Having seen people go bezerk over even Kos daring to think about questioning that abortion rights is the most important thing to mankind (even passing the very existence of the earth), I've decided to write this diary.
I had written up something similar before, but decided not to press the submit button because, well, this is Kos.
Anyway, here it goes, below the fold...
human rights
pl.n.
The basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled, often held to include the right to life and liberty, freedom of thought and expression, and equality before the law.
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The left has a problem when it comes to abortion. The issue at hand by some is the claim that the right to an abortion is a "human right." However, note one important part of the definition:
The basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled, often held to include the right to life
No right to abortion listed, no right to not be pregnant listed. The only right that could be possibly derived to make a human right to abortion is the right to equality.
However, the right to life clause is about as close to handing pro-life groups a winning lotto ticket as you can get without actually getting there.
As a result, the case would appear to be much, much stronger for the right to say that banning abortion would ensure human rights than pro-choice people have of claiming that legalizing abortion is a legal right.
After all, being an inconvienence has never been a legitimate reason to just go and eliminate someone.
As a result, pro-choice groups have to do essentially one of two things:
- Say that a fetus is in fact, not human, or
- A fetus is human, but for someone reason human rights do not apply to them.
#1 would be very difficult to argue, and I'm not sure many pro-choice people would want to argue it anyway.
That leaves #2.
The best way to go is probably not to say that a fetus just has no human rights, but that the mother's human rights are greater than the fetus's.
So, what are some arguments use to keep abortion legal?
a) Woman shouldn't be forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy
This seems to go to the very heart of personal autonomy. The problem is that the woman isn't the only person/thing being effected. This would be a perfectly legitimate arguement is women were being forced to conceive children in the first place, but it starts losing power when it switches to "i'm already pregnant, now I want it to end."
Of course, to resolve this question, we need to answer the origional question: if or when does a fetus's rights become greater than the mothers?
b) Women are the only ones who are guaranteed to be affected by pregnancy
bzzz, wrong. Forgot the unborn child again.
However, we aren't getting very far, once again to resolve this question, we need to answer the origional question.
c) the state has no right to regulate abortion
bzzz wrong again. The state has the right (to varying degrees) to regulate anything even explictly guaranteed constitutional rights. Of course, they have to have to have a damn good reason to regulate those, but they still can. On anything else, the state is given a much greater to regulate.
Abortion, currently being declared a constitutional right (at least in part), congress can't ban it except near the end of pregnancy, and even then they have to follow guidelines.
However, this right was derived from the right to privacy, which was in turn derived from the 10th 9th Amendment. Neither the right to privacy nor the right to an abortion are explicitly stated in the constitution, so these rights are fair game to be stripped by the Supreme Court if they feel that previous courts made a mistake in making them rights.
So, back to the real question at hand, how do we determine when, and if, the state can ever ban abortion.
There are very few benchmarks that can be used. Conception is obviously one, and birth is the one we currently use. Heart beating, brain waves, and viability are the only other real viable choices we have for benchmarks.
To make an increasingly long diary short(er), my thought is that viability is the benchmark where the right of the fetus become supreme.
Birth seems to be an obvious benchmark - its when the fetus becomes it's own individual. However, what is the difference between viability and birth other than the birth itself? Not very much. Presumably in both instances the child can survive outside of the mother. In that case, I can't see how one could use birth as a benchmark while still saying that free reign abortions should still be allowed past viability.
What about pre-viabile? I believe this is still where the woman's rights are still supreme because the fetus is still 100% reliant on the woman's body for survival, and thus not yet a true individual.
Anyway, thats my diary. I rewrote it like 3 times so I hope it is still in some coherent form (i'll try to fix it if it isn't)
