But a child is always entitled to the care of their parents. When the child is born, that care comes in the form of feeding, changing diapers, visiting the doctor, etc. When the child is unborn, that care comes in the form of dependence on the body of the mother.
Thus, we still have the problem of drawing a line. For you, effectively, the line of personhood is, "when the child is no longer physically attached to the mother." If we instead draw the line at viability, then we can simply argue that the mother owes the child a duty of care at that point.
Looks like you're rebutting an argument I didn't make. You changed my argument from the serious problem of principles regarding bodily autonomy being inconsistent with pro-life philosophy, to something about line-drawing. I'm not going to address arguments against views I did not state nor hold in the first place.
Unborn children require care that is different from born children. If you grant that a fetus can be considered a child, then you only need to recognize that a mother does have a duty to care for her child.
It's only special pleading if such pleading can't be justified. You can't just say, "God!" But given that unborn children require a different kind of care than born children, we have plenty of precedent for parents having a duty of care.
You need a strong argument explaining how a duty to care logically implies that strangers can use your blood and organs without your permission.
Consider the case of men. We jail men -take away all their rights, freedoms and control of their body- for not paying child support. They have absolutely no choice in the matter. If they engage in sex with a woman, there is always the possibility that they will be faced with a legal and financial burden they don't want. We don't give men the option of aborting this duty at any point in the pregnancy. Thus, I don't find arguments that women should get a special right to terminate a parental duty very compelling. We do control the bodies of men who don't meet this unwanted duty, thus, imposing a lesser degree of control on the woman's body (allowing the fetus to grow) seems appropriate.
A duty to care for one's child is one possible basis for demanding child support, but the profound unfairness of placing an enormous burden on one parent to meet all the needs of their child may be another reason for child support. Neither reason appears to sufficiently connect the statement "people have a duty to care for their children" to "one person's medical needs takes precedence over another person's bodily autonomy", as family courts do not and cannot legally compel fathers to donate kidneys and bone marrow to their children regardless of medical need. This only makes sense in an ethical framework where
my bodily autonomy takes precedence over whatever life-saving advantage
another might gain from my blood and organs.
cosmicaug's post below summarizes this point more succinctly.
First of all, let's be clear: the mother is not actually giving up her blood and organs. The fetus has their own. The baby is attached to the mother by the placenta where nutrients and oxygen are supplied from the mother's uterus. Finally, I think that the parental duty to provide care supersedes the mother's right to control of her body.
Errm, yes, the mother is giving up her organs to a person which is literally attached to her placenta, her blood supply, her cardiovascular system, who resides in her body and cannot removed before birth without surgery.
And that's a problem. Pro-lifers do not accept the implications of a view which says another person's medical need for blood and organs supercedes the consensual use your blood and organs. Not even the most ardent pro-lifer would argue that a parent be legally compelled to donate organs and bone marrow to their born children -- even though that scenario is a logical consequence of their view, it's the exact same demand they make regarding unborn children.
Pro-lifers cannot avoid that consequence without completely contradicting their philosophy which says that their is not meaningful moral difference between born and unborn children, only their location in relation to their mother. If an unborn child's medical needs allows it to use it's mother's blood and organs without mother's permission, then that principle logically carries over to born child whose medical needs allow it to use mother's blood and organs without her permission. Ergo, a moral duty forcing mothers to give up their organs, blood, and bone marrow to meet a born child's medical needs.
If pro-lifers accept this dystopian consequence, it would be consistent within their own ethical framework.
But they often do not accept that consequence. They behave as if a mother's duty to give up their blood and organs to meet their child's medical needs is logically dependent on the location of the fetus. So moral consideration of a child's right-to-life and right to life-saving blood and organs is
conditionally dependent on their location relative to their mother, making birth a change in location
and moral consideration.
I am honestly trying to see how pro-life principles tie together into a coherent ethic, but it's just a frustrating experience. Their principles neatly explain why a stranger can make claims on another person's blood and organs without their permission, but do not address the moral rats nest of implications that follow.
