The Case Against Abortion: Not Her Body, Not Her Choice - Taking Back Bodily Autonomy

     There's this pro-choice rhetoric of "my body, my choice" to justify abortion. It implies that a woman has a right to do what she wants with her own body, and what she does with it is nobody else's business. The claim is partially true, in that a woman can, and should, be able do as she pleases with her own body - but, the unborn child inside of her is it's own separate entity. A writer on abort73.com wrote a great article explaining why this is so. I have paraphrased it for you:

     "An unborn child in utero is NOT his or her mother’s body, for several reasons:

A)   If the mother and child were truly one body, they would have the same genetic code. However, this is not the case, since the child also receives half of it's genetic information from the father. Though it is possible for a person to have a transplanted organ of a different genetic code, that organ still shares its DNA with it's original donor; the same cannot be said for an unborn child.

B)   Human embryos aren't independently generated by the mother. The embryo is not an extension of the woman's body, because it did not solely originate from the woman; it could not exist without the father's seed.

C)   In many cases, the blood type of the unborn child is different from that of the mother's. One body cannot function with two different blood types, so it's clearly not the mother's blood.

D)   In half of all pregnancies, the unborn child is male; even the gender of the baby is different from the mother's.

E)   An unborn child's identity rests in its genetic code, not in the code of the body of whom it resides in. A Chinese embryo implanted into a Swedish woman will always be Chinese.

F)   It's possible for the mother to live if the unborn child dies; likewise, it's possible for the unborn child to live if the mother dies. This could not be so if they were truly one body.

G)   When an embryo implants in the lining of the uterus, it emits chemical substances which weaken the woman's immune system within the uterus so that the child is not rejected by the woman's body. If this tiny embryo was truly an appendage of the mother, there would be no need to weaken her immunities.

H)   A woman does not have four eyes, four legs, and two sets of every organ while she is pregnant.

I)   As of February 2013, at least 38 states have fetal homicide laws which protect the rights of unborn children independently of the mother (except in the case of abortion). These laws make it possible to charge someone who kills a pregnant woman with TWO counts of murder.

J)   It is illegal to execute a pregnant woman in death row, because the child she is carrying is it’s own separate person, and should not have to pay for the crimes of the mother.

K)   Sir Albert Liley (the “Father of Fetology”) made this observation in a 1979 speech entitled “The Termination of Pregnancy or the Extermination of a Fetus?”:

“Physiologically, we must accept that the
conceptus is, in a very large measure, in
charge of the pregnancy… Biologically, at
no stage can we subscribe to the view that the fetus is a mere appendage of the mother.”

L)   Christopher Hitchens, in his book God is Not Great, made this statement:

'As a materialist, I think it has been demonstrated that an embryo is a separate body and entity, and not merely (as some really did use to argue) a growth on or in the female body. There used to be feminists who would say that it was more like an appendix or even - and this was seriously maintained - a tumor. That nonsense seems to have stopped… Embryology confirms morality. The words ‘unborn child’, even when used in a politicized manner, describe a material reality.'"

     To see the original article in it's entirety, go to this link:

       http://www.abort73.com/abortion/mothers_body/

     Upon the realization that an unborn child is not an appendage of it's mother, pro-choicers still claim that the slogan "my body, my choice" still holds water, because the organism is inside her body, and using her nutrients, therefore she has the right to remove it if she wants to, because she has the right to bodily autonomy. They say that even if a fetus is a human with the right to life, it does not constitute that hey have a right to use a woman's body against her will.

     The woman put her child in a position to need her body. In no case, other than abortion, can you legally put someone in a position you don't want them in, and then purposefully  kill them for being in said position. Even if the unborn child doesn't have a right to use the woman’s body, it doesn't mean the woman has the right to actively kill her unborn child without due process.

     Bodily autonomy/integrity is a prized card in the Pro-Abortion Deck that supporters of abortion just love to play. True, a woman can be autonomous over her OWN body - not the body of anyone else.

    

   Matt Walsh wrote a popular article that summed up all the problems with the bodily autonomy argument. I will paraphrase it here, and give you the link to the full article later.

   "1) The argument assumes that pregnancy is unnatural. If bodily autonomy is really an intrinsic human right (which it is, but not in the way Roe-bots need it to be), how can something so natural as pregnancy violate such a natural right? Really, pregnancy and childbirth are very natural, and, for obvious reasons, essential to reproduction. Unborn children have a natural right to the natural processes gestating them, and parents naturally owe more to kin than they do to strangers.

