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Understanding "My Body, My Choice"

It seems like there is a lot of misunderstanding about what this means. So I am going to try to present a prochoice defense of it, because even some prochoicers have an issue with the slogan.

"But it's not your body and it's not your choice"

If it's not my body, then there is no issue with removing it.

"You put it there"

If the claim is that it's okay for it to be there because I put it there, then by that same logic, it's okay for me to remove it, because where ever it goes after it's removed, is where I put it.

"You consented to it being there"

Using contraceptives/birth control is you explicitly saying you do not consent to it being there.

I use my front door all the time. Using the door does not imply consent for other people to enter.

I am allowed to use my sexual organs with a consenting partner. And I am allowed to do that even if a fetus takes up residence within me and I plan to remove it. I don't need a non-existing fetuses consent to use my body. And I don't need an existing fetuses consent to deny the use of my body to it. Again, if it's not my body, I have the right to deny it my body. I don't need the permission of someone who is in my body to deny them my body. And someone's need or innocence does not give them the ability to override my human rights.

Having great need, being innocent, or my being culpable does not entitle you to my body especially if it will cause me harm. This is the entire basis for self-defense laws. And the times outside of self-defense, we do not ever expect that person take bodily harm, least of which for no gain. Things like cheek swabs for paternity testing, vaccination, blood tests for blood/alcohol level, do no harm to your body. If they did, we wouldn't be doing them (Re: medical exemption for vax.) Even with conscription, you are still fighting for what is best for yourself as a citizen of a country.*

You are entitled to your body and with that comes that you are entitled to deny someone your body. But you are not entitled to other people's bodies.

You need permission to use something you are not entitled to. You do not need permission to use something you are entitled to. If you believe that a fetus has the right to not be removed from your body and does not need your okay, then you believe it is entitled to another person's body.

This is where anti-abortion saying it is for equal rights, is wrong. That is not equal rights. You are entitled to your body and no one else's. A fetus is entitled to theirs and I am entitled to mine. It's really that simple.

*As a side note, I would also like to note the misconception that conscription shows a time where we prioritize life above BA. It actually doesn't. You don't have to fight to save lives. In fact, fighting costs lives. If you want to save lives, you do have an option: surrender. We conscribe people because we wish to protect our way of life. Conscription, which I do not agree with, is actually about protecting way of life at the direct expense of life.

Consent to sex is implied consent to pregnancy

Why? Because I can't fully control it? If we could control our ovulation 100% to where we had full control over our body's ability to become pregnant, then consent to sex would not be consent to pregnancy, now would it?

The fact that I can't fully control it means that biology plays a role in this. I don't make decisions for biology. I am not the one who wrote the programming for biology. You need to take that up with the programmer for writing faulty software.

I no more consented to it than I consented to a car accident because car accidents can happen when you drive. You might have consented to a car accident if, say, you were doing demolition derby. Or suicidal and intended to crash. But the action does not determine the consent factor. Things happen to us all the time that we don't consent to. The fact that they can happen doesn't mean you consented to them.

Since we can't fully control pregnancy 100%, that means that when we do become pregnant, it was by chance. Chance occurrences, by definition, have factors outside our control. Sex isn't gambling, wherein the entire point of gambling is to allow for fate to determine if you win or lose. Gambling isn't gambling without losing. But sex is still sex without ever becoming pregnant.

So how could we therefore have made the decision to become pregnant? And since it was just a chance occurrence, you can't say that I consented to an outcome that was uncertain. By that logic, I consented to not becoming pregnant, since that is a possible outcome.

If a possible outcome is what determines what we consent to, then we both consented to pregnancy and did not consent to pregnancy. It's illogical. And it's insensitive to those who become pregnant when they didn't intend to, and to those who don't become pregnant when they intended to.

Literally it is our wants and desires that determine what we consented to. And we shouldn't demonize people for their wants, especially not those for their own bodies.

Rape is responsible for a small fraction of abortions, so why do you bring it up?

Because it highlights something: you can get pregnant even if you don't consent to sex.

IVF does this as well. It requires no sex. And yet you can still become pregnant from it.

From this, we can glean that pregnancy is a non-consensual biological process.

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