Abortion debate is not just about women

“These are our rights, folks. Fetuses don’t have rights; we have rights, and we need to stand… “These are our rights, folks. Fetuses don’t have rights; we have rights, and we need to stand up and demand them,” Laura Horowitz, a speaker at last week’s Roe v. Wade panel, said. “Abortion in this country is not about children. It’s about women and who controls them.”

Every January, around the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a new group of panelists arrives at Pitt to make bold, empowering, unsubstantiated statements about the rights a fetus doesn’t have. There are valid points to be considered about when and how a fertilized embryo becomes a human, points that offer support and criticism to both sides of the debate. But this topic is always ignored by panelists like Horowitz, not because they don’t know about it, but because they don’t care. They are far too ingrained in a stance that gets weaker as the debate evolves – the idea that abortion is about “women and who controls them.”

Mark Goldblatt is a journalist and legal analyst who studies the abortion debate while remaining impressively objective. In the June/July 2002 issue of Philosophy Now, he critiques the idea that women must have unchecked control over their bodies: “As a defense of abortion rights, the argument is either demonstrably false or logically meaningless. Even if we grant the contentious point that the fetus is part of the woman’s body, it’s simply untrue that American citizens, male or female, exercise absolute sovereignty over their own bodies.” Goldblatt supports this point by citing laws against prostitution and the sale of internal organs. If people had complete sovereignty over their own bodies, they would be allowed to sell sex or a kidney and make a quick buck. But, if legal, these processes lead directly to exploitation of the poor, and so the government can and must govern people’s bodies in certain cases. If we see a developing fetus as a developing human in danger of being killed, government intervention is justified and necessary.

It is important, if this discussion is to go anywhere, that we debunk all the pro-choice hoopla and fist-raising now rather than later, because it’s fueled by its own narrow momentum. Calling the abortion debate a “women’s rights” issue is somewhat misleading – it diverts attention away from some very important concepts, such as definition. A mother may not kill her newborn baby for any reason, so why is she able to do so with an unborn baby, regardless of its age or development? Where is the line drawn? While women are certainly entitled to rights and privacy, I find it surprising that so many who attend these panels are so completely uninterested in formulating an accurate, agenda-free definition of human life.

For all the PR problems that the pro-choice side supposedly has, they have a remarkable way of presenting themselves as compassionate, and I don’t doubt that many of them are. But their arguments are skewed, always making reference to the exceptions – women facing death in childbirth, victims of rape or incest, confused teenagers with their whole lives ahead of them. They rarely focus on the bulk of abortion cases. These are represented by women who use abortion as birth control, whose lives are in no danger, who have not been raped, who have made conscious decisions and want the easiest way out. I can’t think of a more slanted fight than Convenience vs. Accountability. I am willing to discuss the special cases separately and give them some more direct attention, but it is grossly inaccurate to constantly cite them as the rule.

If, in the coming years, medical science should change the popular way we define a human, focusing on heartbeat or brain activity instead of birth, will the debate end? Probably not, because this issue isn’t about children, it’s about women. In his book, “Rethinking Life and Death,” amid scores of other complex and varied ideas on the subject, philosopher/professor/author Peter Singer sums up my biggest frustration in one sentence: “Advocates of legal abortion cannot remain neutral about when the developing human being acquires a right to life.”

And yet they do. Every January we read about pro-choice discussions where women stand up and say “This issue is all about us.” Two years ago, Students for Reproductive Freedom went so far as to throw a party complete with cheerleaders who shouted slogans and tossed condoms into the audience. But for all the fiery speeches and fanfare they will never explain why a newborn baby is so different from a third-trimester, unborn baby; why one is just an impersonal fetus and the other is an adorable child. They have no answer for this question, and that’s why I believe someday we will look back on these events and lose our appetites.

E-mail Eric Miller at save101@hotmail.com.