So, let's say that Roe v. Wade is overturned. . .

[xiphias]

Fundamentally, it seems to me that, while the right to privacy IS a vitally important issue, there's a more fundamental right that Roe v. Wade protects -- the right to control one's own body.

There is quite literally no right more fundamental than the right to do what you want to do with your own body, to the extent that it doesn't infringe on other people. And that sentence, right there, sums up the whole abortion debate in one sentence. If you think a fetus is a person, then restricting access to abortion is potentially justifiable, because you're weighing the rights of two people against each other.

However, f you think a blastocyst is in no reasonable sense a human being, as I, for instance, feel, then a restriction of access to abortion is simply an example of an abrogation of the most fundamental right a person can have -- the right to their own body.

Restricting access to abortion to a woman who wants one is therefore a way of forcing her to work on behalf of a third party -- the fetus (who may or may not have legal standing.)

Could you make an argument based on the 13th Amendment therefore?

For what it's worth: I think that that any law in reference to abortion is inherently a stopgap measure. The only reasonable solution is technological: artificial wombs.

Fundamentally, what should happen is that any woman who doesn't want to have her body used as an incubator for a parasite, for whatever reason, should be allowed to have that fetus removed and placed into an artificial womb in which it could grow to term.

If a fetus does have any sort of legal standing, such a step would protect its hypothetical right to existence, without removing the mother's non-hypothetical right to control of her own person.

Comments

[ckd]

It also raises the question of something like the "use eminent domain on Souter's house after the Kelo decision"...know someone who needs a transfusion? Is Alito's blood type compatible with them? After all, if he can force a mother to keep supporting a blastocyst, why can't someone force him to donate blood to them?

[holzman.livejournal.com]

There is quite literally no right more fundamental than the right to do what you want to do with your own body, to the extent that it doesn't infringe on other people. And that sentence, right there, sums up the whole abortion debate in one sentence. If you think a fetus is a person, then restricting access to abortion is potentially justifiable, because you're weighing the rights of two people against each other.

I'm afraid I'm not buying it. Even if you regard a fetus as a human being in every sense of the term, there is no legal or moral basis for requiring me to risk life and limb for the benefit of another -- which is why no one can require me to donate my organs even though a full grown adult (about whom there is no debate whether they are fully human and have legal standing) may very well die because I choose not to do so.

When anti-abortionists base their position on "a fetus is a baby," they're bullshitting you, themselves, or both of you. The only actual basis for restricting abortions that has ever been at the basis of any law against it is a belief that women should be punished for sex, and we should never let them off the hook for that position.

And if an anti-abortionist tries to tell you otherwise, ask them when they intend to pass legislation instituting a lottery for who gives up their lungs for a transplant. I guarantee fewer than one in a thousand will agree with this idea, and each of them will explain that pregnancy's different because the woman has to be held "responsible" by being forced to carry it to term.

As to the artificial womb approach, I'm curious what the relative cost and risks to the woman associated with such a process would be. If it increases either, then I can't see it as what should happen at this point in history.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Well, when I talk about an "artificial womb" I'm discussing a science-fictional device, and can therefore assign it whatever characteristics I want. I therefore postulate a form of terminating a pregnancy which is in no sense more traumatic than a current abortion, but which nonetheless maintains the integrity of the blastocyst or fetus, in such a way that it can be moved to the artificial womb where it can continue developing.

THAT'S actually the tricky part, rather than the developement of the artificial womb per se. . .

[theletterelle.livejournal.com]

I think a more comparable idea would be a lottery to force someone to give up a kidney for transplant. It won't kill them, and it'll save a life.

But I agree, it's their "personal responsibility" theme applied here. Funny how personal responsibility never applies to corporations that poison water and air, or the people that make up those corporations.

[navrins]

I think it is justifiable to assert that a parent has a responsibility to risk life and limb for his/her child, even in the absence of any such responsibility toward any other person. Not saying I agree with that claim, but it is not an uncommon belief.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

And if an anti-abortionist tries to tell you otherwise, ask them when they intend to pass legislation instituting a lottery for who gives up their lungs for a transplant. I guarantee fewer than one in a thousand will agree with this idea, and each of them will explain that pregnancy's different because the woman has to be held "responsible" by being forced to carry it to term.

The difference is that in the vast majority of cases, a pregnant woman has actively chosen to take steps which created a measurable risk of pregnancy. If you tried the argument based on a lottery amongst a small group of smokers to provide a lung donor for a non-smoking cancer sufferer known to have been exposed to the secondary smoke of those same smokers, the analogy would work better, and the morality of it would start to look rather different, IMO.

