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

[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.

[gunlord.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see. Well, thank you. BTW, since you mentioned science fiction, I dunno if you have much of an interest in Japanese animation or not, but in the Japanese anime series Gundam SEED, artificial wombs figure prominently in the plot. You might want to take a look at it if you're interested in that sort of thing ^_^

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Heh.

Well, I was really thinking more about how they are used both in the Honor Harrington novels and in the Miles Vorkosigan novels.

Both universes postulate rather similar technologies -- first, contraceptive technology is good enough that accidental pregancy pretty much only happens on primitive planets; second, really good uterine replicators are available, and, when a couple on a technologically-advanced world wants to reproduce, they do so with the aid of a uterine replicator. Some families rent or buy their own replicator, and therefore can have their gestating kid in the box in the nursery, and, y'know, play Mozart to it and sing to it and stuff.

In the Honor Harrington books, which are written by a guy, the main character's mother, although she had access to the advanced stuff and was a biochemist and medical doctor herself, chose to go through an old-fashioned pregnancy and birth. David Webber, the author, seems to imply that this was a rational decision somehow, dispite the fact that Honor's mother is an under-five-foot tall tiny little Asian woman, and Honor is an over-six-foot-tall-and-genetically-modified-to-be-stronger-and-bigger-than-human-normal giant.

In the Miles Vorkosikan books, the main character's mother was from an advanced world, but fell in love with and married a noble on a primitive world. Because there was such suspicion of the outside high-tech universe, the mother was convinced much against her will to go through a natural pregancy, but insisted on having uterine replicators and fetus-extractors available in the castle in case there was any sort of complication with the pregnancy. Like, for instance, a terrorist chemical attack on the pregnant mother -- the use of the uterine replicator is the only reason the main character survived to be born. Lois McMaster Bujold implies that you'd have to be kind of nuts to prefer a natural pregnancy and childbirth to an artificial one.