On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States has reversed the precedent articulated in Roe v. Wade which provided that a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy was protected by the constitution. Make no mistake, when it comes to the protection of the rights and liberties of individuals, the first bastion has fallen.
The Right at Stake
I take the position that an individual has near absolute right to their own bodily autonomy.1 That is, one has a near absolute right to control what happens to their body. You have control - not me, not the state, not the community, not a religious organization, not a bunch of wokies or church ladies (same thing when you think about it) - you! Eat red meat or go vegan; drink alcohol or not; have consensual sex with who you like, how you like; exercise or be a couch potato, get tattoos or not. You are in control of your body. Do as you like, and I will do as I like.
When it comes to abortion - and let’s confront this head-on without euphemism or deflection to other issues - the primary issue is the bodily autonomy of biological women.2 Do biological women have a right to bodily autonomy? Yes they do. Pregnancy is a bodily function, thus the right to get an abortion is an exercise of one’s right to bodily autonomy.
For this reason, all the talk of “when life begins” is irrelevant. The issue is bodily autonomy, and whether a fetus is a live human or not is irrelevant. Even if it is alive, it does not have the right to hijack the body of the woman in which it resides. That would be a case of someone else, like the community or the state acting in the putative interests of the fetus, dictating to a pregnant woman what happens to her body.
Think of it this way; suppose if you do not get a kidney transplant you will die. I have two kidneys and (theoretically) only need one to keep on living. You are free to ask me for one of my kidneys, but you are not free to take one of my kidneys. Even though my refusal to give you a kidney will mean your death, I have the right to control my body. Call me selfish, call me a bad person, call me cruel if you like. But my right to bodily autonomy trumps your interest in getting my kidney.
Perhaps some of my readers do not believe in bodily autonomy as an important value to be protected, and think abortion should be banned. That’s fine, but I don’t want to live in that country.
Individual Morality Versus Societal Rules
Let us consider Miranda. Miranda believes abortion should be banned. She believes that abortion results in the death of a human being (the fetus in question), and abortion is also condemned as an evil by her religion. Miranda describes herself as “pro-life.” Finally, you cannot call Miranda a hypocrite because she is also opposed to the death penalty for the same reasons, in fact she is just as active in the anti-death penalty movement as she is in the anti-abortion movement. (Yes, I have known a few people like this.)
Here is where I think Miranda gets abortion wrong. There is a difference between moral considerations at the individual level and the societal level. This should not surprise us because individuals and societies are two completely different things.
Strong moral codes and sensibilities are important for individuals. These derive variously from philosophies, religions, ideologies, mystical practices, experience, and a whole variety of sources.
However, what makes sense at the individual level does not make sense at the societal level. I am thinking particularly here of laws and government; that is, the state. In part, this is because there are many different philosophies, ideologies, religions, and mystical practices in the world. This is where pluralism comes in. No one person has a lock on the truth with a capital “T.” Anyone who tells you they have the one ultimate truth is someone to be avoided. They are either a simpleton, deluded, or a narcissist in danger of going full on Jim Jones.
I’ll even go one further - there is no universal path for life that will work for everyone. Even within the same religion there are always different paths. Hinduism offers paths of contemplation, work and activity, or devotion to the gods for its followers. Buddhism has both monks and householders. Catholicism has a broad range of ways to serve its god.
Thus, at a societal level we are best served by pluralism, the moral stance that, because people have a wide and divergent variety of values, we need to make as much room for different ways of living as we can. Thus, at the level of society or the state, the moral imperative is to strike a good balance between letting individuals discover and follow their own paths on the one hand, and keeping the peace on the other. Why? Because people pursuing different versions of the good life are eventually going to come into conflict. If we are all going to live in proximity, we are going to need limits to keep the peace.
For example, I am a devout Buddhist and a committed Stoic. These paths work for me, and have allowed me to mature into a moral individual. Nonetheless, I would not impose these paths on other people. Rather, I demand that you let me follow these paths, and that you include me in any deliberations about what rules we will impose at a societal level so that you and I can live in peace.
Which brings us back to bodily autonomy as a primary value at the societal level. The ultimate value in a pluralistic society is freedom of thought (including freedom to follow one’s conscience and to express one’s thoughts). But human existence is embodied existence, and so control over our own bodies is right up there. Why? Because control of our bodies is control of ourselves. That is, respecting bodily autonomy is central to pluralism.
So let’s return to Miranda. She has obviously chosen her path and it works for her. She is against abortion, and so we expect she will not have one herself so long as she walks the path she has currently chosen. But this is Miranda exercising control over herself - and nobody has the moral right to force her to have an abortion.
Miranda is free to persuade others to her point of view. Conceivably, if she convinces enough people, abortion will disappear from her community because not enough people will want one. That would be fine, because that is a choice that is not imposed on individuals from above. Miranda’s religious organization is free to expel members who disagree on abortion, or to expel members who have one. A religious organization is an association of individuals following a path, and so those individuals have a right to choose with whom they will associate and who they will exclude. One can agree to be subject to the rules of a voluntary association, while laws apply to everyone.
Right about now, Miranda would ask “but what about the fetus? What about their right to bodily autonomy.” Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that a fetus does have a right to bodily autonomy. So what? The issue is the pregnant woman’s right to bodily autonomy being infringed upon. Again, just like the person in need of the kidney doesn’t get to lay claim to one of mine, the fetus does not get to lay claim to the body in which it currently resides.
Miranda is welcome to come back and argue her point if it becomes technologically feasible to (1) non-invasively extract the fetus from the woman (a Star Trek transporter comes to mind), and (2) gestate the fetus somewhere else. Such technological developments would alter how bodily autonomy interacts with abortion. Want to ban abortion? Get cracking on making that transporter work.
The First Bastion
Without a robust acceptance of bodily autonomy, both pluralism and individualism are in danger of being replaced by totalitarianism and authoritarianism. It’s a short road from the community or the state telling you what you can and can’t do with your body to telling you what you can and cannot do your mind.
And make no mistake, after they come for biological women’s bodies, they will come for the rest of us. Once they have our bodies, they will come for our minds. The first bastion has fallen. What are you going to do about it?
I also take the position that nothing is absolute.
Obviously, this includes transmen and non-binary people who can get pregnant.