  2) With the ideology of complete bodily autonomy, we have no obligations whatsoever to anyone in this world. If we didn't want to use our bodies to pay taxes, no one would be able to make us do it. Likewise, if we wanted to use our bodies to drive much faster than the speed limit permits, no one would be allowed to stop us.

   3) It assumes that people are absolutely, solely autonomous over their bodies, when they are not. Prostitution, rape, and suicide are illegal. You cannot walk out in public completely in the nude. And, there are even cases where someone is allowed to impose upon your body; think of a police officer imposing force on you when you get arrested, think of a stranger imposing force on you to break up a fight you're involved in, etcetera.

   4) It assumes that an unborn child is an appendage of the mother, which is certainly not true.

   5) It requires that a person support abortion during the entire pregnancy. After all, why is a woman's body less autonomous when she's been pregnant for eight months than when she was pregnant for one month? Why does she have any less of a “right to her own body” when she's 30 weeks pregnant than when she's 3 weeks pregnant?"

    To see Matt's original debunking of this argument, go to this link:

     http://www.lifenews.com/2014/03/07/i-am-afraid-of-this-indisputable-pro-abortion-argument/

 
     The case for bodily autonomy is easier to make from a pro-life position. Kristin, another Google user on blogger.com, wrote a great article that proved this. I have paraphrased the article here:
 

     "I, for one, have always been super pro-bodily autonomy/integrity and freedom of choice. My main philosophy in life has always been that you should be able to do whatever you want, whatsoever, as long as it doesn't harm another body besides your own. This is exactly why I am against abortion. Bodily autonomy/integrity is why most pro-lifers are against abortion. If there wasn't another body being threatened, or we simply didn't care about that body, we wouldn't be pro-life, and there wouldn't be a problem. We'd say "Yeah, sure, violate and kill the unborn’s' body. It's not like I care what others do to bodies that aren't their own!" Get a hysterectomy, sure, but there is no greater threat to bodily autonomy than abortion. The right to bodily autonomy fits so much better with the pro-life side. 

     The thing about pro-choicers is that they really don't understand bodily autonomy. They think it's absolute (they seem to forget the "as long as you don't hurt another body" part of it), but there are many situations where it is not absolute, such as helmets, seat belts, or other safety laws, certain drugs being illegal, or illegal under circumstances for people of a certain age, being taken away in a 5150 and forced in a mental hospital and watched to make sure you don't kill yourself, someone can't neglect their child and refuse to feed it because they don't want to use their arms to give it food (refusing your child nutrients and survival because you don't want your uterus to go to this is basically the same - children also have the right not to be neglected, and depriving the child of the resources it needs to live, even if it wasn't planned or is an "inconvenience", is still neglect and still wrong) or to kill or hurt their child if they wrapped themselves around your leg for instance and you can't get them off without doing so, and various other circumstances (regardless of whether or not you agree with them, they exist legally). Roe-bots think the right to life can never come before bodily autonomy, but right to life comes before at least most things as it is the ultimate threat against someone (without life, all other rights are meaningless as we wouldn't be alive to be able to use them, and this is why they put life first in "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"). It's almost like a lot of them don't even think right to life is a thing, because if bodily autonomy always exists in the context of "even if someone dies", as so many of them like to argue, then you can go around killing people and excuse it by saying "Well, it was my body doing the killing  so you can't do anything about it because bodily autonomy". When talking about abortion, they act like the only aspect of bodily autonomy is whether or not you allow someone to use your organs, and they forget about unborn's bodily autonomy because the woman's autonomy is the only thing we should really care about, etc.

     Now essentially, bodily autonomy has a few different aspects to it (and not all of them are legal). It means you can do whatever you want to/with your body (get tattoos, piercings, body mods, take drugs, be a stripper or prostitute, have sex however you want, whenever you want, with whomever you want (unless the person you're having sex with is underage or didn't consent to sex) refuse to shave or wear makeup, etc.), and no one can do anything to your body without your consent or invade the personal space of your body (think of rape, molestation, inflicting pain or injury, even just touching someone without them wanting you to, etc.). Having control over your organs is an aspect of bodily autonomy, but the main principle is that no one can hurt or kill your body without your consent (it's actually sort of related to right to life, as someone being killed means their body was killed and hurt to the utmost extreme, so they aren't even mutually exclusive in the first place). You get to be in charge of your own body, and no one else can ever hurt it (unless you're into that sort of thing and it's completely consensual). 

