3. What are you allowed to do if someone is using your body without your permission?

You are allowed to stop them, and you are allowed to ask for help to stop them. Three caveats:

 

1. Are you allowed to murder a person using your body without your permission? No.

​

2. If the person using your body without your permission is threatening your life, are you allowed to kill them in self-defense? Yes. As a last resort, killing in self-defense is not murder.

​

3. In the case when a person is using your body without your permission but not threatening your life, what are you allowed to do?

 

You may separate that person from your body, and you may request social support and/or medical assistance to help make the separation as safe as possible for both of you. Outside of the context of pregnancy, if someone is using your body without your permission, you can (should) request help from the authorities (call 911 or ask someone to call 911 for you). Within the context of pregnancy, if someone is using your body without your permission (i.e. you were raped and/or your contraceptive method failed), you do have a somber choice to make. If you are healthy and able, you could give that person inside you the kindness of allowing them to stay and use your own life force and body as a source of life support, until their own body is able to metabolize oxygen and food independently. (See the First Question page for Respect People's stance on when the life of an unborn person begins.) That is a momentous sacrifice you may choose to make—to endure bodily harm and personal strife to support the life of another person. But only you can make that choice. Carrying a pregnancy to term is backaching, exhausting work. In this country, where we prize the rights of the individual, it is gravely immoral and unconstitutional for a person, a state government, or the federal government to force you to work against your will. 

​

The United States Constitution's 13th Amendment mandates in no uncertain terms that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

​

If you have any doubt that "carrying a pregnancy" or "being pregnant" is work, lay that doubt to rest with the knowledge that pregnancy has monetary value. You can see pregnancy's monetary value by looking at surrogacy salaries and NICU costs. In the United States, the typical surrogate salary ranges from $40,000 to $55,000. The cost of NICU care is relatively much greater than the average surrogate salary, perhaps suggesting that surrogates are severely underpaid. In the United States, NICU care for one infant costs on average an excess of $3,500 per day. From fertilization to birth, a typical pregnancy is 38 weeks. 38 weeks x 7 days in a week = 266 days of pregnancy. Comparing the length of pregnancy to the daily price of NICU care reveals the monetary value of pregnancy is, at a minimum, a whopping $931,000. To force a person to carry a pregnancy to term is the equivalent of forcing someone to do about a million dollars worth of unpaid labor.

 

Becoming or being pregnant is not a crime, therefore, in the case of pregnancy, there is no exception to the 13th Amendment. Slavery is unconstitutional and morally untenable.

​

This means that throughout a pregnancy, a pregnant person has a moral and legal right to access the medicine and medical care necessary to separate a person from their body via early delivery (labor induction and/or cesarean section).

 

If a person passes away after being separated from your body because their body is not able to sustain itself, it is important to note that this death is as natural and fair as death can be. The most natural death is the death a person faces when their body is unable to sustain itself. We often think about natural death occurring at old age, but natural death from the body's inability to sustain itself can happen at any age—that's why young people still die every day from heart attacks, lung failure, kidney failure, liver failure, muscle dystrophy, cancer, etcetera. Natural death is not murder.

​

On the whole, is it compassionate/kind/good to help another person in need when you are able? Absolutely. But should you ever be forced to bodily serve another person against your will? No.

​

And that's it! That's the last of the three questions that reveal the big picture of the abortion debate. For a brief summary of all three questions and Respect People's Guidelines for Reproductive Rights, click the button below!