"It's my body!"
On Abortion
The baby, though being in a relationship of dependence upon the mother, is not part of the mother. To be a fully mature female does not depend upon the existence of a baby in the womb. That the child is a separate body is implicitly admitted by those who justify abortion by calling the baby a “parasite.”[1] Such a claim is in tension with the idea that only the woman’s body is present. But, accepting (for a moment) that it is just your body – can you morally mutilate your own body? Just because something is yours (or you), it does not mean you can do anything you want to or with it. We have already established that choices are not moral or allowable simply because they were chosen. You cannot use your body to assault another person.
Suppose a woman takes a pregnancy test, not wanting to be pregnant. Of course, she will only go to an abortion clinic if the test comes out positive, but why? What is it that the positive test tells her that the negative test does not? The negative test tells her that it’s just her body. But the positive test tells her that it’s no longer just her body – another body is present. I know of no woman with twenty fingers and four feet - someone else is there. The fact that one goes to an abortion clinic is an acknowledgement of another body present. A supporter of bodily autonomy cannot then allow a pregnant woman to get an abortion, for that would impact another body. If it isn’t your body, then you certainly cannot harm it, just as a landlord cannot murder a tenant just because they live on his property.
Conceding that there is another body involved, other abortion-supporters may argue that the right to bodily autonomy trumps the right to life. Indeed, this even applies to corpses. In many countries, you cannot legally take the organs of the deceased without their prior consent. Some will bring up the “violinist argument” to demonstrate that the woman is not obliged to carry the fetus to term, even if it is another body. This argument was made famous by Judith Jarvis Thomson, who posited that a person can be equal to another without having the right to another person’s body. She defended this with an analogy:
… imagine this. You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you—we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you." (A Defence of Abortion, 1971).
Thomson’s point was this: Even though the violinist is a human person, with the same dignity and right to life, he does not have the right to use your body without your consent. Just as you can reach around and unplug the violinist, so can a pregnant woman “unplug” the fetus.
This analogy, however, is not as strong as it first appears - it is guilty of false equivalence. For most women who become pregnant, she has consented to the act of sex, which brought about the pregnancy. In that vein, the analogy only works for rape victims. [See "I didn't consent to pregnancy!"]
And there is yet another false equivalence: Thomson’s analogy ignores the moral responsibility of a mother. Parents have a responsibility for their offspring that they do not have for strangers. You are not morally responsible for the wellbeing of some random guy, but you are morally responsible for your child. As a parent, you have a parental role that should move you to make great sacrifices for the sake of your offspring. Even as a rape victim, by virtue of being the parent, a mother is duty-bound to carry the child to term. It’s nice of you to give food to the poor in your city, but not to do so would not be breaking the law. But to neglect and fail to feed your child, in your home, is against the law. There’s a moral and legal difference between a stranger-stranger relationship and a mother-child relationship.
The pro-abortion argument might respond with this analogy: “Imagine you’re a parent of a child, whom you love, who gets very sick. They need a kidney transplant or else they will die. Suppose you are the only one in the world who meets the conditions for such a kidney donation. It would be nice, and it would save your child’s life, to donate your kidney. It wouldn’t kill you. Should the law force you to give your kidney to your child?” Just as a parent does not have a legal duty to give their born child their kidney, a mother should not have a legal duty to give her preborn child her uterus.
But again, we have another false equivalence. Consider: What is the nature and purpose of a kidney and how does that differ from the nature and purpose of a uterus? The kidney exists in my body for my body. The uterus exists in my body for someone else’s body. The uterus is unique from all other body parts. It is the woman’s most selfless organ. It exists more for my offspring than for me. And with that knowledge, the preborn child has a right to the womb in a way that the born child does not have a right to the kidney.
I have heard the uterus described as one of the woman's "internal resources," which a fetus has no right to. But a resource is "something that is available for use," and we know that a woman does not use her uterus. The uterus is for her offspring and is used by her offspring. To take it away is akin to a hospital removing temporary life support from a recovering patient just to empty a bed.
If a woman is not interested in having a selfless organ, and desires only to live for herself, she can get her uterus removed. The disadvantages of a hysterectomy all relate to the fact that you can no longer have children - no child can have a rightful claim over your uterus if you have no uterus. That is the only way to bypass this obligation. If you want a body which exists only for you, then you cannot have a uterus, which inherently exists for another. Either you accept the selfless nature of your reproductive abilities, or you take your reproductive abilities away entirely. There is no getting around it. For the woman especially, reproduction is synonymous with selflessness and duty. The baby has a right to the uterus which you do not have.
At the bare minimum, there is a parental responsibility to meet the basic needs of one’s child. We might distinguish these ordinary needs from extraordinary needs, for which there is no duty to meet them. The uterus is the food, shelter, and clothing of the preborn child. Ordinary care (i.e., the basic care required for regular human growth and development) is an obligation. However, the sacrifices required for the violinist are above the call of duty – it is extraordinary care. It’s heroic and admirable to meet extraordinary needs, but it is not an obligation. A mother, however, is obliged to carry her child to term.
[1] Note that a parasite is defined as "an organism that lives and feeds on or in an organism of a different species and causes harm to its host." A child is the same species and (all things ideal) does not cause harm to the mother, meaning therefore that a pre-born baby cannot be described as a parasite.
[-] I have also heard the claim, "Abortion just moves the fetus to a different environment! It's not my fault it can't survive!" This line of thought demonstrates a total lack of understanding of abortion procedures (which actually butcher the fetus), and is about as effective as saying, "I just moved you to the bottom of the ocean! It's not my fault you can't survive there!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQKZsfy_YdM&ab_channel=PintsWithAquinas Special thanks to this source featuring Stephanie Gray: Highly recommend!
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