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

[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.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

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.

I'm not sure I understand. Are you seriously suggesting that such a lottery could possibly be considered legal or moral?

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

Legal, no. Morally, I find it quite attractive right now, but I may feel differently once the current smoking ban debate here in the UK has been resolved.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid that, like the morality of an anti-choice position, the morality of such a lottery escapes me.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

It's the morality of cleaning up after your mistakes.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

As with the argument that banning abortion is the "morality of cleaning up after your mistakes," I'm not buying it. It's the pseudo-morality of punishing people who make choices you don't like, and nothing but.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

*grin* You know me so little, that's almost funny.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

Then why single out smokers for this lottery, and not other polluters? (Hint: if you've ever driven or ridden in a motor vehicle, your "morality" plants you in the lottery.)

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

I am an ex-smoker, so I was in already.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

I can't help but notice you neglected to answer my question.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

Yes, because the additional information contained in my answer renders your question irrelevant. Further, you appear to be assuming that I have moral objections to smoking and to women having sex, but do not have moral objections to the use of cars, when in fact the reverse is true.