     According to science, the unborn is another individual living human being and a distinct body separate from the mother. The unborn's bodily autonomy is the one being threatened here as the act in question is abortion, and the unborn is the one being aborted, not the woman. Abortion is forcing death (and various things with the various types, such as dismemberment, which is also a great threat to bodily autonomy) on it without consenting and having a choice in the matter. That is the biggest threat to bodily autonomy.

     Now trust me, I get that the woman has autonomy, too - she might not want to be pregnant and share her body with the unborn. Talking about the unborn's rights to life and bodily autonomy DOES NOT mean we think little of the woman's right to bodily autonomy. As an infertile female, I live with thinking about what it's like to be pregnant all the time, BUT abortion is still a greater threat to bodily autonomy. Someone hurting or killing someone else's body is obviously a greater threat than someone using their mother's organ to stay alive. The unborn have two violations pushed on it (right to life and bodily autonomy) vs. the woman's one. 

     Abortion being the greater threat to bodily autonomy is true even more so for various reasons. It is completely innocent in the matter, it could not have consented or chosen to be there, and it is already there before the woman finds out she is pregnant or an abortion can take place. It did not "take over the woman's uterus without consent" as it could never have consented to that, and comparisons like that imply intent, but it never could have made a conscious decision to do something like that or even be aware of what it was doing. Just like newborns and toddlers can't be held responsible for certain actions because they couldn't have consented to it or realized what they were doing, (from needing to be fed down to more serious things like accidentally hurting someone) the unborn is purely innocent. It can't consent to being killed either, just like infants outside the womb couldn't consent to being killed so since it's not legal to do that, it doesn't make sense to allow someone to do it to the unborn (other examples of how bodily autonomy still applies to those who aren't aware to be able to consent either way is how women who have passed out can't consent to having sex, so doing that to her is rape, or sleepwalkers can't consent to sleepwalking, yet they also can't consent to being killed). Usually people know that things like circumcision or piercing a baby's ears  are against their bodily autonomy, yet some of them do a 180 when it comes to abortion. Those aborting is a direct and conscious action in someone. The unborn being there was there by the actions of the man and the woman, or in case of rape man and woman's body. It happens to be using her uterus because that is how science works and the only home it has. Once again, it didn't "force itself into her and take her uterus hostage". Other analogies I've heard are ones like you can't drag an unconscious person into your home and then shoot them because you want them to leave *or something like that* and extensions of that. 

     Want of womb empty is definitely not an adequate excuse to literally, purposefully, consciously, and actively kill someone who already happens to be there and by natural circumstances made by other people/bodies, especially those who are wanting to kill them, and without their own consent to be there or a conscious choice made, who is the most innocent of all. Anyone for bodily autonomy should be pro-life above all else. No one is saying they should get more rights, we're just saying give them actual equal rights, which pro-aborts don't seem to understand. Someone's right to their own body stops where another's begins, and we know that is at conception. 

     Also, I never liked the "kidney transplant" type of analogies. Abortion is different than refusing to give someone an organ or something like that hasn't already happened and when someone gives an organ, part of them is gone forever and put into someone else, whereas with the unborn, it is using the woman's uterus for only 9 months, she gets to keep it in her, it is already there and growing before she finds out she's pregnant, and she will have it to herself after she gives birth in 9 months. Also, one might say that if a parent were the one to make their child's organ non-functioning, they should be obligated to give their organ to their child, or if someone already had an organ transplant, the donor shouldn't be allowed to get it back (which is an actual thing - you can't take it back once they are already using the organ), and anyone can refuse an organ. However, if someone decides to accept an organ, they are making a conscious choice to use another person's organ, but the unborn can't refuse to use the woman's uterus, and didn't make the choice to use it in the first place. There is also a difference between passively withholding an organ and actively killing someone, but I’m willing to bet that even the most radically pro-abortion people look down their noses  on those who refuse to donate organs to others who need it."


     To see this article as it was originally written, go to this link:

      http://riotgrrrlsforlifeprolife.blogspot.com/2014/05/taking-back-bodily-autonomy.html