Having failed after 40 years to convince most of us that abortion is equivalent to infanticide, for the last little while the anti-choice movement has been shifting its focus to “personhood” and “fetal rights“.
To me, the primary reason that fetal rights is a non-starter is pretty straightforward. In any conflict of interest between a pregnant woman and the embryo/fetus she’s carrying, the woman’s rights must supercede; otherwise, pregnant women would have less right to self-determination than non-pregnant ones. To put it in slightly more incendiary terms, fetal rights would reduce pregnant women to second-class citizens beholden to a fetus — ambulatory incubators.
Recently Wendy McIlroy of iFeminists looked at the implications of fetal rights from a libertarian standpoint. Such as:
Implication #5: anti-abortionists are destroying the concept of natural rights itself which claims that every human being properly has jurisdiction over his or her own body. It is only because each human being is a self-owner that is is improper to initiate force against another. But if the fetus possesses the right to live off the pregnant woman’s body functions — to share the food she eats, the blood her heart pumps — then this is tantamount to saying that one human being can properly own the body functions of another. It is tantamount to saying one human being can properly enslave another.
McIlroy raises some issues that make good arguments against fetal rights, not just in terms of womens’ reproductive freedom, but the wider scope of individual liberty; you can read the whole thing here.
“It is tantamount to saying one human being can properly enslave another.”
That pretty much nails it. If anti-abortionists can’t control women (still perceived as an easy target) directly, they’ll do it through projecting their own desires on her fetus almost as it is theirs. This type of controlling behavior can in no way be considered anything but a psychosis, otherwise it’s really no one else’s business.
It really takes a desperately weak, loathsome soul to have to do that, the kind of potentially irrational person law enforcement should be watching out for.
Bruce – Exactly. It all stems from the belief that a woman’s primary purpose is to crank out babies, and anyone who disputes that or tries to circumvent it is a rebellious wench. They’re trying to take the focus off of the “controlling women” aspect of things and refocus on the fetus, but as McIlroy’s essay shows, this raises just as many odious issues, and boils down to the same thing: reproductive enslavement.
Oh Bruce, here’s a live one… from “No Apologies”, Pride Parade is “child abuse”.
GOD, these people are nitwits
As much as I appreciate Wendy, she is incorrect on this one. A woman has every right to not get pregnant or to get pregnant. That is the level of choice. Once that choice is made, she needs to take responsibility for her choice.
No one would claim that I have a right to abort Barack Obama’s life just because I made a choice to live in America and I don’t like what Obama is doing to my body. Once I’ve made my choice, I have to take responsibility.
On another subject, what do you think of libertarians infiltrating the Republican Party? There is a good article on the subject at:
http://spirituallibertarian.blogspot.com/
I preferred the “continuous monitoring” argument. It’s not just continuous monitoring—it’s actually continuous (and cruel) restraint.
Mandos – It really makes you wonder why they haven’t thought some of these things through… or if they have thought them through
because McIlroy is right — short of Republic of Gilead-type totalitarianism, there’s no way to ensure that at-risk fetuses are unharmed.
Well, they’ve thought them through, but most of them rationalize it away by saying that in a Correct World, women would naturally think Correctly (and love every pregnancy). It’s the other side of the “women are too weak-minded to resist the Sirens of Abortion” meme, which is how they respond to McEllroy’s murder argument.
Essentially, many of McEllroy’s arguments are nullified in the minds of many pro-lifers by the fact that they didn’t think women had any agency anyway, pregnancy or not.
“Oh Bruce, here’s a live one…”
I saw that on the NoBrain site.
It takes a very sick mind to call the diversity of humanity child abuse.
And now I would like to leave a little comment about WordPress, I hate it, with a seething, searing, fucking heartfelt passion, it sucks donkey dick with a fervor even I can never imagine, and I have a great imagination.
Apparently I could solve all of life’s problem by signing up, but I can’t do that without starting a blog. I can’t even read what the fuck I’m typing becaause I picked some typestyle from somewhere else.
Thank you for letting bitch.
