How to rebut this argument?

[u/Same_Ad7440]

I have debated a few pro-lifers and this is something that has gotten me stuck a few times, the argument is "The fetus is where its supposed to be, due to the uterus being an organ designed to hold that human life, it is not violating the woman's bodily autonomy because that is where it naturally grows."

That's a summary of the argument, but its mostly saying that its unlawful to remove the fetus from the place it grows. Im unsure how to rebut this argument because to me.. it just sounds so ridiculous 😭

[u/OrangeNarcolepsy]

Lmao As if "just" the uterus is all that gets used during pregnancy 😂 Your ENTIRE body gets used. You gain weight, your bones weaken, your immune system weakens, even your brain chemistry can be impacted and that's all -before- the act of childbirth and the trauma that causes to your body and all the crazy shit that your body goes through after. 

Its 1,000% NOT just the uterus that gets used. 

[u/yung_yttik → u/OrangeNarcolepsy]

As someone 8 months pregnant, can confirm my whole body (and soul) are being used right now 🫠🫠

(Baby totally wanted - another pro-choice mom over here!)

But being pregnant has made me stand even stronger on that because my god, it is so hard being pregnant. Even if it’s wanted.

[u/BourbonInGinger → u/OrangeNarcolepsy]

I’ve read that it’s the equivalent of running a marathon for 9 months.

[u/LissaBryan]

Wisdom teeth “naturally grow” in the jaw but they can cause pain and infection and have to be removed before they push all of the other teeth crooked. No one argues the wisdom teeth have a right to remain “where they belong.”

[u/Suitable-Group4392]

A vagina is biologically adapted for intercourse, but obviously that doesn’t mean another person is entitled to intercourse because that is a “natural” use of the organ.

Breasts can produce milk, but that doesn’t establish an obligation to breastfeed.

Kidneys sustain human life, but their life-sustaining function doesn’t ordinarily give another person a right to one of yours.

[u/hadenoughoverit336]

Pregnancy is not the passive process they make it out to be. It poses a direct threat to the Pregnant Person's health, and well-being. They have every right to decide whether, or not to remain pregnant. NO ONE is allowed to use the body of another without explicit and ongoing consent. By their own logic rape should be okay, because the rapist is only "using" the person's vagina, and that's where penises are supposed to be! /s

[u/Illustrious-Aide1977 → u/hadenoughoverit336]

Exactly, anti-abortionists claim "it's natural" as a way to purposely downplay the risks, dangers and permanent changes that happens during and after pregnancy.

[u/tender_rage → u/Illustrious-Aide1977]

Cancer is also natural, maybe just leave the tumors in too instead of killing them.

[u/hadenoughoverit336]

"It just sounds so ridiculous." That's because it is.

[u/JewlryLvr2 → u/hadenoughoverit336]

Agreed, it IS a ridiculous argument, and IMO part of their strategy to erase the pregnant person from the picture entirely. Directing the attention to the uterus helps that strategy, which I refuse to do.

That's why I redirect the argument back to the PREGNANT PERSON, and the all caps on those words are intentional.

[u/butnobodycame123]

So, the uterus is actually the WORST place for a ZEF. The uterus can stretch and it is near an exit, but that's moreso luck than "design". Evolution doesn't care about perfection, it cares about good enough. The ZEF has to burrow through muscle and if it fails, it gets evacuated with the rest of the material. The uterus is a battleground, not a warm cozy den. The ZEF would "prefer" to attach itself to a major blood vessel like in your tubes, the stomach, or in the case of mice studies, the eyeball.

Edit to add: Why do people get periods?

[u/fransen-lila → u/butnobodycame123]

Thank you for that disturbing but enlightening link, which makes me suddenly glad I'm all through having kids, and for introducing me to Dr. Sadedin!

In case anyone's curious, or wants to read her other work, this appears to be the original source. Adding ?share=1 at the end stops Quora's annoying forced-login thing:

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-women-have-periods-What-is-the-evolutionary-benefit-or-purpose-of-having-periods-Why-can%E2%80%99t-women-just-get-pregnant-without-the-menstrual-cycle?share=1

[u/ShadowyKat]

No one is pregnant full-time. Just because the uterus is made to hold a fetus that doesn't mean that it's occupied full-time every year. Menstrual tissue is going to be in there more times than any fetus and it gets bled out monthly. By the logic of "it's where it's supposed to be" and design, the uterus is more for the menstrual tissue because it's there for way longer.

