And that's the thing, isn't it?
Those who view women as subhuman, as deserving less rights than a corpse (for a corpse will not have organs taken away if the person did not consent to it while still alive), want, and in most countries actually managed to have it written into law that women have no bodily autonomy.

But the original topic of the thread was about women's right to choose who we get naked in front of.

That right is being chipped away before we ever fully succeeded in having it.

As far as I know, women never actually had the right to have only female doctors and midwives present during a birth no matter what. You can have a homebirth, but if you need a cesarean section, will you be guaranteed a female surgeon doing it? No, you won't.
Same with all other operations that require you to be naked.

Okay, I got carried away. Point is, now people pretend that they don't know fucking exactly what we mean when we say that we only want to get naked in front of other females.
And/Or take offense at us explaining what, exactly, we mean by female even though they fucking KNOW and are well aware of what kind of people have been oppressed under patriarchy for at least two thousand years, and it is not the bepenised kind of person.

... the violinist argument is plagiarism... coff.

No one is entitled to anything from me.

I agree wholeheartedly.

There are now regulations in place regarding getting finance because of previous scandals that almost led to a world finance meltdown. The consent forms you now fill in are clear and explicit. They have to be.

The same agency should be applied to bodily autonomy. An understanding that consent is sacred and should be enshrined in our conscious decisions that we make when it comes to human interactions.

The violinist is a famous argument, I did not claim it as my own.

The violinist argument comes from a piece by Janet Radcliffe Richards back in the 1980s (I first read it in a collection of essays on applied ethics published by OUP).

It's a very thoughtful discussion of the idea that even were we to concede the anti-abortion claim that the foetus is a person and has a right to life, we would still have to balance its rights against other people's (specifically the mother's), and that rights short of the right to life (such as the right to bodily autonomy) could still trump the foetus's alleged right to life. It's a good essay, which I'd recommend to anyone. (Yes, the violinist example is far-fetched - it's meant to be; but Radcliffe Richards works her way through a whole set of sci-fi type thought experiments to examine things like the anti-abortion argument that "we know that contraception fails; therefore in having consensual sex you knowingly open yourself to the possibility of getting pregnant; therefore you have given up the right to have an abortion if your contraception fails," asking questions like "how much of every-day life is a person supposed to give up because of a hypothetical risk of pregnancy - for instance, are they supposed to live in a sexless marriage because contraceptive failure is a possibility?").

If people pregnant ( obvs a woman in this case ) wish to smoke drink be obese that is entirely up to them - their own autonomy . There is no outright right to a female doctor on the NHS and nor should there be .

Jeepers - I dissapprove of smoking in general. I'm not going to make an exception for pregnant women!

As far as I know, women never actually had the right to have only female doctors and midwives present during a birth no matter what. You can have a homebirth, but if you need a cesarean section, will you be guaranteed a female surgeon doing it? No, you won't
Same with all other operations that require you to be naked

Are you suggesting these rights should exist?

I think it's absolutely right that we choose who can touch us, who can have sex with us etc.

I think a baby has a right from conception, to a healthy environment and this is supersedes any woman's right so smoke etc.

*to smoke

Looking at the question again

We are allowed to impose boundaries on who we have sex with, who we get naked in front of, who we spend time with with no justification required

If that is intended to include "who is staffing the hospital theatre during an operation" then , no, there should not be a right to insist on a female surgeon.

No, women can't decide who's staffing a hospital. But if a woman wants to turn down medical intervention on that basis (even if that means there is a risk she will die in child birth) she should have the right to do so. I may feel she would be totally unhinged to do so, you might well feel the same, but she should still have that right.

The right to bodily autonomy extends to include declining treatment if no female staff are available. However unwise that decision might be, if someone has capacity to make that decision, they can because they have bodily autonomy.

Why are some people so quick to think up scenarios where women should be denied choice?

Why are some people so quick to think up scenarios where women should be denied choice?

Vestal raised the issue that women never actually had the right to have only female doctors and midwives present during a birth no matter what. You can have a homebirth, but if you need a cesarean section, will you be guaranteed a female surgeon doing it? No, you won't.
Same with all other operations that require you to be naked

She hasn't said if she thinks this should be a right.

@msrisotto I agree with your premise but the example you gave at 12:40 is not in anyway shape or form relatable to unborn foetuses.
1-both you and the violinist have rights. Whether one has more rights to the other person is another thing.
2-the foetus has no rights. It's rights only begin from the moment it's born and becomes a baby human being.

What I would say is that the foetus only seem to cause problems when it comes to the policing of the female body. What I find astounding is that in most countries, if not all, women get punished for either having an abortion early or late in pregnancy.
Where as men can kick a woman, punch, poison a pregnant woman and the foetus dies and the only crime is that done to the woman. With male crimes the foetus is never looked as a person with rights but it does with women and should be protected. (This includes the uk).

I think if the law is to apply to one set of sex, it should apply to all. If you kick cause an accident and a pregnant woman dies, there should be two charges and that should include the foetus until women are given bodily autonomy.

I would also, say that China is no better with its one child policy and how women are forced to have abortions for subsequent pregnancies and their choices monitored.

