Where would we be without it? Without the right to bodily autonomy, someone else would be able to force you to do whatever they wanted without regards to your own desires. That's called slavery. Do you think that's a good idea?
Depends.
I think if God does it, then it is good, and He is doing what is best for us. He is our Creator and Redeemer and is sovereign over us.
If it is a person that wants to impose morality it might depend on the reason.
I come at that from a religious perspective, and you, since you have an atheist icon, would presumably not hold to such a view, which i understand.
So I asked you the basis of that moral principle you proposed to see what you base it on. Now you have proposed that if we didn't have it then some could force us to do something.
So are there ever instances where we should force someone to do something?
If a small child is running into traffic should you grab them and stop them, even if they don't like it at the time?
If a child only wants to eat cake for every meal, should the child be allowed to do so?
If a person is a danger to others because of a mental condition should they be restrained from harming people, by detention if necessary?
If a friend was starting a medication with a possible side effect of suicidal ideation and shortly thereafter wanted to kill themselves, would you try to stop them?
I would see the above as different than experimenting on people without consent, for instance, due to the mitigating factors.
Yeah. Quite a few times I've wanted to punch someone in the face, or tell them to go away in very rude language, but I have not done so.
Why didn't you?
I would think that includes the baby in the womb that pulls back from the pain of an abortion as its limbs are torn from its body.
Okay then, let's go with that.
In order to feel pain, the fetus (and don't even think about quibbling over the fact that I said fetus instead of person, human, baby, or whatever other word you want to use) requires a developed central nervous system. The clinical evidence indicates that a fetus can't feel pain until about 23 weeks post gestation.
"Fetal awareness of noxious stimuli requires functional thalamocortical connections. Thalamocortical fibers begin appearing between 23 to 30 weeks’ gestational age, while electroencephalography suggests the capacity for functional pain perception in preterm neonates probably does not exist before 29 or 30 weeks." SOURCE
Reconsidering fetal pain
This discusses more recent data calling into question the necessity of the cortex for pain experience. They have a fairly restrictive copyright usage, so I won't quote from it here, but you can read the details.
That still would bring us to around the 14 weeks you reference below.
At this point, I will point out that nearly 99% of abortions take place before 14 weeks gestation.
SOURCE
So would you then oppose any abortion after 14 weeks on the basis of potential pain experience?
Yes, a fertilized human egg has human DNA and is human. A canine fertilized egg has canine DNA, and is not human.
So why the difference? Why is your argument valid for Humans but not for dogs?
You asked this before and I do not know what argument you are referring to.
a human fertilized egg is human.
a canine fertilzed egg is canine.
You haven't mentioned extending bodily autonomy to canines. But you did to humans, before changing it to persons. I was noting that if humans have bodily autonomy, that would then include the fertilized egg, as it is human, alive, and has its own unique DNA.
I think canines are living, have their own DNA. But I don't extend bodily autonomy to them.
If you do or do not may be interesting to hear you explain, but the reason for examining this point in the first place is that you said humans have bodily autonomy.
That's like saying, "If there's no point in time when it stops being daytime and starts being nighttime, shouldn't we just always take it to be nighttime, even when the sun is out?"
Whether you think it is night time or daytime in a dusk scenario for instance is not a moral consideration. If you posit that people have bodily autonomy once they are persons then determining when that happens becomes important to moral considerations under that scheme.