feminist: Pro-Consent Coalition

not at the moment (

penguin_chaos) wrote in

feminist,
@ 2007-01-27 16:25:00

Pro-Consent Coalition
The Pro-Consent Coalition
It's a pretty interesting website, with some different pro-choice viewpoints, mostly about how the woman should consent to pregnancy just as she would consent to sex and why not allowing abortions would infringe on women's rights to their bodies. I'm sure that sounds obvious to a lot of people here, but they explain it rather well.

Excerpt:
"Pro-life advocates claim they want the fetus to be treated as if it were a born person. Well, even if the fetus were a person, and even if the fetus had a right to life, the fetus has no right of access to a woman's body or liberty, because no born person has such a right.
...[I]f someone coercively took a pint of blood from a parent to give to the child, the government would protect the parent from such nonconsensual bodily intrusion, not the child. If we were to treat the fetus as if it were a born person, therefore, the government would protect the woman, not the fetus, when the fetus intrudes without consent upon a woman's body and liberty. "

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tabari
2007-01-27 09:33 pm UTC (link)

Wow, that's fantastic. Because I've basically been unable to convince myself that fetuses shouldn't have the rights of born persons - but this is a really good argument for why, even with the rights of born people, they wouldn't be entitled to the rights to a woman's body.

And it's an argument I'm really morally comfortable with, too. Because while I myself might make the personal decision not to abort, I wouldn't have to worry that the decision of another woman was immoral in such a way that the government had an interest in preventing that act.

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sunovermountain
2007-01-27 09:48 pm UTC (link)

I remember when I first heard this type of argument. It was like a "eureka" moment. Things just clicked into place. The "personhood" debate is so very, very subjective. Anti-choicers keep trying to make parallels with racism and ableism when they manage to rope you into that kind of discussion.

I think it is important to note that it doesn't matter one way or the other if you think a fetus is a person or not. The point is that the woman unquestionably is, so she has a right to control her body regardless of the state of the fetus. Think it immoral or think it selfish for her not to decide to gestate... I don't really care what people think of it as long as they aren't trying to remove her ability to decide for herself.

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	unusualdrug 2007-01-28 05:34 am UTC (link)
	I love that argument. I have always thought along those lines - although I have never been able to explain it in such a coherent or kind manner. Thank you. (Reply to this)

	lifeisacabaret 2007-01-28 06:39 am UTC (link)
	Excellent. (Reply to this)

	I agree mooshka 2007-01-28 10:22 am UTC (link)
	With most of what the website says. But it is all logic. And how the hell are you going to use logic to convince the pro-life camp? (Reply to this)(Thread)

Re: I agree

elise
2007-01-28 04:56 pm UTC (link)

Some of us are capable of logic.

I agree that the the arguments on that site are very compelling, but I still think that they're based on a false axiom, i.e. that the right to bodily integrity is more important that the right to life. Indeed, I think that that axiom is self-evidently false, because killing someone is doing more damage to their bodily integrity than pretty much anything else is.

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Re: I agree

katie_lee
2007-01-29 04:19 am UTC (link)

So I posted this in my own LJ and one of my pro-life friends and I got into a friendly debate about it. I posed a hypothetical that I was really hoping she would address, but she did not and has since bowed out of the conversation. Maybe you'd be willing to address it?

Basically, say we are in a hospital and you have an emergent medical condition such that you need a kidney transplant within hours or you will certainly die. I am the only person present healthy enough to be capable of donating a kidney to save your life, and finding anyone else would take too long--in short, I really am your only hope at survival. The donation of a kidney would mean I would definitely experience a lowered quality of life and health for a temporary period, as well as take on some risk of long-term or permanent damage to my health, but there is a high likelihood that I will come out of it just fine (similar to pregnancy). In this case, under the law, my right to bodily integrity is more important than your right to life, in the sense that I have to consent to the removal of my kidney, and I have the right to withold consent, even if it means your certain death. So, what makes the fetus different? Does a fetus have a particular kind of a "right to life" that born persons do not?

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Re: I agree

elise
2007-01-29 09:04 am UTC (link)

There are two responses to this. The first, and possibly rather difficult to stomach, is that I think the law is wrong in principle. I do think it would be a lot more difficult to legislate for forced organ donation in in a way that wasn't open to horrible abuse, but in principle I wouldn't see it as a bad thing.

