The central argument for abortion has been “a woman’s right to choose.” It is in their very monicker – “pro-choice.” The position rests on an assumption that a woman has the right over her body. However, if the debate was strictly over choices a woman can make about her body, why are feminists not fighting for legalizing prostitution across the country?
If a woman has the right to her body and should not be told by the government what she can or cannot do with her body, why then is there no uprising in support of prostitution. Should women not be able to “choose” the so-called oldest profession in the world if they so desire – it’s their body after all.
The logicall fallacies of such arguments are astounding. We regulate what woman (and men) can do with their bodies all the time, such as the case with prostitution. The government tells women that they cannot take illegal drugs, thus controlling their bodies in another aspect.
Looking at numerous cases of state and federal law, we clearly have an establish pattern of the government telling, constitutionally, a woman what she cannot do with her body. Not to mention the feminist positions against pornography which is also a “legitimate” choice for many women.
The common explanation for the extent of personal freedom is that my freedom stops where your freedom begins. But this is muddier water for abortion than it is for drug use or prostitution, both of which involve willing participants. Abortion has the unknown variable of a unborn baby, which cannot make their request made known.
My contention is that it has less to do with choice and more to do with choices without consequences. Women have both the joy and pain of carrying children and giving birth. Whether you believe evolution or God designed it that way – the results are the same. Woman have been given the responsibility of carrying for the unborn.
Sometimes that responsibility for the unborn results in sole responsibility for the born, as sperm donors (not fathers) skip town and force the woman to bear most of the consequences by themselves. Modern society has sought to somewhat equalize the situation by forcing men to pay child support – this is a stop gap measure at best. This leaves so many women in bad situations where they view the birth of a child as making their circumstances even worse.
The current feminist position, while proclaiming that it empowers woman, actually makes them even less powerful and portrays them as helpless at best. Men are told that they can choose whether to have sex or not. If they choose to have sex with a woman, then they’d better be prepared for the potential consequences. Women somehow are not granted the power of choice*, it is assumed that they had no say in the matter of having sex. The woman can decide to take on the responsibility of the child or she can decide she is “not ready” and abort the baby.
Many women view having children as an interuption to their routine, their career, their life. So they view abortion as the way to postpone children until they have accomplished what they want to do. No thought is given to the responsibility aspect of it, excpet in regards to the men. Is it not the case that if women do not want to have children then they can simply avoid the situations that result in children, just as men can?
The abortion debate is hardly about granting woman the power to make choices over their bodies. Again if that was the only goal, NOW would be promoting prostitution, pornography and legalization of drug use (at least among women). The abortion debate is about engaging in an activity with known risks and wanting an out when those risks come to fruition.
*I am ignoring, of course, the horrific situations of rape and incest. I would argue that in those terrible circumstances the unborn child did nothing worthy of punishment. However if those are the only exceptions in place, abortions would all but cease, seeing how the overwhelming majority of abortions are used for birth control.