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth: I think that that any law in reference to abortion is inherently a stopgap measure. The only reasonable solution is technological: artificial wombs.

Fundamentally, what should happen is that any woman who doesn't want to have her body used as an incubator for a parasite, for whatever reason, should be allowed to have that fetus removed and placed into an artificial womb in which it could grow to term.

If a fetus does have any sort of legal standing, such a step would protect its hypothetical right to existence, without removing the mother's non-hypothetical right to control of her own person.

I have to disagree. That's not quite good enough either.

Because you're still forcing the woman to become a mother, even if not a parent, if you follow. She may not then have to carry that fetus, but if you force her to allow that fetus to develop and then become a person, you have forced her to reproduce. You have also exposed her to the ever-growing likelihood that this unwanted child will track her down and want a relationship with her someday whether she does or not. There are any number of reasons a woman might not want any of these things happening.

In the end, nothing will do but the right to choose not to have anything to do with it IMO.

[cheshyre]

I will say that those arguments are precisely ones Men's Rights Activists use to try to avoid child support payments and to have more control over the women upon whom they've fathered a child.

The man doesn't want to be a father, doesn't want anything to do with the kid, but because it's the woman's body, it's her choice to keep it if she wants, and he's stuck with it.
In their case, they want to be able to write off all rights/responsibilities/connection to the kid because they didn't want it. Judges usually throw this argument out of court on the lines of (a) if he didn't want it that badly, he shouldn't've given her sole responsibility for contraception, and (b) ruling on what's in the best interests of the child.

[Not agreeing nor disagreeing, and I don't follow the MRA/Fathers' Rights movements as much as some, but it's something I've heard.]

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I was under the impression that a woman could carry a child to term, give it up for adoption, and then have her own records sealed so that the child could not track her down. I would say that something like that would have to be part of this theory, too.

[yardlong.livejournal.com]

I agree that forcing the woman to become a mother is unacceptable. My view is that there is no "other person" with which to compete until birth, because birth confers personhood. I also agree with your view on the Men's Rights issue, inasmuch as the woman who makes the choice is responsible for her choice.

[ailbhe]

I like the uterine replicator idea. I always have.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

It would protect women who wanted to be parents, too.

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

There is quite literally no right more fundamental than the right to do what you want to do with your own body, to the extent that it doesn't infringe on other people.

Suicide. Prostitution. Drug Use. Organ Sales.

Presently, in the United States of America, these are not choices you are legally able to make. Combine that with the idea of the draft, which puts your body at the service of the government, and I'm not certain that particular premise is actually a "right."

[redbird]

While suicide is illegal, that's always been--and always will be--a difficult law to enforce (even aside from the Oregon exception in the case of the terminally ill). Prostitution is legal in Nevada. Alcohol is a drug, as are caffeine and nicotine. (Also aspirin and numerous other things, but I assume you mean "mind-altering drugs" here.)

[bradhicks.livejournal.com]

You're building an awfully elaborate framework to answer a question whose answer is already easily known. We know what would happen without Roe: abortion regulation would devolve to the states, and vary from state to state.

If you think you can get a 5 judge majority of "strict constructionists" to create an abortion right out of any other part of the constitution, I think you're at best excessively optimistic.

No, the more interesting question is what will they do when they realize there is no practical way for them to do it without striking down Griswold? And will even they have the guts to face a ticked off American public after they return the right to regulate contraceptives to the individual states?

[holzman.livejournal.com]

I think some members of this court are eager to overturn Griswold.

[deathboy.livejournal.com]

In a world that seriously doesn't require any more tiny humans, let alone ones that don't have a receptive family to raise and nurture them so they won't add to the problems we already have, I don't think raising an unwanted child is legitimate in any sense at all.

We have more than enough children and adults that the world doesn't care for sufficiently, that die, kill each other or take their own lives - this idea of lavishing such great importance on something that only exists in potentia is crazy-talk to me.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

In Freakonomics there's a solid argument that one of the consequences of Roe vs Wade was the crime drop across the US -- figures also work with other countries that have legalised abortion. It seems when you have abortion, the most violent least wanted section of the community just isn't there.

You think the Republicans would appreciate this argument, even if they don't appreciate any others.

[ecban.livejournal.com]

I thought that at least some Republicans would appreciate it when I first read that argument, but a few things occurred to me when I gave it longer thought. I can think of several reasons why Republicans wouldn't admit the validity of this argument. Consider the two major varieties of Republican:

1) Suppose a basic lower/middle-class grassroots Republican of indifferent education who has never considered their views, just absorbed them as they went along. While this person does have some reason to fear crime, their worldview and religion will automatically prevent them from even considering this argument because:
a) They just don't have the mental toolkit.
b) It would throw their entire worldview into question. Far easier to ignore the message or shoot the messenger than rebuild one's worldview without tools.