I find I agree with that Ron Grey and his CHP in this: “Xtra’s article shows nude men in the ‘Gay’ Pride Parade. This has been happening for four or five years. The first time, the police arrested the naked men, but a homosexual Crown counsel in Toronto conspired to have the charges stayed, on the spurious grounds that they were “not naked” — they were wearing shoes!
It’s this sort of sophistry that brings the law and Canada’s ‘justice’ system into disrepute.”
Stupid laws do bring the justice system into disrepute – for that matter, as does intermittent enforcement.
Why should nudity be illegal? It is not illegal (note double negative) for a women to be topless in Toronto and the last time I was there I did not notice Bloor Street packed with obvious mammary glands. To make certain body parts illegal really makes little sense to me.
Mandos
Oh yeah. I’ve seen a similar argument put forth on one of our favourite fetus fetishist sites — women should just welcome every pregnancy, it’s that simple
It must be nice to think in such black and white terms — must make everything so easy-peasy.
Unfortunately it doesn’t take into consideration that unruly entity known as “Human Nature”. Again that’s rationalized by the belief that we can all just control our urges. (When they can’t even control their own.)
Bruce
It’s sad when you think about what a colourless, pallid world they must inhabit, where everyone is the same. OTOH, I can’t muster up too much sympathy when they vent that kind of hateful spleen at the expense of their fellow humans who’ve done nothing to deserve it, other than the crime of being different from them.
Re WordPress: I have to admit I’m not too crazy about it either. No html editing, no preview for comments, it doesn’t accept javascript so the site meter is useless, and can’t have anything but links and images in the sidebar… etc etc. I do like the colour scheme and find it easier to read than what I had before, but I could do that anywhere. I’ve been seriously thinking about moving back to blogspot, but probably won’t do so until I decide to change the name of the blog (which I’d love to do, I hate “unrepentant old hippie”).
Another day
croghan
It shouldn’t. It’s not my cuppa, but if someone wants to walk around naked it’s no sweat off my ass. I have trapezius muscles, I can turn my head the other way. Or not
You hate ‘unrepentant old hippie’?????? What, are you repenting?????
fern hill – LOL, UOH was a name my ex old man used to tease me with, so when I was trying to figure out what to call this blog, it came to mind. I didn’t realize that hundreds of people would eventually be reading this thing thinking I was some kind of Peace Moonbeam type, which I’m really not. (The “unrepentant” part is real, though.)
Bravo…I like Wendy’s take on things.
She really lays it way better than I can and have been trying to do.
Of course, when I tried to use this very argument with HER, SHE stated that she did not own her own body…
Yikes!
Mike
Christian Prophet – Sorry but you’re wrong and Wendy is right.
You maintain that a woman’s choice is to keep her legs closed or suffer the consequences should she inadvertently get pregnant — that is nothing less than reproductive tyranny. We’re not going back to that way of thinking; women know better now.
As far as the GOP goes, libertarians will never be at home with them until they ditch the religious right.
Mike – Yeah, I thought it was an excellent article. The logic and reason behind the points she makes is incontrovertible. I see some fetus fetishists have been trying to fisk some of her arguments, and I have yet to see any who’ve been successful.
SUZANNE is totally fine with the state owning our bodies, as long as it’s all for the “greater good”. When I argue with her that there’s no reason to have an abortion law, she just points to drug laws
which of course I also think are bullshit, so that argument doesn’t work too well 
I’m on the fence about this and trying to clarify my thoughts, so I hope you’ll bear with me.
Why would it be unjustified to recast things in the following way?:
“In any conflict of interest between a pregnant woman and the embryo/fetus she’s carrying, the fetus’s rights must supercede; otherwise, fetuses would have less right to self-determination than post-birth humans. To put it in slightly more incendiary terms, abortion rights would reduce fetuses to second-class citizens beholden to the whims of the women carrying them.”
“It is only because each human being is a self-owner that is is improper to initiate force against another. But if the woman possesses the right to end the fetus’s body functions — then this is tantamount to saying that one human being can properly own the body functions of another. It is tantamount to saying one human being can properly enslave another.”
Why would it be unjustified, poppies? Where to begin with how you’ve ‘recast’ it. Where to begin.
Except that it’s currently 4am where I am and I’m calling it a night. Sharper minds than mine, in its current state, should be along shortly to deconstruct that.