Secondly, there is a difference between acting to have an effect, and not acting to stop it, even when the effects on both parties are the same. I will admit that this starts to get to the point where I'm going partly on intuition as well as logic, but I don't think it's particularly contentious to suggest that "Do no harm" is a more binding imperetive than "Do all the good you can", and the above follows.

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Re: I agree

katie_lee
2007-01-29 05:01 pm UTC (link)

I wondered if you might talk about the difference between actually harming the fetus vs. "not acting" to save someone from death. I guess for me I just honestly don't see much of a difference here at all. Even if we had a more "humane" way of taking the fetus out of the womb without killing it, it's still bound to die outside of the mother's body... I guess philosophically it just doesn't strike me as an incredibly different scenario. But what if we tweak it slightly, and say that I've just woken up from a coma to find that your body is hooked up to mine, and mine is acting as life support. You would surely die if I do not consent to allow you to remain hooked up to me.

Though, given your first response, I suppose I could predict what you would say there. That one honestly has me surprised! I've had lectures given to me about how selfish the pro-choice position is but I have to say, to me the idea that someone should be coerced or forced to undergo surgery so someone else can survive just smacks so much of entitlement. Do you really feel you are entitled to the blood, marrow, or organs of someone else if you need them to live? Even if extracting these things causes certain pain/lowered quality of life for a period and a risk of death to the other person? Because I sure as hell don't... I don't feel entitled to anyone else's body. If someone else chose to help me out in that way I'd be eternally grateful, but if I found myself in a position where I needed something like that and no one was able or willing to give it, I wouldn't feel like I had been wronged. It's not their fault that I need something. And honestly, this is how I view the fetus too. The fetus is not entitled to the womb any more than I'm entitled to your kidney. I even look back at the fetus that eventually developed into the human person that I am today, and if my mom hadn't wanted to be pregnant, I don't feel that fetus was entitled to her womb. She suffered so much pain, physically and emotionally, before, during, and after my birth that I certainly would not have wanted to cause that to anyone who didn't want to have it. I am eternally grateful to her for the sacrifices she made so that I could live; but I in no way believe I was entitled to that life.

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Re: I agree

elise
2007-01-29 06:01 pm UTC (link)

At this point I start to get a bit handwavy. I don't really think that life has to be preserved at absolutely any cost, but very nearly. It's strange, since I find myself at odds with most of the pro-life movement on nearly everything else, and loathe loathe loathe the hypocrisy of being pro-life (in the sense of anti-abortion), yet pro-war and pro-death penalty, and feel sick at the way a lot of the movement seems more focused on punishing women for sex than actually saving lives, but I still believe that saving lives is very very important.

I do think it's a very very difficult question, and unfortunately I have to be away from the computer now.

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Re: I agree

katie_lee
2007-01-29 07:17 pm UTC (link)

I appreciate your participation in discussing this with me :)

I do respect your position. I think that for me, I'm just not quite so invested in protecting life at almost any cost. So it sounds like where we diverge is primarily in worldview. I think it's more important to improve quality of life than to improve length of life, and partially this may be because I don't feel that death means the end of our existence (this gets into a faith-based belief, of course). I do believe in protecting life, and honoring life, but I also believe in honoring death (morbid as that might sound to some).

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four_thorns
2007-01-28 08:35 pm UTC (link)

"Pro-life advocates claim they want the fetus to be treated as if it were a born person. Well, even if the fetus were a person, and even if the fetus had a right to life, the fetus has no right of access to a woman's body or liberty, because no born person has such a right."

you know... i agree with this logic, but it never occurred to me before that it could be taken a step further: if the fetus were really treated as a born person, as "pro-life" advocates want, the fetus could be prosecuted for occupying the woman's uterus without her consent. right? i mean, i think it hinges on whether or not the sex that caused the pregnancy would be considered "consent to allow a fetus to occupy the uterus", but since pregnancy can't be guaranteed to follow as result of heterosexual intercourse, i think you could argue that intercourse does not imply consent to uterus occupation. just thinking out loud here.

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