Quote:
Originally Posted by Kael
[ If that little bundle of cells barely starting to differentiate is a human life, the state has the same prima facie obligation to protect that life as it does for any other.
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I think this is the most that could follow, but presumably something akin to personhood would also be needed; "human life" broadly applies to a shed skin cell, too, and doesn't mean much to the state on its own. But even if we read "person" for "human life" -- a huge allowance -- the p.f. protection from the state is widely seen as defeated in precisely cases like pregnancy, for reasons argued most vividly and famously by Judith Jarvis Thomson: the state's mandate to look out for the well-being of an adult citizen does not plausibly extend to compelling me to remain hooked up to that citizen by tubes for 9 months, not even if it would kill that citizen for me to disconnect the tubes.