What I would say though is that anyone who decides to continue a pregnancy and decide to put chemicals into their bodies and in the long run the foetus gets damaged, and if that can be proven, the child should have rights to sue that parent for continuing a pregnancy if they knew they were not going to make an effort in looking after them. I don't think children born with alcohol and drug problem is right if it could have been prevented. Probably this where I differ from most people on bodily autonomy.

Quencher some US states do apply double homicide rules. English law has a law of child destruction which applies to the deaths of some unborn babies. I don't know how it works.

We can owe duties to future persons, for instance we should make efforts to minimise climate change for the sake of our descendants. excellent point.

As far as I know, women never actually had the right to have only female doctors and midwives present during a birth no matter what. You can have a homebirth, but if you need a cesarean section, will you be guaranteed a female surgeon doing it? No, you won't.
Same with all other operations that require you to be naked. Is this a problem? What would matter to me is wether the surgeon was good at their job or not. I was born naked and prefer for people to not judge my nakedness. The naked body should not be shameful or used for sexual purpose u less I agree to it. When I was in labour all I cared about was the baby being out and safe. The sex of the purpose helping me did not matter. When I go to the gp and they need to look at my naked body, I just plonk myself on table. I have no fear as long as I trust that person as medical person to do what is needed. I would rather my issue was sorted out than wait.
I would also, assume I would be the same even if I had the choice of doctors. Female or male does not matter. It only matters when the sexes are being judged on job titles and wether females can do the job or not. Or how many female S they can hire.

If I have got it wrong and do jot understand the extent of this please explain.

@LassWiTheDelicateAir I don't think the uk does that. It is why I became aware of it, I read about it somewhere. I will find out to what extent but I don't think it's applied when that happens here.

It didn't even take me long to find one. The same law that applies to late abortion is what applies to men who intended to punch their girlfriends and wives and the foetus dies. You have to prove he wanted to kill the foetus and that can almost be impossible unless you have evidence of them saying it or some sort of evince. Only the woman matters in this case because the foetus has no rights. Case stated below.

The lawyer for a teenager who repeatedly punched his pregnant girlfriend in the stomach has told Newsbeat it's too hard to convict people of harming unborn children.
Dusan Bako, 18, from Oldham, has been sentenced to four years and eight months in a young offenders institute after admitting GBH. He assaulted her last August.
The 16-year-old was seven months pregnant.
She lost her baby but a charge of child destruction was dropped.
Bako, who wants to be rapper, had become angry because her phone was switched off.
His defence lawyer, Alison Mafham, can't talk specifically about her client's case but told Newsbeat she believes there is a loophole in the law.

"Whatever moral standpoint you take, in the eyes of the law an unborn child is not a person, so you can't be charged with murdering an unborn child and you can't be charged with assaulting an unborn child," Alison explains.
A law of child destruction applies to the deaths of some unborn babies, though, and carries a life sentence. Legal abortion is an exception.
But only 16 people have been found guilty of child destruction in 11 years in England and Wales, despite Alison claiming to see more and more attacks on pregnant women.
"The prosecution has to prove not only have you killed a child, capable of being born alive, but you intended to kill it - so you wanted that unborn child dead - and that's quite a hard thing to prove," she says.

If an attacker's intention was to harm an unborn baby rather than kill it, or if they wanted to hurt or kill its mother, the law doesn't recognise any offence against the unborn child.

www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/32332040/too-hard-to-convict-people-of-harming-unborn-babies

Yes I agree, the violinist example is based on accepting the false assumption that foetuses have rights. They don't, but even if they did, it still wouldn't overrule my right not to be obliged to them.

who we spend time with with no justification required

I don't fully agree with this, as I can think of multiple scenarios where associating with certain people is dangerous or ill-advised or disrespectful. But as a general principle, I think I know what you mean.

On smoking etc during pregnancy, it's worth noting that SS can and do become heavily involved with pregnant women who abuse drink and drugs to the degree that they are likely to be causing harm. Someone who is that dependent upon drink or drugs is unlikely to be able to care adequately for the baby once born, so SS involvement will usually continue until the mother stops the harmful behaviour or the child is removed. I don't believe that SS have powers to insist that a woman be forceably placed into a rehab centre or similar to prevent harm to the unborn child, though

I think a baby has a right from conception, to a healthy environment and this is supersedes any woman's right so smoke etc.

So who's going to draw up the list then? At what point does the woman't right to do something loose out to the foetus's right to a healthy environment?

I'm obese (with 2 healthy kids) - should I have been forced to have a contraceptive implant so I couldn't conceive them since research shows they are more likely to have certain health problems? At what point does the increase in risk become me risking them?

What about car travel? Is it OK to risk the foetus, as long as I'm going to the shops to buy healthy food, but a trip to M&S for new pants should wait until it's born?

I can't see any way to legislate against body autonomy that isn't just a flat fiat with arbitrary rules. These rules in place because apparently women would be out aborting 38 week pregnancies if it was legal (clue, no, no they wouldn't). It just doesn't stand up to reason. There's no need to legislate against women smoking in pregnancy, because the vast, vast majority don't and those that do need support, not criminalising.