Now I’m writing something that won’t make me very popular, but I have no choice but telling the truth (at least what I feel is true). I was never interested in popularity, only the truth. I consider neither abortion morally acceptable nor ban of abortion. Sounds like contradiction, but it is not. The truth is the same but I approach only from two different sides.
The first claim I think is obvious to everyone. Whatever the mother carries under her heart counts as life and is doomed to live. Abortion is a gross interference with the order of nature, which is unfair to a potential life. Especially now in the modern age when women access to birth control unlimitedly. Nature has one purpose with sexuality, to ensure the maintenance of the species by producing viable offspring. When we take advantage of this, and we do not provide back, we steal from nature. Sensual pleasure requires commitment, and the name of this commitment is family.
Abortion, then, is a deception of nature. However, there are special cases where abortion is morally acceptable. For example, when it turns out that the unborn child will become unviable.
You could rightly assume that the ban on abortion is our moral obligation. Well, not exactly. It’s far complicated than you would think.
Each person is the sole owner of his or her own body in hundred percent. The embryo is also a part of this property until the fetus is born. The body is human’s most direct private property. Those who do not believe in this cannot call themselves conservative either.
When they forbid abortion, they do nothing but challenge a woman’s right to her own body, own womb. In the case where one cannot be the sole owner of their most direct private property, one’s own body, slavery is established. This is in practice ends up with enslaving women.
The problem is more serious, because if it happens, justice has already crossed a line. And this is the line between the rule of law and ideological legislation.
The next step will be to sanction women who do not fulfill our marital obligations (rejecting sex). That is, what has been a family affair so far will be a criminal case with legal consequences. Let no one think this is fiction. In some Muslim countries, where abortion is, of course, under a state ban, there is a weird law. According to this the husband has the right to deny his wife food when she rejects sex. In addition, the law does not prohibit the rape or mutilation of women.
I will illustrate with just one extreme example the consequences of denying anyone the right to their own bodies. Of course, in Western societies, even the most fanatical anti-abortion activists would not go to such extremes. So much so that they would allow abortion only if the pregnancy was the result of rape. Let’s think about this logical dead end.
If the law states that the fetal life must be protected and the woman thus has no right to her own body, then the method of conception is completely irrelevant. It is completely irrelevant to the fetus whether it was conceived in a voluntary sexual act or rape. Is fetus to blame in the latter case? That is, the fetus no longer has a right to life if conceived in violence, which is not up to him or her? In that case, why do women’s rights take precedence, and why not in other cases? Is it up to the woman’s behavior to determine whether a fetus has a right to life or not? Or does a woman only have the right to her own body if she has been raped before?
It’s a ridiculous absurdity, isn’t it, though a lot of people take it seriously. Well, I’ll ask the question differently. If life starts with conception and not birth, then no woman should have the right to an abortion, even if the condition is the result of rape, right? However, this woman’s right is not disputed even by the hard core of anti-abortion activists. However, if the abortion does not take place and the fetus is born, which was conceived as result of rape, following the logic, it could be killed later. How much more would that be than abortion itself? This is where the whole concept becomes absolutely untenable.
So, there is no other logical and ethical choice left than to admit that, under legil practice, life cannot begin at conception, because in this case the born child can be killed just like the fetus, in cases where abortion is permitted, such as rape.
Here, not only is the woman’s right to her own body disregarded, but also her right to privacy by taking legal action on how the woman became pregnant. With doing so, they interfere with a woman’s sex life, which violates a woman’s right to intimacy. This is a very rude humiliation. An unwanted pregnancy can also be the result of inadequate protection (Condom Tear, spiral displacement). It is not necessarily the result of irresponsibility. Nor is it always clear when a violent intercourse took place. So what cannot be proven has not happened in legal practice.
Many societies regard pregnant women as their own property, which is, of course, never declared officially. And no matter how surprising, but I have heard an argument, as you have no right to torture or kill your pet in your own property for self-serving purposes, the pregnant woman shouldn’t have a right to abort the fetus. But the two are not the same. The pet is living in your own property though, but does not belong to your body. The pet, whatever it’s a dog or cat, has own body and soul. They are viable on their own, and they belong to your property by chance. They could live in anyone else’s house or even on the street. In contrast the fetus is the part of female body until birth. If it wouldn’t be, can live without it. A fetus is unviable on its own.
And the individual has the right to expel the intruder from his or her private property. Whatever it can be an intentional trespasser or unconscious pest. In this sense, abortion can also be interpreted as self-defense if pregnancy is unwanted. This is only as immoral as self-mutilation, of course, only in legal practice. The morality is much complicated and deeper issue. Not all moral transgressions are punishable by law, and abortion is one of them.
Well, either we say that the fetus has no rights in itself, or we have to say that the woman has no rights to her own body IN ANY CASE, including of course the rape. There is absolutely no other logical way around.
It can be something legal and immoral, and it can be something moral and illegal. There is a connection between the two, but morality and law are two separate categories. Of course, the problem is not with agitation against abortion, which is a legitimate and moral intent, but with the intent to ban abortion. This is not about convincing the woman, but about suppressing and enslaving her, which is neither legitimate nor moral.
What I find really interesting is that in countries that consider abortion legal, artificial infertility is conditional. This means that it is only permitted if the individual already has two or three children. Why is voluntary sterilization conditional when we do not lose fetal life there? Although sterilization can prevent a possible abortion. Why is one conditional and the other not? There is no logical answer to this, but they violate the rights of individual to their own body here too. On this basis, violent sterilization against undesirable social, ethnic, and health groups could also be introduced. Just as eugenics was a practice in Nazi Germany, Communist China, India, Australia, but even some U.S. states.
The problem is that if we do not separate morality from the law, then in this case the legislation can be hacked. And this leads to the fact that, on the basis of ideological half-truths, even a completely immoral legal practice can be accepted as moral and legitimate, like eugenics.
The fundamental question is whether the human body belongs to its true owner or to society. There’s no middle or third way around. You can’t be an owner of your own body in fifty percent, or in ninety percent. You either have a right to your body or not. According to collectivist ideologies, the individual alone is worth nothing, only as much value as it benefits society. The problem is that everyone in society is an individual, and if the rights of the individual are violated, the rights of society are violated too. There’s no such thing as society without individual. The collectivism is a logical fallacy.
So the individual lives are for themselves and are created for themselves, part of society but not its property. At least I do not recognize that anyone can have a right to even a single minute of my life.
Thank you for reading me and happy Mother’s day! Hats off before those who give their children a chance to wish them a happy mother’s day.
If you are interested in this issue in more detail, please consider to read my previous posts related with this topic. See bellow:
