IN DEFENCE OF ABORTION RIGHTS
Many today feel that the unborn child if not wanted by the mother is there against her will so she has the right to end its life to be free. If a parasite person hooked on to your body you have the right to maybe kill that person in self-defence even though your own life is not at risk. You treat the person as part of you even though they are not when they are attached to you against your will. They give you the right to treat them as if they were a limb or part of your body. Legally then and morally the unborn child though biologically not part of the mother is part of the mother. The argument that abortion destroys somebody else's body is invalid and untrue. The law is about regulation not morality so the law cannot protect a baby in the womb at any stage of pregnancy. It is not it's place when the argument we have made is a reasonable one.
In 1971, Judith Jarvis Thomson wrote A Defense of Abortion. She believed that the baby in the womb had a right to life. But she thought it was too simple to conclude that this meant the mother didn’t have the right to end the pregnancy by aborting the baby. She gave something like the above example where somebody will die if you disconnect yourself.
What validates her argument is that she is saying that the woman's strong desire to be free comes before the life of the other person, even if the man needing the body of the woman is her son, and their health. Her body autonomy comes first. That is the answer to all the objections.
Christians and anti-abortionists and even some pro-choice people say the error here is assuming that a baby in the womb is no more the pregnant person's responsibility that some stranger. Let us assume the person is her twin or her grown up child. Let us assume maybe that the person is your brother and sister and child in God. Remember Jesus said whoever does his will is his mother and child and brother. The argument by Thomson is supposed to be evil for it assumes relationships are irrelevant.
It is said that the baby is where nature or God if you like has "intended" her or him to be. It is not like the person attached to you for life support for that is not normal or meant to be.
What if your child needed your blood to live and you did not want to give it? This is an instance where you still cannot be forced.
Some say that abortion is more than just unplugging. The baby is attacked and dismembered. That is irrelevant. Nothing is beautiful about this.
Another complaint is that if it is your body your choice then why can't you smoke and drink while pregnant? Again nobody suggests that the woman should be forced.
It is said that our bodies may be autonomous in some things but in the most important things they are not. Society makes demands on our bodies. Born children make demands. We cannot sleep on when they are crying in the night.
Does the baby deserve to live? The problem is the baby deserves nothing for deserving implies you have used your ability to earn. Even murderers have the right to life. But even those who think the death penalty is wrong argue that they don't deserve to live. Does deserving to live trump the right to live? Or vice versa? These are hard questions.
Let us examine what Thomson wrote.
She argued that if you were kidnapped and plugged up to a violinist to keep him
alive for nine months so that both of you could be safely freed at the end of
the time then to get on with your lives, that you have the right to unplug
yourself from the violinist even if it means he will die as soon as you find
yourself tied up to him. From this she concluded that abortion is ethical
because the baby grows in the woman’s body and it is her body so she can have an
abortion if she wants to. Critics of the argument see abortion being a different
situation from the example she describes. But most of them concur that the
argument justifies abortion in the case of rape only and certainly when the
mother’s life is in danger from the pregnancy.
But it is clear it allows abortion when the woman has an intense wish to have an
abortion. Pregnancy is worse than being hooked up to the violinist. We must
conclude then that it must allow a lot more than abortion only for rape or to
save the mother from death. Also the less developed an embryo is the less
resemblance it has to the case of the violinist who is a grown-up. If it is
acceptable to cause the violinist’s death by extricating yourself from him how
much more is it acceptable to abort the embryo. There must be more cases in
which aborting the embryo is acceptable.
What if you are friends with a man and woman and you know the woman is going to
abort his baby without telling him? Should you tell him? To argue that you
should mind your own business and say nothing is to tacitly approve of Thomson's
argument. The woman's right to control her own body overrides any rights the man
has over the baby. The Catholic would argue that if telling may enable the man
to get a chance to talk her out of it then one should tell so that the life of
the baby might be saved.
