Body Autonomy Is Protected By The Constitution
The government cannot force you to save someone else’s life against your will, not even the life of a baby
Most discussions about abortion and choice center around whether or not a fetus is a full human being with the same or greater level of rights as an actual woman. When exactly a fertilized egg becomes a true “person” is a philosophical question that has a lot of nuances and no truly definitive answer. It very much depends on who you ask. Is it the moment of conception? When a heartbeat is first detectable? When the fetus can live on its own outside the womb? Reasonable people might well disagree.
But these are not the questions that should or likely ultimately will end up informing our laws. Existing precedents around body autonomy are infinitely more important. There are no other instances in American law where the rights of one person supersede the body autonomy of someone else. The government cannot force you to give blood or bone marrow to someone else, even to save the life of a baby. You cannot take organs from a dead person without their express prior consent, no matter how many lives it might save to do so.
The fact that a corpse has more rights than a live woman in some places is an…