JJ – Now that momma cat, Mr. Blue and her siblings have taken over your place, you could call yourself “Crazy Old Cat Lady”
(Why is it invariably a cat lady as opposed to woman? Because of the Batman villain?)
poppies
My statement compares a pregnant woman’t rights to the rights of unpregnant women, not unborn fetuses. Turning it on its head only works if you consider a fetus to be the equivalent of an already-born person. That’s an unjustifiable position because it puts a *potential* person on the same physical/mental/emotional/moral standing as an existing person who already has established individual rights and no longer requires one specific person’s body to keep it alive in a blood-to-blood transmission of nutrients.
A fetus is subject to the whims of the woman carrying it, which is the way it should be. Its general health, whether it ingests fresh veggies or big macs, prenatal vitamins or crack cocaine, and ultimately whether it’s allowed to live or die, is completely up to the woman carrying it until such time as it’s no longer physically dependent on her and only her to stay alive. A fetus isn’t a second-class citizen, it’s not any kind of citizen until such time as it exits the birth canal. (Citizenship depends on where one is born, not the citizenship of one’s mother.)
To suggest that a fetus has rights superceding those of the woman carrying it is to open the door to all kinds of nanny-state nightmares — the monitoring & subsequent punishment of drug & alcohol intake, lifestyle choices etc as crimes of abuse against the fetus, and so on.
FF – You’re just going to bed as I’m getting up!??
You rock n rolla, you 
RB – No! A thousand times No. I’m not a cat lady, I’m a crazy old dog lady
(And I think it’s always cat-”lady” because it just sounds like a more accurate description of the spinsterly type one associates with cat-ladying.)
No, I will probably stick with UOH, it would be too confusing to change.
Hey! It’s the UOH name that drew me here for the very first time. And now I’m here! It’s your blog’s name, JJ, so you may do what you like with it. But if you change it I won’t leave. At least, not on that basis! But I’d miss it.
I’m sorry, JJ, but if you want us to think of you as a crazy old dog lady you’re going to have to get WAY more doggies, since as we all know there’s a factor of 10 involved here. You need 10 times as many dogs as cats to be considered crazy. 10 cats = crazy, ergo 95 dogs = nicely understated elegance.
I guess I’m further unclear on how birth confers individual rights, then. Are individual rights simply an arbitrary construction of society which for various reasons should be limited to born humans, or are they inherent to the nature of human-ness? If the former, then who decides who gets what rights, and if the latter, doesn’t that negate the importance of birth status, since a fetus is as biologically human as a baby who, still completely dependent, must be fed and sheltered to stay alive?
Thanks for your patience with my questions, these issues seem to get complex quickly.
poppies
Individual rights aren’t inherent to DNA — if that was the case my liver would have rights, and my kidneys and my middle finger. Rights are inherent to individual personhood, which starts when one is no longer physically attached to and dependent on one particular person.
The standard anti-choice argument that a baby or small child is also dependent on someone else to help it survive is a non-starter; that’s why I make the distinction of a fetus being dependent on one particular person’s body (its mother’s). Once born, a baby still needs to be cared for, but it can get that support from anyone — mother, father, cousin, aunt, neighbour or even total strangers — that’s not the case prior to birth.
Good point about DNA and rights. Still, lack of dependency on a particular person seems like a rather arbitrary point for rights to begin.
Regarding your second paragraph, also a good point.
poppies
Because of the possible conflict of interest between the pregnant woman and the fetus, some specific point where equal rights begin has to be established, and the only two points that make any logical sense are either at birth or at conception (which is unacceptable to the vast majority). Anything in between is arbitrary.
One might suggest that rights begin with viability, but this varies from fetus to fetus. Another possible time frame is the 3rd trimester, but that means for the last 3 months of pregnancy, a pregnant woman’s rights are compromised by the fetus she’s carrying, making her basically more of a fetal container than a human with full human rights. Etc.
Plus, the ultimate goal of the anti-choice movement is the conferral of equal rights at conception, and they make no secret of that. So opening that door by allowing rights at any time before birth wouldn’t solve any problems and would just create new ones.