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There’s an imaginary woman who’s eight months pregnant and wants to end her pregnancy for reasons unrelated to the common exceptions to abortion bans (to prevent the death of the pregnant person, to preserve the health of the pregnant person, when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, and when the embryo or fetus has lethal anomalies incompatible with life). An imaginary doctor is willing to end her pregnancy.
These pretend humans get bandied about a lot in abortion politics. Some of us find it repugnant to debate about pretend people, along with the entire notion of “abortion politics.”
Yet American-style democracy requires lawmakers to bandy about pretend stuff all the time. When legislators make written laws, they have to think about how they’ll apply in real life, and that means looking to the future, which only exists in the imagination.
When I was a human-rights lawyer, judges constantly asked me about hypothetical people and situations and how the rule I wanted the court to adopt would apply in these pretend scenarios.
A mentor counseled me that a good way to test whether something is the right thing to do is to take it to its logical extreme. In the case of complete bodily autonomy, the logical extreme might look something like a very late-term abortion unrelated to the common exceptions to abortion bans. I’ve brought up this scenario, and people told me I was evil for even having the thought. They shamed me, shut me down, and canceled me on the spot. They said my thoughts were insulting.
Policing others’ views isn’t useful. Therefore, it’s unintelligent.
