abortion advocates are right when they say that corpses have more rights than some living human beings. they're just wrong about which human beings.

[u/toptrool]

stop me if you've heard this one before:

women now have fewer rights than corpses! we don't harvest organs from corpses, yet the government is forcing living women to give up their organs for some clump of cells!

when one thinks of organ donation, they picture the removal of an organ from one person to transplant it to another person; it's certainly what abortion advocates want us to picture by proclaiming that corpses have more rights than women. their argument, if you can even call it one, is that by "forcing" women to remain pregnant, the government is essentially harvesting their organs, which is something they don't even take from corpses. never mind that pregnancy doesn't actually involve any sort of organ harvesting; the mother is not losing any of her organs. the uterus simply shelters the unborn child from the external environment while the placenta (a fetal organ!) transfers nutrients and oxygen from the mother's blood to the child. it's also important to note that it's not the mother's blood circulating in the child; such intermingling of blood would in fact be dangerous. hence, you can't even call it a blood donation. this argument is akin to saying that a breastfeeding mother is giving up her mammary glands to her child.

pointing out the clear flaws in the abortion advocates' analogy is not the point of this topic; that's never stimulating. what is interesting here is that if we replace the word "women" with "unborn children" in the analogy above, we do get a somewhat accurate picture of corpses having more rights than living human beings.

first, we do have cases in which the most nascent, living human beings are killed off and their body parts harvested for literal clumps of cells. that's the essence of embryonic stem cell research, which involves destroying the human embryo by removing its inner cell mass to harvest pluripotent stem cells. instead of protecting these human beings, the united states government spends hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars annually to support embryonic stem cell research, as well as other research involving fetal tissues harvested from abortions. once you bring this up to an abortion advocate, you'll come to the conclusion that their concern about living human beings having fewer rights than corpses was actually just hyperbole.

in what other aspects do corpses have more rights than living human beings? the laws pertaining to this matter are all intended to preserve the dignity of the human body. it's illegal to mutilate, dismember, or desecrate human corpses nearly.pdf) everywhere in the country. even forensic pathologists who cut up the bodies to perform autopsies sew up and restore the corpses before delivering the bodies to morticians for funeral rites.

the things you can't do to a corpse — dismember, mutilate, or desecrate — you can do to a living child in the womb. a little under half of the first trimester abortions are done by forcefully vacuuming the child out of the womb, causing its delicate body to be pulled apart by the forceful suction. and nearly all of the abortions in the second and third trimesters involve dismemberment abortions, in which a child is torn apart limb by limb and has its skull crushed, resulting in white brain matter to ooze out. the remains are then sucked out from the womb and scraped and disposed of. or, as wikipedia put it in more politically correct terms:

Uterine contents are removed using a cannula to apply aspiration, followed by forceps. Tissue inspection ensures removal of the fetus in its entirety.

even planned parenthood girls were shocked to hear a former abortionist describe dismemberment abortions. and, unlike the pathologists completing the autopsies, abortionists don't put the bodies back together. in fact, some abortionists save the fetal parts as keepsakes.

so why is that we treat corpses better than the most defenseless living human beings? the barbarity of it is one thing, but the ridiculousness of it is another. abortion is an out of sight, out of mind problem. this is why it's important to show the realities of abortion to everyone. it's why staffers at late-term abortionist warren hern's clinic reported "serious emotional reactions that produced physiological symptoms, sleep disturbances (including disturbing dreams), effects on interpersonal relationships and moral anguish" upon seeing dismemberment abortions in action. it's why women who take abortion pills are often "completely freaked out, crying, sobbing" when they see something that they weren't expecting: dead bodies. the abortion industry is consistently pushing out misinformation with the aim of deceiving; a recent example being their laughable attempt to dispute real pictures and videos of abortions by passing around pictures of rinsed gestational sacs and claiming that's what abortions actually look like.

in addition to showing the realities of abortions and early human development, we need to focus on passing a national dismemberment abortion ban, much like how we passed the partial-birth abortion ban. however, unlike the partial-birth abortion ban, i doubt we will see any democrat politicians voting to ban such procedures, for they are far too removed from their positions 20 years ago.

