If you were to ask a conservative man what he would do if someone restrained him and forcefully extracted his bone marrow, his answer would probably make mention of a veritable arsenal kept in his cabinet. He’d likely feel perfectly justified in killing any assailant who would dare to make any use of his body whatsoever without his consent. Whether or not the assailant needed the marrow to save his life would make very little difference.
Why? Because we have a unique right to our own bodies. If anyone wants something of them, they go through us. As much as our homes and property mean to us, the right to ownership over things is nothing compared to our right to bodily autonomy. This is why rape is rape and not ‘theft of sexual services.’ It’s why we don’t draft organ donors or force the population to relinquish a pint of blood every eight weeks. It’s also why forcing pregnancy is illegal and abortion isn’t.
The “pro-life” method of getting around this is claiming that pregnancy and motherhood are the natural purpose of women, and therefore a blessing, regardless of the circumstances. It’s bullshit. Anyone with any respect at all for women knows that each of us have our own hopes and goals in our lives, and sometimes they just don’t include pregnancy or children. For some women, it’s the ultimate joy in life, and for some of us it isn’t. Telling a woman facing an unwanted pregnancy that pregnancy is pregnancy and therefore a blessing is like telling a rape victim that sex is sex.
Here’s the bottom line: whatever the moral dilemma over humanity, personhood, and what that means for a fetus, women have the right to abortion because they have a right to decide what resides in and lives off of their bodies. Many pro-choicers* do in fact see a moral crisis in aborting a late term fetus that may have the capacity for feeling, but they understand that the law shouldn’t force someone to do ‘the right thing’ when it would effectively destroy their basic human rights.
*Even Amanda Marcotte, scourge of the religious right, sees a moral issue with killing a sentient fetus. It just doesn’t mean that women’s rights can be instantly negated.
January 27th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Sorry, you’re right. You do have a right to do what you want with your own body, but when what you want means you have to kill someone else to get it, you don’t ethically have that right. Legally, maybe, but never, or at least very rarely, ethically. Allow me to play the devil’s advocate here. How would you feel if men started saying that they were pro-choice about…rape? After all, it is their body and they should be able to do what they want with it, right? If we use your argument, abortion and rape should both be legal because every person should be able to do what they want with their own body, even if it damages or destroys another’s life. Just a thought.
January 28th, 2008 at 1:28 am
Rape is actually a very good example for my point. In order to rape me, a man would have to intrude into MY body and use it for his purposes WITHOUT my consent - which is essentially what a fetus does (albeit without malicious intent) in the case of an unwanted pregnancy. If I were to use all the force necessary to remove a rapist from my body, would I not be justified in doing so?
January 28th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
The anti-abortionists may want to think about what happened to Romania under the Communist-era regime of one Nicolae Ceaucescu, about as “pro-life” as it ever went:
In a desire to hasten the final onset of Pure Socialism, the regime mandated a mininum of five children per married couple; mandatory prenatal screenings on a monthly basis; blanket bans on abortion, contraception, family planning and sex education; even allowed for higher ration allowances and better apartment assignments for families as kept their offspring.
What the central planners in Bucharest failed to realise in first implementing such a plan was the danger that a labour surplus would ensue–anathema in a political ideology which saw mass unemployment and joblessness as among capitalism’s failings.
“Think about it.”