Some Thoughts On A Recent Abortion Debate

recently, i got into a tussle with charlie, a winger who posts at kevin drum's blog. he made some snide comment about calling a fetus or embryo a 'potential human being' in a discussion thread for a post that was actually about kerry's vp options. this was before kerry chose edwards.

i felt like trolling the troll. yes yes, i know i shouldn't feed them, but sometimes i do it just for the hell of it. i promise to refrain from now on.

so, i nettled him a little about his vaunted pro-life position since he's so damned pro-war, which by definition involves rampant mutilation and killing of born human beings. at the end of my snide response, i got in a dig about the early christian church's doubts regarding whether women actually had souls or not because charlie never tires of talking about his deep and abiding christian faith. he said he didn't agree with that position, so i asked him how his anti-abortion stance was really all that different from questioning whether women had souls or not. cmdicely, another frequent commentor at kevin's blog, called me intellectually dishonest for asking that question because the two were not even related.

i tried to follow up, but the thread was already dying since it was over a day old, so i dropped the issue.

i dispute that the two are not related, however. if the church at that time questioned the existence of women's souls, then exactly what did they think women's purpose in life was, then? if they didn't have souls, then obviously they were put on earth for men to get their rocks off and to have their children. even the bible itself assigns the unborn to a different status than born people. if one harms a pregnant woman such that she miscarries, the penalty demanded is payment to her *husband*. this, of course, categorizes both the woman and the fetus as property of her husband.

outlawing abortion essentially codifies that attitude towards women. they would no longer be the autonomous proprietors of their own bodies. they would be reduced essentially to the status of life support systems. i don't like abortion. i wouldn't have one. but, something in me is completely repulsed by the attitude that a woman's body isn't her property. i'm also aware that one can be anti-abortion and still pro-choice. i am one of those people. but, a huge portion of the so-called pro-life movement isn't pro-choice.

many of the same people who want to outlaw abortion vigorously support 'free markets' and sneer at any social spending as an attack on 'property rights.' i seriously doubt they would support a law requiring people to donate their extra kidneys to terminally ill matching recipients. i also doubt they would support a social system that strips anyone of their surplus 'property' in order to feed and house the multitudes of people in this world who are dying of hunger and exposure to the elements. we don't even allow the harvesting of organs from dead people who said they didn't want their organs donated in the event of their deaths.

yet, outlawing abortion would force pregnant women who do not want to carry their pregnancies to term to feed and house their fetuses with their bodies. a pregnant woman's body then effectively becomes the rightful property of the fetus for the duration of her pregnancy. would these same people raise strenuous objections to a dead person's right to be buried whole since, after all, they are dead and no longer need their organs? people die every day waiting for an organ.