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http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/11/16/what-about-fetal-rights/:
I believe abortion is morally wrong, but I also believe that in a conflict between mother and fetus, a woman’s right must always take precedence. A human being’s rights under the law increase with maturity. That has been the tradition under Anglo-American law as well as world wide for most of history. To suggest that a fetus has the same rights as a mature adult individual borders on the perverse. A woman’s rights should never be placed second to the needs of her fetus. To do so is to treat women first and foremost as communally owned vessels for bringing forth life and only second as autonomous individuals.
The fact that an adult has more rights than a minor or unborn baby/fetus doesn't mean that the adult's "right must always take precedence." The same reasoning would allow a parent to kill an minor child. The parent's rights do take precedence but there are limits. The parent's rights are limited by the rights of a child -- it is unlawful for a parent to neglect or abuse a child.
5 comments:
The child abuse and infanticide cases and the abortion case are not analogous. In the former the child's interest can be served by giving the child up for adoption or by having a relative or the state remove the child from the home. In the abortion case the only way the child's interest can be served is through forcing the woman to carry the child to term -- in other words, through involuntary servitude and not just a slight inconvenience but the hardest and most dangerous work most women ever do in their lives.
You are correct about the extra work generally required for an unborn child compared to a born child to secure the child's right to life. Also depending on how close to term the baby is there may not be much difference in danger/work to the mother.
I was trying to make the point that an adults rights don't always take precedence of a child's.
Ok. I concede to having been imprecise. That paragraph has to be read in conjunction with the paragraph that a child's rights increase as it matures. An embryo has fewer rights than a fetus, which has fewer rights than a child about to be born, which has fewer rights than a child just born. If s woman's right and a child's right of equal stature (I realize this word is imprecise as well)are in conflict and there is no way to accommodate both -- the woman wins; for example, if the baby needs to be killed while being born to save the mother's life --the mother is hemorrhaging and the baby is stuck in the birth canal -- unless the mother agrees, which she might, would you really save the baby instead of the mother?
The current law, and historically, the law has weighed the interests of the two differently not only based on whether the state or someone else could take care of the baby (viability or birth - -the hemorrhaging example) but even based on age of the child.
I'm not a utilitarian, but consider a young woman in a deep ditch with her baby. You can only save one -- whom do you save? It makes more sense from a societal perspective to save the young woman because she can contribute to society for many years, even by having more babies, before that baby in the ditch with her is ready to contribute.
Of course, if I were the mother in the ditch, I would hold up my baby to be saved, but that is a different issue than what society should require by law.
AFAIK most abortions aren't to save the life of the mother. I assume that even prior to Roe v. Wade that was legal or at least not prosecuted (but I admit ignorance).
I am more interested in the cases where the abortion isn't to save the life of the mother. Generally "carrying to term" allows both to live with relatively low risk to the mother. (Abortion also has risks to the life of the mother.)
It seems to boil down to the unborn baby's right to live vs. the mother's right to not go through the work (an understatement I know) and potential increased risk of carrying the baby to term. (Work includes both pregnancy, adoption, raising, separation, etc.) Do you basically agree? (Maybe you would phrase it differently.)
BTW I liked your
Non-Coercive Alternatives to Prohibiting Abortion . Non-governmental solutions are almost always best. :-)
You are right in one sense, but it just isn't that simple.
The law doesn’t decide that the child is a human being or not. It is a human being from the point of fertilization – the legal question is: Is the embryo or fetus a person under the law? And, if it is a person under the law, what kind with what rights? By what kind of legal entity is it – children have different rights than adults, handicapped people have different rights than non handicapped adults, etc. They even have different degrees of a right to life --- for example, withholding life saving treatment from a patient with advanced Alzheimer's is not uncommon (and usually legal).
There is "acceptable killing" and there is "unacceptable killing" and there is "life worth saving" and there is "life that is not worth saving" given the social consequences -- It sounds harsh, but it is true, society values life differently depending on the situation. The law sanctions all sorts of human killing without calling it “homicide.” -- capital punishment, War, self-defense, double effect (that is even Catholic law) – improving one life by killing the other like in the separation of conjoined twins -- even taking people off life support if they wish it (DNRs and advance directives), society deems their life not worth saving (brain dead) or even sometimes if the family deems their life not worth saving (quality of life judgment allowed in decisions not to treat)– there are other less obvious ones such as mandating vaccinations that kill a certain number of people every year, etc, etc.
The social cost of not allowing abortions is high, very high. In addition to treating women as second class citizens and incubators, prohibiting abortion may not even save any lives. The Guttmacher Institute just came out with a report that shows countries that prohibit abortion have just as many abortions per capita a countries that don't. I was stunned. To think women who don't want to keep their babies are so desperate that they will have abortions whether it is legal or not. My goodness -- that is so sad.
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