Kesher Talk

Are women people? Matt and Co. are discussing whether or not women in the US are full citizens before the law, or slaves. Actually they are discussing abortion, but it amounts to the same thing. I said:

There is one glaring item missing from all these heady philosophical comments. Can all you college boys guess what it is? No?

How about the woman? Yes, that real live adult (at least post-puberty, which is the definition of adulthood in most cultures) human being.

The reason, college boys, that abortion is a thorny issue is because - unlike a brain-damaged person - the fetus' life depends on the the life and activities of its host (which I will only call a mother in situations where I agree that the fetus is a baby).

You can't compare and contrast the legal status of a fetus to any human which is already outside another human's body. The only comparable case is siamese twins, and courts have ruled that doctors may sacrifice the life of one twin for another if that is the only way to keep both from dying.

A woman who is forced to carry a child she doesn't want for 9 months and then undergo labor and the physical results of pregnancy, is not a free citizen but a slave. Is it ethical to enslave an existing human being to a potential human being? Hell, to another human being at all. That's the issue.

Do we force citizens to donate organs to other citizens who may die for want of said organ? No. Do we force people to donate money to beggars on the street who may starve if they aren't fed? No. Do we force children to house and feed aging parents who may die if left on their own? No.

We expect people to do these things, we hope they do these things, but we do not force them. Likewise, we do not force women to carry fetuses to term if they do not want to have children.

This is a religious argument as well as a political one, if the free choice of religious obligation means anything. (Of course, if you believe the infidel must be forcibly converted, you probably also believe people are organs of the collective body and shouldn't choose much of anything.)

If the right to abortion had been framed in those terms, we would still suffer from anti-abortion terrorism, but I think the public's minds would be clearer. The fact that it isn't framed in those terms, and that you can have a long complicated discussion about abortion without once mentioning the individual human being in which the uterus resides, says something about how much we consider women to be true citizens the minute their reproductive faculties are involved.

(I owe this particular pro-choice argument to my favorite sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll Jewish feminist Ellen Willis)

posted by Judith @ 11/14/2002 10:28:30 AM