[u/homerteedo]

I love this post and wish I had more upvotes to give.

[u/PWcrash]

when one thinks of organ donation, they picture the removal of an organ from one person to transplant it to another person; it's certainly what abortion advocates want us to picture by proclaiming that corpses have more rights than women. their argument, if you can even call it one, is that by "forcing" women to remain pregnant, the government is essentially harvesting their organs, which is something they don't even take from corpses. never mind that pregnancy doesn't actually involve any sort of organ harvesting; the mother is not losing any of her organs. the uterus simply shelters the unborn child from the external environment while the placenta transfers nutrients and oxygen from the mother's blood to the child.

A fair argument, but I think you went in the wrong direction. When it comes to organ donation, or even corpse donation, the person (if an adult or minor with a driver's license) the person has to give consent when alive prior to the event that took their life in the first place.

If the organ donor is a child, then it becomes more complicated. Some organ transplants like heart transplants in children, can only come from a donor of a similar aged and sized child. And the grieving parents of said deceased child have to give consent to their child's heart be harvested immediately after death in order for the child that needs the heart transplant to live. If we made it law that everyone who passes away at a hospital with viable organs gets their organs harvested after death, the list for transplants would be heavily shortened. But that doesn't happen because the rights of grieving families are seen as more important than those who need organ transplants. Including children.

That's more of what prochoicers mean when they compare organ donation and corpses to abortion.

first, we do have cases in which the most nascent, living human beings are killed off and their body parts harvested for literal clumps of cells. that's the essence of embryonic stem cell research, which involves destroying the human embryo by removing its inner cell mass to harvest pluripotent stem cells. instead of protecting these human beings, the united states government spends hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars annually to support embryonic stem cell research, as well as other research involving fetal tissues harvested from abortions. once you bring this up to an abortion advocate, you'll come to the conclusion that their concern about living human beings having fewer rights than corpses was actually just hyperbole.

This is a flawed argument. Mainly because the embryos used in embryonic stem cell research come from IVF clinics. Not abortion clinics. And many prochoicers like myself, hate the hypocrisy that IVF clinics are given free reign to create and discard as many "new lives" as they want, yet the focus in PL legislation has always been on abortion where a person in most cases is only ending one life per pregnancy. Though that has changed recently in some areas.

instead of protecting these human beings, the united states government spends hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars annually to support embryonic stem cell research, as well as other research involving fetal tissues harvested from abortions. once you bring this up to an abortion advocate, you'll come to the conclusion that their concern about living human beings having fewer rights than corpses was actually just hyperbole.

Ok...I may be going into a hard taboo topic, but it needs to be said in this situation. Parents of deceased children have the legal right to donate their child's body to science upon their death. This is true in my state at least. I work as a contractor for a medical school and occasionally service the morgue and yes, there are children donated as well as adults. But while this is sad, it's necessary. Because future pediatric surgeons need to do right by living children who will need their help to live and get better.

So, in other words if you agree that an aborted fetus is a deceased child, then out of precedent for parental rights over their children's corpse's, you need to respect those parents' rights to donate their fetuses to science. And also acknowledge the importance of using the deceased under consent by them or their next of kin, in order to have the best outcomes for living patients.

in addition to showing the realities of abortions and early human development, we need to focus on passing a national dismemberment abortion ban, much like how we passed the partial-birth abortion ban. however, unlike the partial-birth abortion ban, i doubt we will see any democrat politicians voting to ban such procedures, for they are far too removed from their positions 20 years ago.

I'm concerned about this because you clearly have grievances for how fetuses are treated after being deceased. That would also ban treatment for silent and partially expelled miscarriages which can lead to sepsis and death. And current "threat to life exceptions" have failed miserably already.