An often debated question around the right to abortion and reproductive healthcare is that of fetal personhood, i.e., when does a fetus become a person, entitled to the legal protections enjoyed by all non-fetus people? It is a central tenant in the pro-life stance of most religious people and organizations: life begins at conception, and therefore that life must be protected. Even the original Roe v. Wade decision of the Supreme Court, which protected access to abortion early in a pregnancy, but did allow for states to restrict abortion access later in the pregnancy, based its decision on the principle that fetal life needs regulatory protection even if it infringes on the bodily autonomy of the pregnant person. It’s such a common argument in favor of abortion restrictions, that many seem to take it as fact that the question of when abortions go from permitted to prohibited is precisely when a fetus becomes a person.

But does this argument hold water? No, it does not. And it’s not that life and consciousness are too difficult to measure or philosophically imprecise, it’s that even if full personhood is granted to a fetus at the moment of conception, full and unhindered access to abortions at any stage in a pregnancy should still be an uncontroversial and protected right.

From a legal perspective, in no other case is the state given the power to take one person’s body, in whole or in part, to sustain the life of another.

Even in the case where a person harms another, or gives birth to a child, the state cannot compel such actions. The at-fault driver of a car accident cannot be compelled to donate blood to save the life of victim of their negligent driving. A parent cannot be compelled to donate a kidney to their own child. This situation is exactly analogous to that of an abortion: where the fetus is considered a living child with personhood, but they need a parent’s uterus or kidney or liver or any other organ to survive. And yet still, the state cannot compel such an organ donation after the child is born, so why would the state be able to force such a donation before the child is born? Views on the morality of refusing such help may differ, just as personal views on the morality of abortions under certain circumstances will still exist. But legally, it is a decided matter that no circumstance, even one of life or death, grants the state power over bodily integrity to provide nourishment or care for another.

When those of us who are pro-choice, and understand the importance of abortion and healthcare access, find ourselves in arguments with pro-lifers, we need to stop getting bogged down in the philosophical debate of when life begins, grant for the sake of argument fetal personhood, and move on to why that doesn’t matter. If the state cannot compel organ donations, well then that’s sort of the end of the discussion, the state cannot compel the donation of a uterus, even to support the life of another person.