Foetus' right to life vs women's bodily autonomy

[AmberTheCat]

I've just been reading a paper written by a friend of a friend, arguing that a foetus should be seen as having the same right to life as a postpartum human, because there are no lines that can be drawn between a foetus and someone post-birth that couldn't also be drawn between two postpartum humans. He added a note to say that clearly there is a question of how this right to life relates to women's autonomy, but that this wasn't something he was addressing in this paper.

Given that this is surely THE question, can you help me refine my arguments for the primacy of bodily autonomy? My instinctive view is that I can't see any way of denying that a foetus is a human being, or at least has the potential to become a human being, depending on how developed it is, but that the decision of whether or not to allow that (potential) human to grow inside her must still always remain the woman's. I'm quite out of touch with the thinking around this, though, so would welcome pointers.

Thanks!

[unweavedrainbow]

boo i know, i'm trying to oversimplify. petula ha no, just a bioethicist. i support abortion to term, as it happens.

[CoteDAzur]

" am arguing in my paper that you can accept foetal personhood and still be in favour of abortion to birth in certain circumstances"

That is a weak argument. If you consider a fetus a person, you cannot murder it under any circumstances, certainly not for disabilities or chromosomal disorders like Down Syndrome.

"this is because an unwanted pregnancy is effectively rape in the sense that it disturbs your bodily integrity"

Err, no

An unwanted pregnancy has nothing to do with rape. And even if it were, rape is not an excuse for murder (assuming you consider the fetus a person)

"having personhood does not give you the right to hurt other people and if you choose to hurt other people then the person you hurt has a right to self defence."

In the Western world, "he hurt me" is not an excuse to murder someone. The only time self-defence is an excuse to kill is if you have reason to believe the other person is about to kill you - i.e. stabbing at you with a knife, for example.

Are you the author of the paper OP is talking about? If so, it doesn't sound like a terribly well-argued one.

[PetulaGordino]

ah ok - you referred to "my paper" which i misinterpreted

[CaptChaos]

Oh Larry, you are a trier aren't you.

I called the foetus a person in response to another poster saying that we all use euphemisms. A foetus doesn't gain personhood under the law until it's born.

Sorry that confused you. I know it's easy to do.

And no, we're not talking about abortion to term (or at least we weren't) the OP is about abortion at all, ever and the rights of women of their bodies.

[ElephantsAndMiasmas]

Some really good thoughts on this thread (especially at the beginning :) ) - love the potential corpse angle, I'll be using that.

Can't believe the author has said "there are no lines that can be drawn between a foetus and someone post-birth that couldn't also be drawn between two postpartum humans." He must be a bit hard of thinking surely? When one being is wholly dependent on another for survival and doesn't interact with the world as an independent entity in any way at all? Plus at various points has no brain, bones, nerves, organs etc? Under his logic, is an early miscarriage when the woman doesn't even know she's pregnant count as manslaughter?

[AmberTheCat]

Thank you, all, for so many thought-provoking answers. FWIW, I think the author of the paper was arguing from a philosophical, and probably also a religious, perspective. I suspect he may also still be at school...

Leaving aside this particular prompt, I'm interested to learn more in general about bodily autonomy. I suspect a fairly large proportion of people (clearly not everyone) are in favour of abortion at an early stage, and against it at late stage. Discussions on this forum about bodily autonomy are making me question my own, rather unthinking, alignment with that view, and I'd like to explore that further.

[ElephantsAndMiasmas]

*"does an early miscarriage" etc

No point talking about late term abortions on this thread, because the paper is "arguing that a foetus should be seen as having the same right to life as a postpartum human" so we should assume that he means at all stages, it makes sense to look at it in its most extreme form i.e. the earliest stages of pregnancy.

[PenguinsHatchedAnEgg]

Regardless of your stance on termination, I find it bizarre in the extreme that anyone can suggest "there are no lines that can be drawn between a foetus and someone post-birth that couldn't also be drawn between two postpartum humans" as regards a right to life and just shove women off in a footnote.

Well, actually, I can. And I am pretty sure that a paper written by a women wouldn't see that as a valid frame of reference for a discussion. The interaction of those rights is the central element of the 'right to life' debate. To give a foetus a 'right to life' you inherently have to overrule rights women have. To move it away from abortion, there are currently some very disturbing cases about alcohol consumption during pregnancy.

The 'woman as vessel' trend is very disturbing, and a subject the charity Birth Rights (I know they stuffed up recently with their whole 'men on wards' thing, but they do valuable work) have been involved in.

[AmberTheCat]

Yes, I agree, Elephants.

On your miscarriage point surely, under any logic, a miscarriage could only be seen as manslaughter if the woman did something to cause it?

[PetulaGordino]

some people want to do exactly that amber

[AmberTheCat]

And just to be completely clear on that last point, I in no way believe that miscarriage is either manslaughter or caused by the woman, just in case there was any room for ambiguity.

[CaptChaos]

Amber have a look at this link

In the US, laws which were meant to allow for the prosecution of an assailant for the death of an unborn child, are now being used again women.

[Booboostoo]

Amber the other thing to consider is what question was the author trying to answer. If the question was "does the foetus have a right to life?" Then it is perfectly reasonable for the author to put questions about the woman's bodily autonomy to one side. While such questions may be crucial to many discussions about the ethics of abortion, they are not relevant to the right to life of the foetus question. Indeed answering the right to life of the foetus question doesn't necessarily tell you much about abortion.

