(no subject)

[serene]

If abortion is a sticky/emotional/traumatic subject for you, skip this, please.



A friend posted this link in zir journal, with the following quote:

Even if we were to accept the premise that a fetus is a person, it may have a right to life, but it doesn't have the right to subject another person against her will to painful and dangerous medical consequences. If I needed a kidney transplant, I might be able to get the organ I needed to survive by stabbing someone and forcibly removing one of theirs. But even if they recovered with no ill health effects after the attack, I'd be guilty of a moral (and legal) wrong for subjecting them to it in the first place. Those people who want to consider fetuses person must remember that even another person with a right to life doesn't have the right to that life at the expense of another person, not even if that person is the child's parent. Being pro-life can't mean being in favor of saving one life by allowing it to hold another hostage for 9 months.

Now, I have often been criticized by fellow left-leaning people because my position on abortion is unpopular. I (along with a friend) was booed at a national Green Party platform plenary for expressing it. So I'm not saying I'm unbiased on this matter. (While I support safe, legal, affordable abortion, I do so because while I think that abortion is in general a bad idea (at best -- a tool of anti-woman oppression at worst), I think punishing women for making a difficult choice and choosing differently from the way I would choose is a worse idea.)

That said, I think the argument above stinks from a logical standpoint. The fetus in the example is not making a moral decision equivalent with stabbing someone; it's making no moral decision at all. Leaving aside the fact that only a small number of abortions are done for the reason that the mother's life and/or physical health are endangered, I think it's weaselly to use language that implies that if the mother decides (or is forced) not to have an abortion, that's the equivalent of some assault by the fetus upon her. It may be an assault by the State, but not by the fetus, who has no culpability whatsoever, as far as I'm concerned.

Comments are enabled, as always; comment away. I don't have that much emotion around this, but the argument just struck me as icky, so I'm blogging it because, well, I can.

Comments

[sistercoyote.livejournal.com]

The hostage philosophy, regardless of who is at fault for turning the woman into one, does have some validity to it, however.

I am adamantly against becoming a mother (and I have to note that it's really a non-issue for me because I do not have p-in-v sex and have never had same and things are not looking good for the future, either). If I were told I could not have an abortion, by the State, by the male half of the pregnancy equation, by whomever had the power to make that order stick, I would feel like a hostage. A hostage at risk for gestational diabetes, dangerously increased blood pressure, and a whole host of other fun genetically transmitted diseases* in addition to the normal stresses that a pregnancy puts on the body.

Which means I would not only be held hostage by the decreeing party, but I would also, effectively, be being tortured in the process.

An emotional response? Absolutely. Should it have an effect on lawmaking? Well, that depends. I see it as an extension of the "Cruel and Unusual" clause. Others see it differently (feeling that my behaviour toward my theoretical foetus violates that same clause).

I'm sure there is a middle ground. After all, I don't particularly consider myself "pro-abortion." I'm "pro-every-child-a-wanted-child." I'd much rather abortion were a non-issue because every woman (and man) had the information needed to prevent unwanted pregnancies (and the strength to insist that they were used every time).

I think I may be babbling.

*Another reason I intend to avoid pregnancy at all costs is that my blood type is negative.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

The distinction I see is that you would not be being held hostage *by the child*, but by circumstance, and the legal system, etc., no?

[sistercoyote.livejournal.com]

Like I said, (or meant to say, I'm a little scatterbrained today), I don't disagree with you there.

Personally, I'd like to be able to transfer the damn thing to the male half of the equation and let HIM deal with it.

But that's just me. Feeling snarky.