Women’s rights clearly include their right to health and to make fully informed decisions regarding their bodies. Does a woman’s right to decide what she will and will not do with her body extend to cover actions affecting the fetus who may reside in her body? Does a woman’s right to control her own reproduction include a right to induced abortion?
Granting the notion that our bodies are our own property, does it follow that a pregnant women can choose to kill her fetuses because the fetus is also her own property? Or, if we grant that a fetus is a separate individual with future of value like ours, does it follow that women can choose to kill fetuses on the ground that they are trespassers?
These questions get to the heart of the abortion debate. I do think that women have a right to make reproductive decisions. They have a right to control their own bodies. They may exercise these rights by, for instance, using contraception or natural family planning. But do they have a right to do what they please to their fetuses?
Imagine the following scenario: Jane decides to chop off the legs of her embryo, at week 7. Believing that Jane has the right to choose what happens to her body, Dr. John, with help of modern technology, performs the operation and chops the legs off Jane’s embryo. In week 10, Jane decides to chop the hands of off her fetus and Dr. John again performs what he reasons to be Jane’s personal choice and right. Taking it to an extreme, Jane decides to pluck her fetus’ eyes out. I’ll refrain from continuing this gruesome tale, but it ends in one of two ways: Jane finally decides to have an abortion, or Jane decides to give birth to an blind, amputated child. This second possible outcome reveals the obvious fact that Jane’s actions were not done to her own body, but to the body of another individual.
If it is true that a woman’s right to control her own body extends to her unborn child, then Jane’s actions are permissible. Assuming we are not sociopaths, however, we naturally condemn Jane’s hypothetical actions as inhumane and morally repugnant. Clearly, Jane’s right to control her own body does not extend to her fetus. A woman’s right to bodily autonomy does not go that far.
If it is not true that a woman’s right to control her body encompasses a right to control what happens to her fetus, then the argument for abortion rights is fatally flawed.
If you don’t believe in abortion, the answer is simple. DO NOT HAVE ONE. Leave the rest of us alone.
I’m not sure I am on board with the thought experiment. The reason being is that while a woman may use her right to bodily autonomy to make it so that the fetus no longer relies upon her body (through abortion), it is superfluous and unnecessary to simply cut off/out arms, legs, and eyes. It is not clear how she is regaining autonomy over herself by mutilating her child.
Thank you for your comment. Your comment would have been on the mark if I was arguing for the wrongness of abortion from my Jane-analogy. I do not. I argued that it is false that women’s right over their bodies extend to the foetuses. This is my case in modus tollens(p→q, ¬q, ∴ ¬p)
1. If it is true that women’s right to control their own bodies’ extent to their foetuses, then Jane’s moral actions are permissible.
2. It is not the case that Jane’s moral actions are permissible
3. Therefore it is not the case that it s true that women’s right to control their own bodies’ extent to their foetuses.
The extreme case is a tactic in arguing that reduce a certain notion to absurdity, argumentum ad absurdum
So then by extension, your analogy would also have to apply to post-birth circumcision and immunization, right?
No, it does not apply to post-birth because the litte one(which in Latin is “Fetus”) is not considered to be “part of” the mother’s body.
I’m not sure I follow. You wrote:
“This second possible outcome reveals the obvious fact that Jane’s actions were not done to her own body, but to the body of another individual. … Clearly, Jane’s right to control her own body does not extend to her fetus. A woman’s right to bodily autonomy does not go that far.”
If the fetus is considered an autonomous being, and it is not morally permissible for a woman to mutilate this autonomous being in utero, then why would it suddenly become morally permissible to do so after birth?
Ron, what I meant is that Jane mutilating “part” of her body turnout to be false because a child born from Jane’s action will show that it was a child’s body, not Jane’s, that was mutilated. The second possible outcome in the analogy was of Jane giving birth to what they claim to be done on part of her body.
But that doesn’t answer my question about moral permissibility, does it? Your entire argument rests upon the premise that it is morally wrong to hack off the body parts of another individual. So what difference does it make whether this occurs before or after the birth?
The problem here is that a young foetus does not having any feeling at all. This makes abortion less condemnable than infanticide.
I certainly highly value humanity as bearing God’s image and think that a potential human being ought to be respected and finally come into this world, provided the health of the mother is not endangered.
Lovely greetings from Europe.
Lothars Sohn – Lothar’s son
http://lotharlorraine.wordpress.com
By that logic, if I anesthetize you first, then I kill you, that would be less condemnable than regular pre-meditated murder, because you would never know what hit you.
Given the sanctity of life, the Imago Dei, God’s moral Law based on His character, murder as sin, etc., there is no logical or biblical argument for normative abortion thinking and practice.