For example:

• one could argue that the foetus has a right to life but that is trumped by the mother's right to life which then permits abortion in these specific circumstances
  
• or one could argue that the foetus has a right to life but this does not include assistance to preserve life. This permits abortion but does not entail a right to kill a foetus, e.g. In a future universe where artificial wombs were successful women would have the right to have foetuses removed from their body but not necessarily to have them killed.
  
• or one could simply say that now we know the foetus has a right to life there is more work to be done to clarify other relevant arguments.
  

As for the quality of the paper it doesn't sound too bad at all. Does he say something like this:

• let us accept that post-birth humans have a right to life
  
• all post-birth humans have this right and there are no significant differences between them to justify denying some of them this right
  
• foetuses have no significant differences from post-birth humans to justify denying them a right to life
  

Conclusion: foetuses have a right to life.

If you want to critically engage with this argument there are only a limited number of responses, none of which are about bodily integrity/autonomy.

One can challenge the right to life altogether.
One can deny that ALL post-birth humans have the right to life. One would then have to account for who does and who does not have the right and show that foetuses fall in the latter category.
One can deny that foetuses are similar to post-birth humans in the rights relevant ways.

[vicmackie]

I think referring to it as a "paper" is extremely generous tbh. And there is tonnes and tonnes of material online about the (non) issue of granting the z/e/f personhood status - does this child not have internet access?

[Glovender]

A baby has a right to life once it has been born, but at every moment prior to birth, it may be dealt with as the mother sees fit? No - that's actually quite abhorrent. I fully support abortion, however this is a complicated and emotive subject. The question is entirely valid and there is no 'right' answer to it. The primacy of bodily autonomy is not guaranteed in this case and nor should it be.

[PetulaGordino]

why not glovender?

[CaptChaos]

Why, Glovender? When do you cease to become a human being with rights to bodily autonomy? I get that this is emotive, I'm not actually as hard as nails, but this is important. Why do women have to give up their rights for months? If women are 'real people' why do they stop being so for over 3 months when they're pregnant?

[AmberTheCat]

Booboo - yes, that's pretty much the argument. Something tells me you may have come across more than one student paper along these lines

Interesting point that you and others have made that, even if we were to accept a foetus's right to life that doesn't mean we also require a woman to support it.

[Glovender]

Of course the mother has rights; it's disingenuous to suggest she loses them. However, I find it rather barbaric to suggest that the child has no right to life until it is 'born' as a matter of principle. The unborn child and the mother both have rights and the question is attempting to address how the child's rights 'grow' as they do. The bodily autonomy question has rightly been set aside in order to examine that aspect. One may then go on to examine how the child's rights and mother's rights where, perhaps, they clash. All in all, I think the current law gets this about right.

[Booboostoo]

amber no it's fairly original, within the confines of subject that has seen quite a lot of discussion. As a piece of academic writing, I.e. A student essay, it sounds quite good. He makes a valid and relatively original argument.

This is the point of Judith Jarvis Thompson's argument and it has been extremely influential in the philosophical literature. For what it's worth the development of the legal stances on abortion in UK has tended to avoid relying on any discussions of the moral status of the foetus or anyone's rights but rather has been backed by pragmatic considerations (which is often the case with legislation on deeply divisive moral issues). The main argument behind the de-criminalisation of abortion in England was that abortions were taking place anyway, placing the women's health at risk so it was better for the law to take control of the process and carry it out under the care of health care professionals.

[CaptChaos]

No... the foetus does not have rights in law until it's born. The only person with rights is the mother. Please try and keep up. You can't just 'set aside' the woman in this at all, how utterly ridiculous, that would mean that you would be setting aside women's rights over her body, which would be extremely misogynistic.

Why does the woman lose the right to bodily autonomy for over 3 months?

Let me just reiterate. In UK law. A foetus has no right to life until it is born. None. At all. No matter how you want to frame it.

[Glovender]

Just to reiterate, an abortion may not be carried out after 24 weeks. Additionally a doctor may refuse to carry out the abortion on moral grounds and refer the patient to another doctor. This is all as it should be.

I'm not interested in a pissing contest with extremist internet crusaders so I'll leave you to it.

[larrygrylls]

I'd like someone to address rather than duck the issue of what 'bodily autonomy' means. You cannot wish a late term foetus away. Someone has to kill it (well, in some of your terms, stop the heart of the unliving foetus) and extract it. What part of 'bodily autonomy' is demanding someone do this?

[CaptChaos]

An abortion can be carried out after 24 weeks, with certain provisos, have you read the thread at all?

I am not an extremist internet crusader, I am interested in women's rights, hence posting in the women's rights section of an internet forum. Sorry you didn't understand that when you signed up.

[OddBoots]

"There is no magic that occurs at the moment the umbilical cord is cut." - It's not magic Larry but many changes occur in the minutes, hours and days after birth, the whole cardiovascular system changes from that of a fetus to that of a baby - the lungs fill with air, the heart valves change, even the type of red blood cells change. The effect is that suddenly there is a baby, a person that uses its own body not another person's body to survive.