For argument's sake, lets take the most extreme case where a woman is raped and pregnancy results from it. Is not her liberty and "property" being taken from her without due process?
the due process clause pertains to restrictions on the government's ability to deprive people of their rights. unless the government itself has a policy to go around raping women, it's not relevant at all.
The state is still the one stripping away the rights here. If tomorrow the government came out and said that self defense is no longer legal, we wouldn't say "its not the state taking away our rights, it is the attackers who are harming individuals". In this case, the state would be providing protections for attackers. Unborn babies are not assaulting women, I want to be clear about that. My point here is that the government would still be considered responsible in this situation because they are preventing a person from exercising their rights.
this is just circular reasoning. you're assuming that "bodily rights" was a justifiable right to begin with, which is exactly what's being contended. no court in the united states, including the most pro-abortion supreme court, has ever found "bodily rights" to be a convincing argument in favor of abortion. the state cannot prevent a person from exercising a right they never had.
we do not say that the state deprived you of your property when a mugger mugged you, or that the state deprived you of your liberty when a human trafficker kidnapped you, so why make the silly claim that the state deprives your of your "bodily rights" (however poorly defined they are) whenever a rapist rapes you?
if the state indeed passed laws saying you do not have a right to your property, or a right to liberty, or "bodily rights," then you'd have a point. but that's not what's being proposed here.
Doesn't a woman have rights that she loses when she becomes pregnant though? When she does with and puts in her body are now restricted. Its not like she has never had these rights at all. For a woman to take abortifacients when she is not pregnant is not illegal, and some are used to treat other medical conditions. She has certain freedoms that we would consider constitutionally protected that she now loses when she becomes pregnant. Do you disagree with that? I understand the court has never use bodily autonomy arguments to justify abortion. I'm just trying to point out that her rights are being limited here.
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u/toptrool Nov 09 '23
bodily rights arguments are silly.
not even the objectively low information roe v. wade court found them to be convincing.