As a follow-on to last week’s in-class discussion, I thought I’d use the blog to get into further detail. I hope that you, dear precious reader, will find this a safe place to speak your mind as well. I promise to post whatever comment you make as long as it’s not shady!*
The Issue from Last Week: Abortion as a Means to Allowing Women “Full Participation” in Society
For the purposes of this class, I’ve relied on Francis J. Beckwith’s book Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion for many of the thoughts I offered in response to the abortion-choice arguments from pity and tolerance. That is, these pro-abortion-choice arguments mostly appeal to one’s emotions, hoping to convince you that abortion is acceptable in light of those pitiful elements of the situation. Obviously, some of the arguments appeal to very real issues that should be handled with the utmost care and love to women in such a difficult situation. But for our purposes, we’re just looking at the strength of the argument, and we’re coming from a perspective that the unborn (from conception to birth) is a full-fledged member of the human community, and as such, deserves the rights that go along with such a status. No appeal to religion here, since our debate opponents wouldn’t assent to such an argument. (Not that religious arguments don’t provide a rich area of discussion about the Imago Dei in human life, etc…)
On pages 111-113 of Defending Life, Beckwith responds to an argument from pity, summed up by these advocates of the argument:
Without freedom to choose abortion there will be no “full participation of women in the economic and political walks of American life.” (Justice Harry Blackmun, author of the Roe v. Wade opinion, this taken from his dissent in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services)
“Laws restricting access to abortion thereby place a real and substantial burden on women’s ability to participate in society as equals.” (Laurence Tribe, Harvard)
“We have to remind people that abortion is the guarantor of a woman’s… right to participate fully in the social and political life of society.” (Karen Michelman, President of National Abortion Rights Action League, NARAL)
“The right to abortion, of necessity must be absollute, for if it is not, women will never truly have the ability to plan and to control their own lives.” (Nancy Erickson, abortion-rights attorney)
I think these sum up the argument pretty well. In class, I contended, based on Beckwith’s response, that these all (1) beg the question about the status of the unborn person – that is, they assume from the outset that the unborn is not a person, when that is, in fact, the fundamental question at hand. (We can discuss this further some other time, as we did at length in class – see HERE for the AUDIO.)
(2) These statements all assume that women in their natural state, apart from any assistance by the medical or surgical procedure of abortion, are naturally inferior to men. This is extremely offensive to me, and should be to any feminist. The point of this response is: if you need something EXTRA to make sure that you’re fully participating in society, that means without that EXTRA thing, you’re not fully participating, and indeed, unequal, lacking, or inferior in some way. This is both offensive and goes against our intuition that men and women are in fact equals when it comes to rational/moral value.
Possible Problem for the Argument
One of our classmates last week brought up a great point, by playing devil’s advocate (which is exactly what doing philosophy is!!! YAH!): Doesn’t this statement make sense? Men are in a much different situation than women, and aren’t physically tied to the consequences of sex (that is, pregnancy). Women are, and so to be able to participate to the extent of men, they’d need an option to choose to abort their pregnancy. So the freedom to opt for abortion DOES provide the opportunity for full-participation in society. (I want to reiterate, this person was just doing great dialogue, and I’m not sure what his/her personal views are on the subject.)
I thought of this today as an analogy. In favor of this abortion-choice rebuttal to the pro-life counter-argument, it’s like saying if the right to vote was denied to women, that would inhibit their full participation in economy and society. This was the case when they were not allowed to vote. It took the social, political and philosophical realization to correct this injustice. The abortion-choice defender would want to appeal to just this sort of injustice.
Possible Responses
I saw his/her point right away in class, and I don’t think I responded very effectively in class; and think that the counter-argument (the pro-life position) could be clarified a little. I still think Beckwith is pretty much right, but could use some further comments to pull out the problem with this abortion-choice argument from pity.
First, as to the analogy to women’s suffrage, I believe we’re dealing with a non-parallel situation. The analogy doesn’t fit. Being denied a vote is unnatural, given the rational and moral faculties of all humanity (male and female). That is, the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution corrected a very unnatural denial of voting rights to women. There is no material difference between men and women that should allow one to vote but not the other. But does the same hold for abortion? I don’t think so. Is it unnatural to deny someone an abortion? Or is that in fact, natural?
