In mind-numbing comment boxes, one often sees abortion defenders accusing pro-lifers of being, essentially, superstitious. It doesn't take very long for those upholding a woman's right to slaughter her unborn baby to start suggesting that the pro-life movement only exists as religious mumbo-jumbo, as if the protection of human life was based solely on scripture with no reasonable secular arguments.
Yet, when one thinks about the legal structure of abortion laws, the legal defense of abortion is really far more superstitious. Let's consider those who believe late term abortions should be legalized (a process banned in many cases -- no doubt because it's legalization seemed, in the end, too superstitious and indefensibly litigious).
Essentially, the only difference between a late term abortion and infanticide is geography and a couple of inches of umbilical cord. To defend a late term abortion you have to believe that what exists inside the womb is not the same as what exists outside the womb -- even when the entire anatomical structure of the being is completely the same.
For this to be true -- for an entity's ontology to be determined by its geography -- suggests then that being is not defined by one's inherent nature, but by one's geographical context. The location, then, must have some power in itself. The abortion advocate must see the womb, or, at least, a woman's internal organs, as having some kind of mysterious power to alter reality and suspend personhood from being realized.
If a baby is in a crib -- it's a baby. If a baby in a stroller -- a baby. If the baby is in a car seat -- still a baby. If a baby is in a high chair -- yep -- babiness is maintained.
But if the same baby is in a womb -- Mother Nature's own, self-designed crib/stroller/car seat/feeding space -- it is not a baby.
To look at this another way, it seems that the pro-choice standpoint might result from an oversimplification. A pro-choice rhetorician might see a kind of either/or stance being debated: either 1) the woman's body has such inherent value that it dehumanizes the baby, or 2) the baby's existence has such inherent value that it dehumanizes the woman -- reducing her to the aforementioned flesh-based car-seat. Because we already know that the woman is a person, but the personhood of the baby seems (rather falsely) debatable, the wiser course of action would appear to uphold position number one and deny position number two.
But the pro-life movement doesn't really uphold position number two -- it doesn't believe in the dehumanization of the mother.
What it does acknowledge, however, is that the mother's body has biological realities beyond the mystification if not fetishization assigned the human body by law.
The pro-life position is actually the middleground between two extremes: one extreme upholds the woman's body as an inviolably sacred space granting its owner the right to destroy anything within its geographical confines, and the other extreme reduces a woman's body to a mere DNA replication site.
The pro-life movement says the woman's body is sacred and has value, but it also concedes that practical, biological necessity as evidenced by science (not religion) demands that limits must be placed on what a woman can do within the volume of space taken up by her body.
Thank you! This is exactly the point I've been looking for the words for. Actually finding the words is easy -- trimming them down and staying calm is harder. It's so extremely obvious, isn't it? They're the ones defying science and medicine, and they're the extremists. We're the majority, for one thing. for another, we're only calling for a ban on killing human beings; surely the middle of the road, unless the road itself has gone off the deep end somewhere.
All we are saying is let children live.
Posted by: Serena | June 23, 2009 at 02:10 AM