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Imagine you are in a people group that the court decided are free to be killed at someone else’s discretion and you have no legal recourse or advocate. Would you accept that for minority groups, groups of any other association? If you are not the one killing or being killed does that mean it affects no one?


There already are that group - recipients of organ donations. If you or I decide to sign up on a match list, are tested for compatibility, and are selected, we have no legal obligation to proceed with the donation. You or I could be in the operating room side by side with the recipient and object moments before being anesthesized. Again, no legal obligation. Even if it should mean the recipient dies. It doesn't mean you are an asshole, or that it violates your ethical code, but still no legal obligation. So yes, we already have the concept, it's simply not evenly distributed.


In that situation medical professionals are doing everything they can to keep that person alive. If there is another option besides the one donor found it will be used.

Fetuses aren’t granted the right to “pursue happiness”. Abortion doesn’t absolve a mother of obligations while giving the child a chance to part ways amicably. As the potential organ donor you cannot choose to actively terminate the life of the recipient, they are free to continue on until they can no longer.


Those have no bearing on the autonomy of the donor. The ethicalness of declining to donate isn't contingent on support of medical professionals nor the concept of active or passive action.

What does supervene on the ethicalness of the action is autonomy. Bodily autonomy gives a donor the right to back away at the last minute, not the concept of passive action or medical support. I'm not disagreeing that those exist, but they don't lay the foundation for the ethicalness of the action - bodily autonomy does. No one, not even the government, has more say over one's body than oneself.


Parents have an obligation to the care and development of their children. There are plenty of parents who are found guilty of negligence. That is more appropriate than the donor concept.


Parents are not legally obligated to donate their organs to their children even if it would result in saving their child's life. The reasoning behind this is that people, including parents, have bodily autonomy.

The donor concept is a perfectly valid parallel. I can understand that someone wouldn't like it if it challenges their conclusions, but that's sort of the point. No one, not even the government, has more autonomy over ones body than oneself.


It really sounds like you’re attempting to conflate minority groups with undeveloped fetuses. This is not a good argument in your favor.


In what way, exactly? The historical idea that some people groups have less rights than others? That certainly seems to be what the pro-choice position is. Can you prove the exact point of “viability”, because I can assure you that it is much earlier than was thought in 1973. Do you think it’s a good idea to argue that even though society has continually made egregious mistakes in assigning personhood to humans that we definitely have it right this time and this group of people is, in fact, not really people?

Edit to add: racial minority is just one way that in power groups have oppressed out of power groups, but that is not a unique delineation. Often it’s the most visibly obvious, but humans have done a great job of dehumanizing others based on just about any demographic feature you might want to choose. In American history there is ample example of racial discrimination, but there is also religious, gender, age, physical or mental ability, political affiliation, etc. I don’t really see this as any different from those. Choose a reason why some group isn’t “human” enough and that makes them fair game to do whatever you want. It’s your choice to pick and choose the features you think are necessary to treat a growing group of human cells as human or not. I just think it’s pretty regressive to exclude someone because they aren’t developed to your standard of worth.




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