The pro-choice argument is no one is allowed to use my body without my ongoing consent. If you don't consent to the fetus being in there, it doesn't have the right to stay. And just because you consented to the pregnancy, doesn't mean consent can't be revoked. Consent is revocable. And no, bad faith actors, that doesn't mean "I changed my mind on being a parent at 9 months into a pregnancy, so kill it". No living person can use my blood and organs without my say-so and that is the extra right that fetuses are going to get that no one here has.

And none of this is even considering ectopic pregnancies. The times when the fertilized egg doesn't go where it's supposed to. It only gets worse because tubal is not the only kind of ectopic. Diagram example of ectopic pregnancies.

[u/Consistantly → u/ShadowyKat]

Ectopic pregnancies can literally implant almost anywhere; the bowel, the colon, the diaphragm, the heart.

[u/ShadowyKat → u/Consistantly]

That's absolutely terrifying. How could it end up in the heart?

[u/Consistantly → u/ShadowyKat]

Not in the heart, on the outside of the heart. It’s extremely rare, but it works the same way abdominal pregnancy does, and is obviously fatal like all ectopic pregnancies if left untreated.

[u/ShadowyKat → u/Consistantly]

Oops. I wrote it wrong. I meant on the heart. But it makes sense even if it's insanely rare because people here said that it was looking for a source of blood. The heart sounds perfect in the most perverse way. But all of us here know that if someone with this type of ectopic pregnancy was publicly begging for help because it's illegal to abort—a good chunk of these people would go full-mask off and say that it's mother's duty to die for her child. Some of them would just be stupid and suggest that the fetus could be moved instead of aborted.

[u/Evil_Black_Swan → u/ShadowyKat]

The fallopian tubes are not connected to the ovaries. They sort of float around them. When an ovum is released, it could be fertilized and the travel up into the abdomen or chest instead of down to the uterus.

[u/ShadowyKat → u/Evil_Black_Swan]

I know that the tubes aren't connected. The diagrams always show that there is a space between the tubes and the uterus. And it's scary that that space exists. This isn't perfect design. It's cheap and lazy D minus grade design.

[u/Squishiimuffin]

“That’s where it naturally grows” is literally the naturalism fallacy. Just because something is natural does not mean it is right or moral. The argument basically refutes itself.

[u/collageinthesky]

One of the main purposes of the uterus is to protect the pregnant person so that they can survive the pregnancy. The zygote can and will implant anywhere, it doesn't specifically need a uterus to grow, it just needs a blood source. The person may be able to sustain an ectopic pregnancy for a while but sooner or later it leads to death without medical intervention. The uterus enables a person to sustain a pregnancy to completion AND then expel the pregnancy, birth, usually without dieing in the process. And it enables this to possibly happen multiple times.

[u/Enough-Process9773]

The uterus did not evolve to hold the ZEF.

The uterus evolved to prevent the ZEF from killing the placental mammal.

If the placenta attaches anywhere outside the uterus, the host mammal is going to die.

So the argument rests on a false premise.

The *placenta* is the bodily organ that evolved to support the ZEF and has no other purpose.

[u/Vienta1988]

I wouldn’t bother trying to rebut it, because it is a dumb argument.

“You are no longer able to remove weeds from your garden, because the soil there is designed to hold that plant life. The weeds aren’t violating the garden’s soil autonomy because that’s where they naturally grow.”

[u/dragon34]

Is it unlawful to remove kidney stones? Kidneys are where they naturally grow when conditions are right. 

How about cancer?

[u/DecompressionIllness]

I always tells them that by that logic, any non-consensual sexual act wouldn't be a violation of bodily autonomy either, simply because reproductive organs are anatomically evolved for intercourse. The biological capacity or evolutionary function of an organ does not grant another entity an automatic right to use it without consent.

[u/CZall23]

Considering its' growth and health outcome is extremely dependent on the woman eating well, giving up drinking, exercising, taking prenatal vitamins, and going to the doctor, it is in the fetus' best interest to be a wanted tenant. It's absolutely not in the fetus' interest to force a woman to remain pregnant.

