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I recently heard the argument (as I'm sure we all have at one point or another) about the right of one person, e.g. a fetus, to use another's body without their consent, even in a non-malicious way.

Some may call me a fascist or some otherwise scary evil person who doesn't want people to have control over their bodies, but I think of it this way: (bear with me, this is hypothetical) if I were working as a doctor/surgeon and I had two patients, one who desperately needed a lung transplant and one who had two healthy lungs and would be a perfect match. Say the healthy-lunged person died, but did not leave any written consent to be an organ donor. I believe that my ethical duty would be to use one of the deceased person's lungs anyways, because 1. they don't need it and 2. the other person does need it or they'll die.

Now let's say the person with healthy lungs is just fine. You don't need both lungs to survive--many people donate one while they're still alive. While I don't think I'd go so far as to knock the person out and forcibly remove their lung, or even attempt a court order, I feel the healthy person has a moral obligation to go out of their way to save someone else's life. If someone I knew refused to donate an organ when someone's life was at stake, I wouldn't hesitate to call them an a*****e or even a murderer.

Ah, but I'm pushing my morals on someone. But what else *are* laws if not forcing morality on a society? I can yell and scream all I want about my belief that stealing is not a crime and how I don't believe in "thou shalt not steal," but is that going to get me out of punishment? Let's hope not. Why should abortion be any different? As I've argued before, abortion is not like being gay or wearing short skirts. "The Bible/Quran/whatever says it's wrong" is not the best defence against it. If it was, atheists such as myself would not be pro-life. If nothing else, humans should be able to agree that giving someone a chance at life is the right thing to do, and refusing to do so because it inconveniences you is selfish, wrong and not conducive to a peaceful society.

Your thoughts? Hehe, I can't wait to take medical ethics... whee

On the note of your last sentence, I couldn't agree more. Pro-choice is morals too. So what if we can't find theirs in a leather clad book called the Bible. It's still someone's idea of life. I don't understand why their's can be legistlated and ours cannot be.

I don't really think anyone can discuss what is moral or ethical anymore mostly due to the fact that most forms of morality are considered changeable.

The only way morals can exist, is if they existed since the beginning of time, and the fact people can say morals change kind of makes it seem that man just makes up morals to control people in that instance.

I don't know, I wouldn't call them a murderer, because when it comes to lungs, it could inhibit your ability to be normal if you lose one lung. Yes you can still survive, but you would not be as athletic and you would need to breathe much more in order to have enough oxygen.

However, this is not to say because first off, most of the time when a person does not donate their lungs and such, they are usually not at all responsible for the other person's accident. In which case, yes it may be selfish, but in honesty, for me it would depend on which organ I would have to donate.

If it was a Kidney, no problem, but donating one of my lungs could impair my ability in sports for life, not 9 months, for life.

Maybe if you shot someone. But then you would be put to death for murder.

Yeah, that was a pretty extreme example--my point, of course, being that just because you'd rather not inconvienience yourself a bit doesn't make you any less culpable if you let someone die. I knew I should have used kidneys.... gonk

The difference between having a unborn child dependant though is that the Unborn will not change your body soo much during it's occupancy that you are done for life... an abortion also does things to the body.

That's the same argument I used, but they don't like reason lol. stressed

The argument is that the government has no right to force a person to give another the use of their body, even if it is to save a life. It doesn't work though. FreeArsenal has a good point, if a woman creates a need for her body and then doesn't allow the fetus to use it, she is directly responsible for its death and should be held responsible for it, legally.