Eve Keneinan - Stoicism, bodily autonomy, and the right to life
It is also relevant to distinguish things that are not within *anyone’s* power from things that are.
This is highly relevant in case of claims of “bodily autonomy.”
People mistakenly think that this right of bodily autonomy gives them moral claims against nature, i.e. having a “right” not to become pregnant.
That is comparable to a “right” not to catch a cold or not to age.
Human persons do, of course, have a wide degree of say in what happens to their bodies vis a vis WHAT OTHERS MAY RIGHTFULLY DO TO THEM.
We have no such claim against NATURAL events. This doesn’t even make sense.
A right to life just is a right not to be killed unjustly by a moral agent.
It is *not* a right not to die without consent.
You cannot invoke your right to life to prevent a bear from mauling you, nor a body of water from drowning you.
Very few people argue that “bodily autonomy” involves a right not to become pregnant, because they would look like fools trying to push a moral claim against a natural event.
But they will argue that one has no obligation to *remain* pregnant.
But this tactic, which is meant to circumvent the question of the personhood of the unborn DOES NO SUCH THING.
It will be argued that an unborn child has no right to “use” a woman’s body to preserve its life.
Let us note an unborn child is not acting here as a MORAL AGENT. It isn’t MORALLY CHOOSING to “use” the woman’s body (it isn’t assaulting her; this doesn’t make it a “parasite”).
Suppose A is the owner of a ship at sea. A goes to sleep one day and wakes to find herself and B (a 6-year-old boy) the only persons on shipboard.
Does A have a right to throw B overboard, to make B walk the plank? On the grounds “my ship, my choice”?
No.
Judith Jarvis Thompson is famous for her “violinist” analogy in A Defense of Abortion. She also makes several other fanciful analogies which are less famous—because analogies are more or less strong depending on their similitude to the situation.
She speaks of uninvited guests:
The idea here is to analogize “my body, my choice” to “my house, my choice.”
Now, of course, people do have a wide range of liberty to say who is or is not allowed to remain in THEIR HOUSE.
But it isn’t UNLIMITED. You can’t throw someone out of your house to certain death.
All else being equal, you have a claim right on an unwanted guest to have them LEAVE YOUR HOME.
But guest right is a real thing.
You do have obligations to PERSONS in your home. You can throw out THINGS into conditions in which they may be destroyed, but not PERSONS.
When a house is A’s house, A typically has a Claim Right on B to leave A’s house if A desires it.
But B has an Immunity Right to nullify A’s Claim Right if A is attempting to use her Claim Right in such a way as to cause B to enter a situation of (Near) Certain Death.
One does have a pretty broad right to say what goes on in one’s body, but it isn’t an unlimited right, just as a say about what goes on on one’s ship or in one’s house.
You cannot make someone “walk the plank” to (Near) Certain Death on the grounds that it is “your ship.”
(If you prefer a more sci fi version of “walking the plank,” let it be a SPACESHIP and “blowing someone out of an airlock”.)
Let it be presented this way:
A owns a spaceship and has just embarked, alone, on a 10 month journey. But she wakes up to discover a 2-year-old child in aboard her ship.
Does she have the right to blow the young child out the airlock? “My ship, my choice”?
No. That is murder.
What makes the “bodily autonomy” argument seem PLAUSIBLE is two things
(1) it really is a *broad* right, but not an *unlimited* right, and its limits are those which involve harming or killing PERSONS
(2) it subtly presupposes the non-personhood of the unborn
What needs to be CLEARLY SEEN in cases of bodily autonomy arguments is that autonomy does not justify harming or killing another PERSON.
IF AND ONLY IF an unborn child is not a person, but a mere thing, is the autonomy might nearly unlimited.
So while the argument is SUPPOSED to be “neutral” on the question of PERSONHOOD — it isn’t.
Because your autonomy rights are limited by OTHER PERSONS *much* more sharply than they are vis a vis mere things.
In ALMOST ALL cases, you have a right to throw an unwanted THING out of your house EVEN IF doing so will lead to its destruction.
There are, on the other hand, ALMOST NO cases in which you have a right to throw a PERSON out of your house into a situation of (NEAR) CERTAIN DEATH.
So it CRUCIALLY matters whether what you are attempting to “throw out of your house” (or your spaceship, or your body) is a THING or a PERSON.
So the bodily autonomy argument does not actually, as is often claimed, “get around” the personhood argument.
That is what it was intended to do, since the personhood argument seems deadlocked (and not in the way pro-abortionists like).
But it doesn’t do that.
Do not be fooled by that claim.
I’ve had my say for now, but I feel like I should add one more point, which is one I regularly make, because it is often lost in the moral confusion of this argument, namely, “a right not be remain pregnant” ≠ “a right to kill a child one is pregnant with.”
You can make a *much* stronger case that a woman has a right not to be pregnant than that she has the right to kill a child.
AS IT HAPPENS these two things are ONE AND THE SAME ACTION during much of pregnancy.
They are LOGICALLY distinct. One can imagine a future where technology is such that a woman can have an unborn child removed from her body and placed, with no danger or death to the child, in an incubator.
Would she have a right to do this?
All else being equal, it seems so.
But as things are now, we have no such technology, and as long as that remains fantasy, it will be true that “terminating an unwanted pregnancy” and “killing a child” BOTH CORRECTLY DESCRIBE THE SAME ACT.
And while one could be (is?) morally justified in “terminating a pregnancy” ON THE CONDITION THAT it is not also “killing a child”, so long as “terminating a pregnancy” and “killing a child” ARE THE SAME ACT, one is not morally justified in doing it.
And the fact that “terminating a pregnancy” is the same act as “killing a child” is NO ONE’S FAULT.
That is a fact of nature, and of the limitation of our technological power to separate two events which are logically, but not practically, distinct.
That is “terminating a pregnancy” (TP) is morally wrong so long as it is the same act as “killing a child.” KC
In any circumstance where TP ⇒ KC, TP is wrong.
The fact we can IMAGINE a circumstance where TP is not wrong is immaterial. We’re not in that circumstance.
