What is the self? Can the self be reduced to a mere organ? No. The body cannot be so reduced to constituent parts. A body can be segmented, but the self does not reside in the part.
What can be said of a fetus? Anti-choice advocates are putting forth the argument that a heartbeat indicates life. When it is pointed out that a six-week embryo—now endowed by the State of Texas with greater protection than any citizen—does not even have a heart proper, the evidence is then shifted to electrical activity. Anti-choice advocates say a pulse is sufficient for life.
But is it sufficient for a self? No. We have already established that the self is not located in any one part of one’s body—not in a quality of that part, either. The self is not located in the pulse. A body can be artificially stimulated to maintain someone medically braindead. The self is gone, but the living body remains.
The self, I assert, is an epiphenomenon of brain activity. It is not located in the central nervous system but is the byproduct of that system. I would further argue that the self requires awareness. We don’t have a way to recognize awareness during gestation. We outside of the uterus cannot tell—it’s a black box.
So a new determinant is needed for society to recognize a “self” arbitrarily for this potential, not-yet-actualized entity. We demarcated this boundary at viability, because at least at that point the entity can be presumed to be able to live if removed from the uterus. Theoretically, the entity at that point might survive on its own. It might even need extraordinary intervention (artificial incubation) but it’s individuated enough to survive.
However, no matter how much intervention we give to an embryo at six weeks, it is simply not developed enough to individuate. Neither in the material world (or, if one prefers, in nature) nor in terms of a self is this entity individuated. It is neither separate nor aware.
On the other side of the equation, you have the person who happens to be pregnant. This person is necessarily female, but I will refer to this person as a person first, with female as a physical descriptor, because we’re talking about 1) personhood under the law, and 2) selfhood as socially and philosophically understood.
This person is actualized in the real (natural/material) world. This person has a web of existing and historical social relationships that anchors this person within a community. This person is individuated in every meaningful sense: in terms of awareness and the ability to survive without intervention. We recognize this individuation legally as personhood, which is later codified as citizenhood. This person is already fully recognized under the law but also (above and beyond that) socially, by virtue of their relationships within the community web of relationships.
An embryo, we’ve established, is not an individual. It is not a person—it is a potential person. Let me provide a personal anecdote by way of illustration. I was one of the people unemployed during this pandemic and qualified for enhanced benefits. One week I had an issue submitting the required weekly information, but I didn’t fully know the nature of the snafu until it was too late to correct the problem on my end. Either way, technically, I had failed to submit the information, so as a punishment, two weeks’ worth of reimbursement of the insurance was reduced to zero. Understandably, I felt a loss from this withholding. But that loss is not a loss of something real to me. It was always a mere promise of money, a promise to pay. It was potential money, not truly actualized. The loss I felt was real—otherwise the State would not wield withholding as a punishment—but what was lost was entirely imaginary. That money never materialized in my possession. It was an idea. That sense of loss was more a wistfulness, a wish that that promise had been fulfilled.
When a certain segment of society moves to deny a person who is pregnant the possibility of intentionally ending that pregnancy, what that segment is attempt to preserve is the potential of a new person. But the embryo is not a person; it is not individuated; it does not possess a self. It does not even possess social relationships that separately and severally help bolster the lived experience of selfhood. That segment of society means to preserve a potential of abstract “self” over the actuality of a person who has a self in every sense, including that aspect of self conferred by the State known as citizenhood.
The sorrowful saga of Terri Schiavo gripped the nation in the early 2000s. Here was a person whose own family members disagreed on whether she should stay artificially alive. Her husband wanted to withhold medical intervention so as to let death occur as a matter of course. Under settled law, the married couple are one entity, and Mr. Schiavo elected a course of action (one that he maintained aligned with her wishes when she was conscious [aware] and able to communicate her wishes). The eventuality of Ms. Schiavo’s passing was a private matter, the consequences of which would be felt certainly by Ms. Schiavo’s family. But legally the choice was Mr. Schiavo’s. The State of Florida tried to intervene; in fact, as Wikipedia states by way of introduction, “[t]he legislative, executive, and judicial branches, of both the United States federal government and the State of Florida, were involved in the case of Terri Schiavo.” However, the federal judiciary ultimately upheld the concept of privacy. The state had no right to unilaterally intervene upon that family’s circumstances.
This right to privacy has been upheld several distinct times by the Supreme Court, notably in Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965. The right to privacy undergirds many of our other fundamental rights, such as what underpins the castle doctrine, protection against intrusive (unwarranted) search and seizure, to be “secure” in one’s person, et cetera. A person cannot be compelled to donate blood or plasma, give up an organ, or otherwise surrender any part of one’s physical body to sustain or save someone else’s life. That remains true even if that person is the only genetic match for the person otherwise doomed. The State cannot legally extend its reach into this realm without a compelling interest.
Obviously, the State has an interest in creating and sustaining the next generation, much as it has a clear interest in, say, the reduction of crime. But the State cannot act unwarranted.
The type of intervention by the State of Texas (and all other states with anti-choice laws that disregard viability, but especially Texas with its ban on abortion once an embryo reaches six weeks of gestation) is an intrusion into a sphere of privacy that has not been so exercised by administrative government since the advent of the modern civil rights era. In fact, we haven’t seen that type of State enforcement of outcome based on status—a physical trait and/or condition—since slavery. We as a modern society recognized and ratified an acknowledgment of a person’s agency over their own lives. A person under the law enjoys basic civil rights. One of these principal rights is the right to privacy. Self-determination stems from that right.
It should be obvious, then, when female persons are segregated under the law that they are seen essentially as not inherently possessing this right to bodily autonomy and self-determination. It is patently offensive for a person, fully individuated and possessing a self, to be legally equated with an entity that is not individuated, has no self in any sense, and cannot survive outside of the uterus, even with extraordinary intervention. It is patently offensive to female persons that they should be so equated and thus reduced to less than a full citizen.
Perversely, and nearly inversely, the embryo is elevated to a sort of supra-citizen status. It dwarfs the legal recognition of full personhood of the female person; indeed, the condition of pregnancy itself thus removes what in every other circumstance would be automatically recognized as rights fundamental to personhood in lived society. The potential person—the idea—subsumes the actual person to the point of legal obviation.
It is a fiction meant to reduce an actual person into an asset that can be seized through government power without that person’s consent. There isn’t even any coercion involved (with its possibility of reluctant or even resistant, resentful compliance) but removal of rights altogether.
Advocates of forced birth want the State to deprive female citizens of the right to privacy and thus the means of self-actualization, in order to ensure those advocates—not the female citizens in question—avoid feeling a sense of wistfulness. This is indefensible.