There have been a number of challenges made to the argument that it's a woman's
body and so she has the right to have the baby terminated. None of them can
manage to stand against the fact that the most important thing is a woman's
right to control her own body. The woman has complete ownership of her body. It
may be replied that if she has then she can cut off her legs to get disability
payments from the state if she wants. But if she does that she is not treating
herself as if she owns herself. She is treating herself as if she were nothing,
a thing not an owner.
So?
Though the violinist isn’t the best example, that doesn’t mean her point is
wrong.
Let’s change it as follows.
Suppose there was a machine that could grow babies to full term. Girls are
forced to contribute eggs to it. Your egg was fertilised by mistake and now the
baby will be aborted so that another baby can be brought to full term in the
system instead. Unless your baby is implanted in you, it will die. It will die
by being pulled to bits by the machine. Is it your duty to allow this to be done
to you and save your baby’s life? What if the baby was genetically designed to
be the most compassionate doctor possible?
Thomson was right. Getting pregnant, even on purpose, doesn’t give the mother
the duty to keep the child alive. She can have an abortion if she wishes.
If you believe that an aborted baby will go to Heavenly bliss then it is obvious
that the mother was right to kill it. Letting it live would have been the
greater injustice for it might sin and lose Heaven where God will make it
morally perfect and perfectly happy.
A fetus will have an increased right to life the longer it is in the womb. It is
insulting to the fetus to say that a fetus has an equal right to life to a fetus
that is considerably less developed than it. It means that time is wasted on
saving babies that are not people yet while babies that are aborted and
shouldn’t be die. Though a woman conceivably might not have the right to take
the life of a fetus in the sixth month just because she doesn’t want to be
pregnant, she might have the right to abort if it is only say the second or
third month for the same reason or even for a trivial reason.
Even the most extreme-pro life people do not insist that frozen embryos should
be implanted in their mothers. If the baby’s life comes first then clearly this
should be done by force if necessary. This case plainly shows that Thomson was
right.
Opposition to abortion shows tremendous insolence and disregard and lack of
thought for women’s rights. Paradoxically, it is not impressive in its alleged
concern for babies at all. Roman Catholicism for instance would see a baby dying
without baptism as worse than a baby simply dying. It worries more about its
assumption that baptism is necessary than the baby’s life.
Abortion like anything can be abused. It is manipulative how most anti-abortion
people condemn it because of the abuse. But it's not the fault of the
legalisation of abortion if it is abused.
Thomson was right. Getting pregnant, even on purpose, doesn’t give the mother the duty to keep the child alive despite the child having a right to life. She can have an abortion if she wishes.
Even if Thomson is wrong, there is enough merit in her argument to show that abortion even if wrong and horrific cannot mean that the person having an abortion is intending or doing great evil. If abortion has no justification then it is bad. If it has some but not enough it is bad but not bad enough to make it illegal or to condemn the person who has an abortion. It can be better for a surgeon to do an operation imperfectly up to a point than for him not to perform it at all. Same logic!
Abortion rights can be based on a pro-life view but
pro-life and pro-existence are two different things. The latter is what
suffers the most from her argument
BOOKS CONSULTED
Abortion The Great Injustice, HP Dunn, Irish Messenger Publications, Dublin,
1979
Abortion, John R Rice Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1971
Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, Uta Ranke Heinmann, Penguin, London, 1991
Human Life is Sacred, Irish Bishops Pastoral, Veritas Dublin 1975
Is Abortion Sinful? Mike Willis, Guardian of Truth Publications, KY
Practical Ethics, Peter Singer, Cambridge University Press, England, 1994
Questions of Life and Death, Christian Faith and Medical Intervention, Richard
Harries, SPCK, London, 2010
Reason and Religion, Anthony Kenny, Basil Blackwell Ltd, Oxford, 1987
The Catholic Church and Abortion, Catholic Press and Information Office Dublin,
Irish Messenger Publications, Dublin, 1983
The Doctor's Dilemmas, Donal Murray, Veritas, Dublin, 1988
Vicars of Christ, Peter de Rosa, Corgi, London, 1993
BIBLE QUOTATIONS FROM:
The Amplified Bible