So grassroots Republicans will automatically fail to consider the argument.


2) Suppose an upper-class well-educated Republican with solid reasoning ability, not necessarily religious. This person is well aware of why they vote Republican. They hold their views because they wish to preserve their current wealth and power, and accumulate more. They also know that this is not in the best interests of their grassroots political majority. They have little reason to fear small crime, since they live in gated communities and work in secured buildings. They know that wealth is acquired by either persuasion or coercion. And they know the power of simple storylines conveyed through the mass media to sway their grassroots. This leads them to a few preliminary conclusions:

a) A steady supply of police and soldiers is needed to preserve and expand their wealth.
b) A steady supply of simple, media-quality fear sources is needed to keep their grassroots support in the fold, thereby preserving their political power base.

So when this person applies their reasoning to the Freakonomics argument, they will conclude:

a) Drops in poverty are bad, since they reduce the base of people most likely to become soldiers and police. Not incidentally, they also reduce the base of people willing to produce wealth for low wages.
b) Drops in financially low-level but fear-inducing crime are bad for the political power base, since they reduce the flow of fear-inducing news to the media.

Upper-class Republicans will privately accept the argument as true, but view its consequences as a direct threat to their wealth and power. Knowing that their political base is predisposed to ignore the argument anyway, they will simply opt to not draw attention to it. And they will continue to try to roll back Roe v. Wade, because doing so will give them their soldiers and crime back.

[bimmer1200.livejournal.com]

Restricting access to abortion to a woman who wants one is therefore a way of forcing her to work on behalf of a third party -- the fetus (who may or may not have legal standing.)

So you're against staxes then? Because taxes, for the half of us who actually pay them, is the forcing of me to work on behalf of a third party, whether I want to or not. And it's a great deal harder to argue that I'm responsible for seeing to it that some drunken redneck who was too busy skipping school to get a degree so he can provide for himself is fed, clothed and housed, then it is to argue that a woman is responsible for the consequences of her decision to have sex.

Further, in a society that has the legal precedent that a man can be responsible for child support for a child that he didn't father, it rings a little hollow. Add in things like prostitution, drug use, suicide, gambling and even things like helmet laws, and while I don't know your personal stand on all of these, many who make the argument you are making turn right around and argue that the government should be able to interfere in your personal life in all kinds of ways.

As for Roe v. Wade itself, the SCOTUS screwed the pooch. Roe v. Wade should be left to the States. There should be neither a federal prohibition or prescription of abortion. Would some states have abortion on demand right up til a minute before birth? Some would, yes. Would some restrict it completely? Yes. But if you don't like the way your state law is, you can change it or you can move. With the Roe v. Wade, the court stepped in and truncated a political process that was working up until that point. Abortion laws had been liberalizing across the country at the time of the decision, and the trend was accelerating. Without an imposition of the Roe from on high, this very well could be a largely settled issue with much less acrimony on all sides.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting question, about taxes. As it is, I do accept the right of governments to impose taxes, even in cases where the individual in question benefits less from the services of the government than the amount that they pay out in taxes.

I wonder why that is -- I may need to think about this for a while to unpack exactly what my thinking and feeling is.

Is there a qualitative difference between actual work, especially dangerous work such as carrying a baby, and money, which, at some level of abstraction, can be considered a tangible representation of work? I feel that there is such a distinction, but I can't quite put my finger on what it is. For one thing, I feel that governments can have the right to regulate commercial transactions to a much higher degree than other forms of interpersonal contact. So I need to see where that comes from, and under what theory THAT holds up.

One distinction is that money can be made through investment rather than through direct work -- one could make an argument that capital gains taxes, for instance, were moral, while income taxes were not -- income taxes are based on a method of gaining money which is more directly tied to work. I'm not prepared to make that distinction -- if only because I DO feel that income taxes are moral.

I'm going to have to think about this further. If I come up with anything brilliant, I'll let you know.

As far as Roe v. Wade -- I disagree that it's necessarily best left as a state-by-state situation. Primarily because the arguments against legal abortion AND against the restriction of legal abortion are both so clearly based on fundamental questions of morality. It seems to me that, since the Civil War, at least, we've had an argument that an issue can be so clearly morally based that the society as a whole has a say in defining itself as one which allows or disallows an action.

I argue that restriction of abortion is so clearly immoral that our country must not condone the restriction of abortion. Others argue that abortion is so clearly immoral that our country must not condone it.

In either case, a state-by-state solution is unfeasable.

