Every woman has the God-given right to determine what happens to her own body. No law, particularly ones crafted and enacted by old, white men, should constrain or regulate a woman’s control over what happens to, or what she does with, her own body. For that matter, the same is true for men, too.
Except if she, or he, wants to use their body to drive a car over the speed limit. They might crash and hurt someone, so the government can make an exception in that case. Oh yeah, and when they’re young, if they want to go to public school, forcing them to be inoculated is reasonable because not doing so would put other kids at risk of catching all kinds of communicable diseases. Oh, shoot, I forgot one along the same line; if they have a disease like AIDS, they mustn’t be allowed to use their body, sexually that is, with others, because, well, that would be a criminal act.
Okay, I guess there are some clear cases when women or men don’t have a right to do whatever they want with their own bodies. Whenever such acts infringe upon the rights, or certainly the “bodies” of other human beings, it’s simple logic and universally agreed within civilized societies, that such acts be prohibited. In this country we are fond of the phrase, “You’re free to do whatever you want, so long as it doesn’t harm someone else.”
Ah, there’s the rub! What determines when and what a “someone” is? What is a person and when do they become one? This core question is at the heart of the most divisive issues today and it has been so since our nation’s founding.
As far as I know, the only time “personhood” was dealt with by the Supreme Court was in the now-infamous Dred Scott case of 1857, when the court ruled in a 7-2 decision that “persons” of African descent could not be citizens (with rights) because they were, essentially, “property,” i.e., not really human beings—you know, not fully human; less than human; at least, of less value than real (non-black) humans. Hmm. It appears the courts sometimes get this stuff wrong—this stuff being: “What constitutes—what is—a unique human being, deserving of human rights?”
In the moral perspective, until recently, all civilized societies on earth have been in agreement that murder—the taking of an innocent life—is wrong. But a gray area exists when it comes to the subject of abortion, as a grand mistake was made in the Roe v. Wade case when the court failed to define what constitutes a unique human being.
The new law in New York that legitimizes infanticide, as well as other laws around the country condoning euthanasia, will, I believe, move this issue to a Supreme Court near you in the not-to-distant future.
I do support a women’s right to choose how she treats her own body, and what decisions she makes about it—so long as it is her body, and no one else’s. When other people are involved, society has the right, no, the obligation, to be involved in those decisions.
As a Christian, I believe the pro-life argument isn’t effective or even meaningful when we make our case solely on moral grounds. You can’t argue that someone’s decision about an act is immoral unless you agree upon a baseline of morality. Instead, it should be argued in terms of something many on the pro-choice side believe to be more objective—science. Indeed, the abortion issue itself isn’t so much a question of morality, as it is a question of facts. While we all agree that murder is wrong, we can only know what murder is by first understanding and properly defining what constitutes a unique, individual person.
My guess is, society—via the courts—will soon conclude that there are scientifically-factual characteristics that define unique human beings, i.e., personhood. Unique DNA is one characteristic. Dad’s, mom’s and baby’s DNA are all unique and different from one another. Then, there is a question of viability. Since all fertilized ovum do not necessarily progress to become “people,” these may not be considered so. But, when an ovum implants itself into the uterine wall, it is a fact that it will eventually become a “baby” (person), so long as it is not molested. A reasonable, scientifically-based definition of a person could be: “A life form with unique, human DNA, allowed to develop to whatever point nature (or God) determines appropriate, when left un-molested.”
Aside from fact, another argument to affirm life is that it is the more “progressive,” optimistic point of view. A child that society felt justified sentencing to a pre-mature death, had it been given the chance to live, may well have grown up to become the scientist who would have discovered the cure for a form of cancer that subsequently plagues generations of that society to come. Every lost life is a loss of human potential.
Finally, I think all of this is already self-evident. Deep down, we all know the truth, and it’s obvious by how the issue is talked about. For example, we often hear the argument from pro-choice advocates that “a fetus is hardly the same thing as a human being and abortion is really just like scraping skin cells off your arm.” But in the next breath, those same people argue that having an abortion is a “very private, personal, difficult matter,” or that abortion is a “very difficult, serious decision to be made solely between a woman and her physician.”
If a fetus is just a “blob of tissue;” if it isn’t really another distinct person, why then is the decision to abort it so “difficult, serious, personal, and private?”
We can’t have it both ways. Is the decision to end a life the same as flicking dandruff off your shoulder, or are we dealing with a solemn, sacred issue that defines what it means to be a just, honorable, civilized society; one that values each person—each life—regardless of race, age, gender, condition, social status, or stage of development?
The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members. ~ Mahatma Gandhi
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