No, the act is simply intended to remove the being currently using the woman's organs. The fact that it will die without the woman's body is unfortunate, but is not something that she can remedy without enduring an unacceptably taxing, and traditionally unrequired, physiological burden. The fact that medical technology cannot help the embryo is not the woman's fault, and can therefore not be considered neglect.
The conflict is pretty simple. The child has an inherent right to life, regardless of how it got here. The woman has rights as well, which she may be impeded from exercising while she is pregnant with the child.
This may be your view, but that has not been the tradition of this country in any other area besides pregnancy by rape. I can think of no other case where someone is, or has been, compelled by the state to provide physiological life support to a being for which they have absolutely no responsibility.
Just don’t kill the baby, since we are not allowed to go around killing people because we feel like it, or because they inconvenience us.
We are allowed to kill people when they present a direct threat to us. A forced pregnancy, created entirely without any kind of invitation, is a particularly aggressive form of physical assault (one that lasts for 9 months and could cause the woman any number of health problems). The woman is more than justified, according to our traditions of personal liberty, to have the being effectuating the assault removed from her body.
It’s about having your rights abridged in order to minimize the harm caused by the rights of two persons being in conflict.
The woman, a person with rights who existed before the embryo, is in a state of being, essentially, assaulted by the embryo. Again, the law allows use of force in cases of self-defense. If that force ends up being lethal, one is still generally justified in using it, if it is necessary to stop the assault. So, I still fail to see how your position is consistent with our traditions regarding personal liberty and rights of self-defense.
“No, the act is simply intended to remove the being currently using the woman’s organs.”
You can’t divorce the procedure from the killing of the child, which is a direct and inevitable consequence of it. Otherwise, I could say, remove a ladder that a workman was using, causing him to fall to his death, and I would not be guilty of murder. All I was intending was to remove the ladder!
“The fact that it will die without the woman’s body is unfortunate, but is not something that she can remedy without enduring an unacceptably taxing, and traditionally unrequired, physiological burden.”
An “unacceptably taxing” burden is simply not a just cause to kill another human being. If that is the logic that you want to follow, then you are one step away from euthanizing the eldery and handicapped. In fact, if you go back and read some eugenics publications back from their “golden age”, you’ll find plenty of references to “unacceptable burdens”.
“This may be your view, but that has not been the tradition of this country in any other area besides pregnancy by rape.”
It really doesn’t matter what the traditions are, but I’d still say you are wrong on this point. Our legal system has very often used the exact same type of arguments when judging cases of conflicting rights. In fact, I’d posit that it is the most often used method of determining those cases.
“I can think of no other case where someone is, or has been, compelled by the state to provide physiological life support to a being for which they have absolutely no responsibility.”
Of course you won’t find any specific instances which match up exactly with this one, since this is a unique situation that has no exact parallels. There is no other situation I can think of that would create a conflict of rights which matches the one created by this one in such a way to demand a similar judgement. However, that fact in no way detracts from the validity of the judgement, nor is there any reason to expect it would.
“We are allowed to kill people when they present a direct threat to us.”
Indeed, we are allowed to kill people in those situations.
“A forced pregnancy, created entirely without any kind of invitation, is a particularly aggressive form of physical assault (one that lasts for 9 months and could cause the woman any number of health problems).”
Hold your horses there. A physical assault is a pretty specific thing. You can’t simply call a pregnancy, wanted, unwanted, or forced, a physical assault, anymore than I can call a horse a donkey, and expect other people to accept that. An assault requires an attacker, as well as intent. Who is the attacker here? The rapist? The baby? If it’s the baby, then where is the intent? If it’s the rapist, then what is the baby, a weapon? This is a pretty huge leap of logic here that I’m not willing to accept.
Also, the principle of self defense is restricted by the idea of lawful or necessary force. You do not have a right to simply kill anyone who makes you uncomfortable, or may pose a threat to you. There must be an actual threat or actual violence that would cause a reasonable person to fear for their lives, if you wish to exercise a wilfully lethal level of self defense. A reasonable person does not consider a normal pregnancy a threat to their life, so your appeal to lethal self defense fails on that standard alone.