My little contribution to the neverending debate…

Susanna at Cut on the Bias has been debating abortion with AC Douglas. Go and read ’em, if you like. Personally, I agree with AC – but I think Susanna has done a better job advocating her position. If this were a formal debate and I were the judge, Susanna would get the win.

But this isn’t a formal debate, and I’m not the judge. This is blogville – which, happily, means I get to take sides with my totally unasked-for opinions. Susanna writes:

AC says the hero analogy is stupid because no one unselfishly gives his or her life for someone else. […] how about men at war who jump on a grenade to save the others? Or go into a battlefield risking life to save a comrade? How about a mother who would fling herself between her child and a threat – be it animal, human or mechanical? How about family members who give up one of their healthy kidneys so their loved one can live?

I agree with Susanna’s argument here. There are indeed heroes who act altruistically (and if AC wants to deny it, he should support his denial with an argument, rather than just assertion). But does Susanna think people should be forced to do all these heroic things by the government?

If I was dying and needed a kidney, it would be swell of my sister to offer me one. But I don’t think the government should force her to "donate" her kidney to me. If I understand what Susanna is saying, she’s trying to analogize an altruistic kidney donation to an altruistic mother birthing an unwanted child. But unless Susanna wants the government to enforce altruism on unwilling kidney donors, the analogy doesn’t work.

So what makes your beliefs and assumptions accepted and mine not, to the point that you can unilaterally dismiss mine without even a logical argument as to why yours are superior?

I agree that AC didn’t provide an argument, so let me try to provide one.  I’d say that pro-choice "beliefs and assumptions" should be accepted with less argument, because they don’t impose on liberty. The pro-life position calls on the government to impose pro-life beliefs on the entire U.S. population. The pro-choice position, in contrast, leaves it up to each individual pregnant woman to decide.

Now, imposing on other people’s lives ain’t always bad. I might find laws against arson an imposition, for example, but that doesn’t make anti-arson laws wrong. But in our society, liberty is the default state. We don’t say "skipping rope is outlawed until rope-skippers prove their case"; we say that skipping-rope is allowed until the skip-rope-prohibitionists prove their case. For an activity to be legal requires no special defense; outlawing an activity, in contrast, requires ultra-strong arguments.

And that’s how it ought to be. Forcing a pregnant woman to go through with the pregnancy against her will is a terrible thing to do; it attacks her autonomy, her health, and her independence. And by attacking the liberty and autonomy of women and women only, it perpetuates male dominance.  It’s a bad thing to do. Now, maybe that’s justifiable – but the people who want to do the harm should have to make the justification good and solid! Enforced childbirth is a hell of a lot more imposing than banning skipping rope, after all.

None of that proves abortion shouldn’t be outlawed. It merely says that the pro-lifers – like all people wanting to restrict liberty – have a harder case to make.

Anyhow, back to Susanna.

Susanna spends a paragraph arguing that abortion is usually selfish. I don’t agree (nor do I understand why Susanna makes an exception for rape and incest – why is a child’s life worth less according to how it was conceived?), but more importantly I don’t understand why she’s bringing this up at all. We don’t outlaw things because they’re selfish.

AC finally defines the central issue in the abortion debate as when the mass of cells becomes developed to a point that “entitles it to be considered an individual human person, and therefore qualified for a conferring of individual human rights.”

AC may concede this much, but I sure don’t. Even if a fetus is a "person," that doesn’t establish that the government should force childbirth on its unwilling mother. I’m an individual human person, but that doesn’t make it right for the government to force other people to act altruistically in my best interest (for instance, by forcing my sister to donate her kidney).

It might be nice of big sis to give me her kidney. It might be nice for an unwilling mother to go through birth. But why should the law force either of these actions on either of these women?

Nor are Susanna’s arguments about timing (conception? viability? birth?) convincing. I mean, sure, it’s human at conception – Susanna proves that nicely. But everyone agrees on that. Obviously it’s human; it’s certainly not a Vulcan or a frog! But just because something is human doesn’t establish that it has rights. My fingernail clippings are human (don’t believe me? do a DNA test), but they don’t have rights.

What you won’t concede is that the new state is sufficiently changed to be worthy of rights. And that is an arbitrary decision, AC , why wouldn’t it be? Answer me that.

I think Susanna’s reversing the burdens. She’s the one who is willing to impose her beliefs on unwilling pregnant woman; she’s the one who wants to go against the default position of allowing folks to make their own choices. It should be up to her to prove that the new state (by which she means conception) is enough "to be worthy of rights," not up to pro-choicers to show that it isn’t.

I admit, I’m a bit confused how a brand-new embryo could have rights. Where do these rights come from?

Does it have rights merely as a side effect of existence? No, because lots of things exist without having rights.

Does it have rights merely because it’s made of human tissue? No, because some things made of human tissue have no rights (fingernail clippings, hair clippings, blood samples, unused sperm, etc).

Does it have rights because it may someday become a person? But if this is so – if the potential being has the same rights as the actual being –  then why do laws protecting old growth forests not also protect acorns? I have the potential to have a great job with IBM, but that doesn’t mean that IBM owes me a paycheck, because I don’t actually have it. I have the potential to buy a car, but that’s not the same as actually owning it; and until I actually own it, I have no right to drive it off the lot.

There’s a very good reason for this distinction: it’s reality. An acorn is not the same as an oak; a embryo is not the same as a person. When pro-lifers deny that obvious difference, they’re in battle with reality. Having potential to be X is not the same as being X.

And even if Susanna can show that there’s no meaningful difference between potential and actual, that isn’t enough to justify state-enforced childbirth. Actual people don’t have the right to use other people’s bodies, even when their life is at stake (as in me and my sister’s kidney); so why should potential people have that right?.