In this case you have every right to take your respirator back… I wouldn’t necessarilly agree with your decision – but it is your right.

“Or suppose my daughter was dying of a blood disease. And I refused to give blood to save my own daughter’s life (for no strongly compelling reason)– wouldn’t Child Protection step in at that point? I should hope so.”

I should hope not! It’s YOUR blood and nobody should have to right to compell you to donate it!

Yes. You would have the right. Whether or not you exercise that right is up to you — your choice.

“wouldn’t Child Protection step in at that point?”

Yes, very likely they would. And they would remove your choice from you and your daughter. What if this were also your daughter’s wish, though? What if she did not want the blood? What if you were both Jehovah’s Witnesses, both adult, and both making an informed, educated decision? Do you honestly feel that anyone has the right to force you both to participate in something you feel is wrong?

“We recognize that there are reasons to compell people to help others stay alive.”

You could substitute “force” for “help” and it would be closer to the truth. Not everyone feels this way. As a society, we seem to be bent on telling everyone else how to live their lives while our own lives go to hell in that well-known handbasket.

We humans have absolutely no respect as a species for any other living thing around us. Protestation and actions of a few individuals aside, we are bent on destroying our own environment. We have no respect for our mother earth. We have no respect for the water, or the air. We are even talking about turning our orbit into a giant dumpsite! We’re running out of places on earth to put all our garbage, so we’re planning on sending it into space!

When this species of ours learns the true meaning of “respect,” and actually begins to practise what it preaches, maybe then we can all be our brothers’ keepers. At least then perhaps we will have earned the right. But until we respect the right of the individual to govern the uses of her own body, nobody should be using the term “respect” to prop up an anti-choice campaign.

But in every case someone needs a thing that belongs to someone else, and its absence would cause death, we recognize the argument by necessity.

Suppose, for instance, I own a respirator. And someone stole my respirator to keep someone else alive. Would I have the right to take that respirator– assuming it would not be in use otherwise?

Or suppose my daughter was dying of a blood disease. And I refused to give blood to save my own daughter’s life (for no strongly compelling reason)– wouldn’t Child Protection step in at that point? I should hope so.

We recognize that there are reasons to compell people to help others stay alive.

Does the mother have rights to which society should respond? Absolutely, and in America at least those rights are not adequatley being met. But I don’t see that the unborn life within her womb is merely a part of her body over which she has absolute authority to nourish or destroy at will. The life within her, the other within her, obligates not only her respect and life-affirming response, but also the respect, response, and assistance of society. We are all our brother’s keeper.

And the womb belongs to a woman — someone who may or may not consent to its being used.

Find a way to gestate the fetus without encroaching on someone’s body, and I’ll support you.