“My body, my choice.” The mantra of abortion advocates. The
rallying cry of Progressives. The end of discussion for feminists. There have
been analogies developed to support it. Vitriolic words have been spewed forth
to defend it. Who can argue with a woman’s bodily autonomy?

The small detail that pro-choice people gloss over is that
abortion does not only involve a woman’s body. No, there is another’s at stake.
An individual’s rights end where another’s more fundamental
rights begin. We have great liberty in this country, but there are limitations.
I am not free to cut my friend’s arm off. His rights are protected in that the
arm is part of his body, and I cannot simply violate his safety. In a similar
way, we do not allow a man to rape a woman. His body cannot be used to
compromise the rights of another body.
In other words, there are limits to what we can do with our
bodies, most especially if we use them to harm an innocent person’s body.
A fetus is not a part of a woman’s body. Being connected to
one’s mother does not make one part of the mother’s body. A woman does not have
the right to kill an infant as she is breastfeeding simply because the infant
is taking her nutrients from her body. Requiring a lot of care of is not
grounds for murder; otherwise, parents of a disabled child would have the right
to kill their child at any age.
If a fetus is part of his or her mother’s body, he or she
would be a strange growth indeed. The mother has two arms and two legs inside
her body. She has two additional eyes and ears. She has an additional DNA type
and possibly a different blood type. She may even have male genitalia. All of
this would defy nature. But it is perfectly natural because during pregnancy a
woman has a distinct human life developing inside her.
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A woman's third hand reaches out of her uterus to grab the finger of a surgeon. |
Imagine if we followed the bodily autonomy argument to its
natural conclusion. A man could morally be able to rape a woman because he has
the right to do what he wants with his body, even if it infringes on another’s
rights. If this sounds preposterous, the argument that a woman can kill a child
because she has the right to do what she wants with her body is equally
preposterous.
Judith Jarvis Thomson offered a famous defense of abortion
in an essay entitled “A Defense of Abortion”. In it, she puts forward an analogy
of someone going to sleep, only to wake up hooked up to a famous violinist. The
person is the only one that can keep the violinist alive during his coma, which
the violinist will come out of in nine months. She maintains that it would be
unfair to be forced to be hooked up to the violinist for nine months, and
therefore it is unfair to a woman to force her to stay hooked up to her child
for nine months.
But there are inconsistencies in Thomson’s argument. The
natural result of sex is pregnancy. The natural result of going to bed is not
becoming hooked up to a violinist. It should be expected that sex can lead to
pregnancy. That is 99%
of abortion cases. I will deal with rape and incest momentarily. There is
also a distinct difference between unplugging from the violinist and the act of
abortion. Abortion is the active killing of a human being. It involves the
tearing apart of a fetus. Dismembering her. While an individual’s act of
unplugging from the violinist may passively lead to his death, it is not active
killing. Imagine if, instead of just unplugging from the violinist, the
individual chopped him into pieces with an ax. Simply delivering a child and
leaving her to die is not morally superior; while one has no relationship with
the violinist, there is a special and unique relationship between the mother and
child.

Take this example: a man’s brother and sister-in-law dropped
their son off for the man to take care of. They text him an hour later and say
that they’ve run off, and the man is stuck with his nephew. What can the man
do? He could raise his nephew himself. He could find parents to adopt his
nephew. What he does not have the right to do is chop his nephew into pieces
with an ax. No matter how long the adoption process would take, the man would
not have a right to kill his nephew. Even in a dire situation that he couldn’t
help, he has no right to take the innocent life. If it seems common sense for a
born child, it should be no different for a preborn child who is no less human.
Read
my post on the case of rape for a fuller justification for sparing the life
of a child conceived in this horrible circumstance.
The bottom line is, a fetus is unique from his or her
mother, and so is not part of the mother’s body. Women should have the freedom
to do what they please with their bodies—but only when it doesn’t infringe on
another’s more fundamental right to life.
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