Mothers vs corpses, bodily autonomy

[sparr]

Our society refuses to take organs from a corpse without the person's consent, even when it would save multiple lives. We refuse to take blood or bone marrow from an unwilling donor, even when it would save a life or cure a disease.

However, we are quite willing to subject a woman to months of pain, risk of injury or death, and mental trauma in order to preserve the life of one fetus.

This analogy has been a commonly occurring meme in pro-choice internet discussion communities recently, and it's an amazingly good one. It's so good that my powers of devil's advocacy are failing me. I need someone more creative than me, or a real anti-abortion advocate, to answer this question for me...

Why does a corpse have more right to bodily autonomy than a pregnant woman? Why do we give the dead body more rights than we give the living person?

PS: No arguments here about whether a fetus is alive, please. That's another issue for another thread. For the purpose of this discussion, I will concede that a fetus is a living person.

Comments

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Short answer would be political power.

[xochitl.livejournal.com]

It seems like they are overwhelmingly religiously motivated to "keep women in their places." They want people with uteruses to be relegated to breeding stock for Jesus. If we're stuck at home with kids we won't be out voting or becoming CEO's. (I don't think I've ever seen a secular argument against abortion, other than very late term abortions where there may be sentience and viability outside the womb.)