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xiphiasFundamentally, 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.
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.
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Date: 2006-02-01 08:29 pm (UTC)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.