I could see a limited way in which someone could be considered responsible for a child that he didn't father: if you consider a marriage contract to be a contract of mutual support between two people, and one of those people incurs the liability of a child, I could see an argument that BOTH parties in the marriage contract have incurred the liability. I'm not absolutlely convinced by this argument -- for one thing, unless otherwise specified, a marriage contract is ALSO assumed to include the stipulation that neither party WILL procreate outside the partnership, and I think it'd be totally reasonable to argue that, if YOU break THAT part of the contract, I'M allowed to break THIS part of it.

I believe that drug use, suicide, and prostitution should be legal, and I'm against helmet laws -- I'm also against most drug use, most cases of suicide, the way that street prostituion works, and riding motorcycles or bicycles without helmets, but I feel that the law isn't the right tool to deal with the situations.

One of the difficulties that the United States has as a culture is that we have too few tools for regulating behavior. All we've got are laws, the tort system, and a limited degree of government regulation. And that's simply not enough to run a healthy society. Because there are plenty of things that MUST be regulated by a society, but which must NOT be regulated by any of those tools. And our culture lacks pretty much any other tools.

Gurgle!

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

I think the whole pro-life/choice dichotomy is ridiculously false. As such I'm pretty much in the middle regarding legalizing abortion.

Abortions should be readily available when there is cause, BUT I do not think that "I was too stupid/careless, and got pregnant" is justifiable. You want to play like an adult? Then you have to be responsible, and pay the price of your actions. Many people DO take what may be considered reasonable action to prevent pregnancy, and still get knocked-up (broken condoms and such). Because of this, and because it is presently impossible to tell apart the torn-rubber cases and the Too drunk to use one idiots, it is impossible to control this issue through law.

That said, I think that with the freely available FREE abortions, should come SOME sort of social regulation, for cases where this is not a clear-cut medical issue.

"You've had your abortion, Ma'am, but in showing yourself to having seriously questionable judgment, we'll now prevent you [through semi-permanent birth-control] from having a child for the next three years. Try growing a brain, in the meantime."

Yes, this again raises the issue of controlling another persons' body, but to a lesser degree. But we already do limit the free movement of people who being mentally incapable of showing "normal" judgment, by hospitalizing them. This is the same thing, to a much lesser degree, or an even milder case - we refuse/cancel driving licenses to those who can't demonstrate proper judgment on the roads...

Re: Gurgle!

[holzman.livejournal.com]

Thank you, by the way, for illustrating so my point that the anti-choice position is about punishing women for having sex, and nothing but.

What makes you think your moral compass is so superior to anyone else's that you think it makes any sense at all that anyone should give a damn whether you think a given woman had a "good enough" reason for an abortion?

[cheshyre]

Ian, you might be interested to read this

Will Saletan wrote an article on abortion in last week's NYT.
Katha Pollitt responded with a rebuttal article in the Nation.
Now they're having a public dialog hosted by Slate.

It's only just begun, but looks promising.

On Artificial Wombs

[dancing-kiralee.livejournal.com]

Well, it wouldn't work for me.

Being a women (and using a method of birth control with a 1% chance of failure over the course of my lifetime) I've considered the question of whether or not I'd want an abortion. There are some situations in which I would. And there are some situations in which I would not.

For me, the "artificial womb" solution is essentially equivalent to adoption.

See, my analysis has nothing to do with the "burden" of pregnancy, and everything to do with the "burden" of parenthood. If I give birth, I'm (largely) responsible for the creation of that human-being, and for everything that human-being does. In essence, I'm responsible for seeing to it that my children are raised well. For me, adoption doesn't take away that responsibility. It does take away my control of the situation, and prevent me from fulfulling my responsibility. But I'm still responsible.

Neither the possiblity of adoption, nor the possiblity of an artificial womb, would decrease my desire to have an abortion in those situations in which I would want one.

Kiralee

[gunlord.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, how far has research on "artificial wombs" progressed? I know as little about medical technology as I do about zoology or most other things in general, so I'm curious as to whether transporting a blastocyst or whatever into an artificial womb is actually feasible any time in the near future. :3

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Total blue-sky speculation. It shows up in several science fiction novels.

That said -- when I was born, I was born 6 weeks early, which was JUST the edge of how early you could save a preeme, while you can now save premeees who are barely out of the second trimester. And, at the same time, you are getting better and better in vitro work, where you can push how long you can develop a blastocyst to an embryo before implantation.

So. . . you ARE kinda narrowing the length of time that an actual human needs to be involved, so if you can squeeze that time to zero, then you've EFFECTIVELY got artificial wombs.

But nobody, that I know of, is doing any actual, serious research on uterine replicators. I just wish they would.