Reiterating Beckwith’s Argument
Beckwith simply states that the view assumes that women are naturally inferior to men, and that they need a form of surgery to become equal. He quotes from the publication Feminists for Life:
“How can women ever lose second-class status as long as they are seen as requiring surgery to avoid it? This is the premise of male domination throughout the millenia – that it was nature which made men superior and women inferior. Medical technology is offered as a solution to achieve equality; but the premise is wrong. Nature doesn’t provide for inequality, and it’s an insult to women to say women must change biology [i.e. abort their pregnancy - Evan] in order to fit into society.”
Responding by Accepting the Natural Inequality
I think this is compelling, but an abortion-choicer might say that “it’s not a surgery that makes them equal, but the access to it—the freedom to choose it if they want it.” And isn’t there something to that? It does seem like women naturally got the short end of the stick. Men have no physical consequences associated with sex, but women do. Does this in fact provide them great opportunity for “full participation” in society?
I think this rebuttal fails: in this case, the abortion-choicer wants to embrace the fact that women are naturally inferior to men, stating that only science, medicine and politics are able to correct that natural imbalance. So their willing to concede that there is a natural inequality in regards to social participation that is caused by the way human reproduction works. And of course, they say that’s a problem that the availability of and right to choose abortion solves; “yay for freedom and abortion!”
Why it fails: The strategy to embrace a natural difference between men and women is just fine. But it begs an important question by just assuming that all differences imply unjust inequalities. Of course men and women are not naturally unequal in terms of worth/value/social status (that’s why universal suffrage makes so much sense). But being reproductively different doesn’t make one or the other any more important or valuable or more free or less burdened or discriminated against. We just have the a twacked-wrong mindset when it comes to sex, pregnancy and how we’re to all get along in the world.
Imagine a World Without Abortion
To play on the natural differences issue, imagine a possible world in which abortion was never invented—there are no scientific procedures available for this, and in fact, the thought hadn’t crossed anyone’s mind that aborting a fetus is even possible. Would women be economically, politically or socially disadvantaged in this possible world? If you think yes, what do you think women in that world would say? If they thought they were inferior, would the answer be to (1) teach them about abortion and give them that option in order to make them reproductively the same as men (in the sense that they’d have no binding physical consequences for sex), or (2) help them embrace their natural roles as women? I think these women might not think of themselves as naturally inferior, though they’d observe the obvious natural (and very significant) reproductive differences. I also would like to think that they might like to be encouraged to embrace these wonderful sexual and social differences that are so central the continual flourishing of human life.
Right Thinking: The Nature of Sex and Its Necessary Connection to Pregnancy
I think the conflation of natural differences (perfectly just) with natural inequalities (completely unjust) is representative of the rampantly modern and unfortunate perspective on sex, pregnancy and fertility. My wife (a female) and I (a male) are inclined—nay, happy!—to bite the bullet, and say, yes, participation in both economy, politics and society will be very different for a woman, specifically due to the way the human reproductive process works (i.e., 9-month pregnancy, burden of carrying child, caring for child, etc.)
But deriving natural inequality from natural difference is not only a logically unjustified; it makes men the standard for social participation, focusing on what women lose in the process. (Women can’t do what men could do because they’re stuck with pregnancy as a result of sex.) Beckwith refers to “an unconscious sexism that assumes that male sexuality is the paradigm of human sexuality.” This is an unjustified and offensive sexism, I’d argue. He continues, “consequently, the inequality does not lie in the nature of women but in the disordered way in which our society places value on that nature.”
Juunyah. Guuly Man.
And that’s exactly the problem: a disordered perspective on male and female sexuality and fertility. What if it was the other way around? It’d sound ridiculous: men are disadvantaged and inferior to women because they cannot be pregnant. But if the cultural paradigm or standard was set by the female sexuality and reproductive nature, then this would follow. And men, unless science/medicine created a way for men to become pregnant, would be considered inferior.
We need to restore a positive outlook on pregnancy, and reinforce the natural connection between sex and pregnancy. And why not focus on what women gain? I’ll never know, but motherhood must be a thoroughly mystical and profound experience. Women have a beautiful privilege of carrying, delivering and caring for future generations, allowing for the continuation of humanity. This is more profound than I could even depict here.
And if you’re inclined toward utilitarianism, is it not better (1) to save an unborn human life and be socially disadvantaged, even inferior, than (2) to be equal to all others as a murderer? I’d go with (1).
Comments, please!
*I reserve the right to interpret the definition of “shady.”