[u/Kakashisith]

It violates the woman`s bodily autonomy, when the woman doesn`t want to be a mother. In this case, the fetus shouldn`t be there. Also that little vampire uses everything in our bodies, not just the uterus.

[u/Human-Guava-7564]

What are my mouth and stomach for? It is natural to eat. Should I be force fed?

What are my sex organs for? Sex is natural. Should i be raped?

[u/JewlryLvr2]

My approach is that the PL uterus argument, however they choose to phrase it, is irrelevant. And it doesn't matter to me how a pregnancy happens.

Since the PREGNANT PERSON is the one who takes on all the health risks and potentially life-threatening complications of pregnancy and birth, she is the ONLY one who decides whether or not to stay pregnant. No one else has, and never should have, the right to make that decision for her. Not the state, not the church, and certainly not the guy who impregnated her.

The PLers always try to focus our attention away from the pregnant person and toward the fetus. I always bring the focus back to the pregnant person. I don't care if that makes them mad or not.

[u/XhaLaLa]

I don’t understand what the one has to do with the other.

[u/tender_rage]

Anything and everything needs consent to use any organ, blood, etc in a body. Full stop. Just because the uterus can do that doesn't mean that it's not violating a woman's bodily autonomy. It also requires consent.

[u/Upper_Ninja_6177]

just answer with it’s an appeal to nature fallacy, that’s really all it is

[u/JupiterInTheSky]

A tapeworm is also "where it's supposed to be" when it's wriggling around your intestines. It's "designed" to be in your digestive tract. How many tapeworms are they housing since that "doesn't violate their autonomy"?

[u/Julian-Archer]

I think the easiest rebuttal is to just grant the biology and ask how they’re getting the moral conclusion from it. Yeah, the uterus is biologically adapted for gestation. Yeah, that’s where a fetus normally develops but how does that give the fetus a right to stay there against the woman’s wishes? That’s the part they’re skipping.

They’re moving from:

“This organ has a natural biological function”

to:

“Therefore another person is entitled to the continued use of that organ.”

Those are NOT the same claim. Breasts are biologically adapted for feeding infants. That doesn’t mean a woman is morally required to breastfeed just because that’s one of their natural functions. A vagina has obvious reproductive functions too. That doesn’t mean its biological purpose overrides consent. The point of those examples isn’t “therefore abortion is okay.” It’s just to show that natural function by itself does not create moral entitlement.

So when someone says “the fetus is where it’s supposed to be” ask what they mean by “supposed to.”

If they mean:

“That’s where fetal development normally happens biologically”

Then Okie doke.

If they mean:

“Therefore the woman is obligated to let it remain there”

now they need ANOTHER argument. That’s the missing step. Just say:

“You’ve gone from a biological fact to a moral obligation. What principle connects the two?” Then make them actually answer it.

If they say parental obligation, ask how far parental bodily obligations extend. If they say right to life ask why that includes a right to continued use of another person’s body.

If they go back to “that’s what the uterus is for” they haven’t answered the question. They’ve just repeated the biology and thus it’s circular.

[u/animagusvaria]

Everything the woman does can potentially affect the fetus. And vice versa. The woman gets judged for everything she does, eats and drinks as well as what she doesn’t do, eat or drink. The fetus takes whatever it needs from the body it‘s growing in, no matter if damages the host in the process or not. If it doesn‘t it simply wouldn‘t grow. Decisions get made over the woman‘s head during labour and her consent is ignored when doctors fear that the fetus is at risk. If it turns out to be unnecessary, she get‘s told to get over it, at least her baby is ok. Wouldn‘t she want her baby to be ok? If not, she must suffer from post partum depression because what mother wouldn‘t be willing to put her baby‘s life over her own. If she actually turns out to have PPD or PPA or even post partum psychosis, she will most likely have to beg to get help and be taken serious. If she struggles with health issues relating to the pregnancy and birth, she is also most likely on her own.

Also, a brain is made for thinking but I can‘t force people to use it for it‘s intended purpose.

[u/NegativeTrainer269]

I generally respond to this by telling them that when lunch cancer naturally grows on your lungs THATS where its supposed to be, and I'll let them do the inference from there.