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Laurie Fendrich's avatar

I learned a lot from this column, for which I thank you--first about the role of the ultrasound and technology in pregnancy generally, and second about the fact that no matter how we try to make comparisons of pregnancy and fetuses to other parts of human existence, a fetus is sui generis.

Everything to do with pregnancy brings up the political issue of rights versus obligations. Western societies have devolved into millions endlessly bruiting about their "rights," with hardly anyone seriously discussion what, if any, obligations they have. Nowhere does this show up more than in arguments over abortion.

Once a society untethers rights from obligations, as we have been doing ever since Machiavelli shoved morals out the door, rights have been devolving into sheer power struggles. In the old days, rights and obligations came tethered, and since a fetus could obviously have no obligations, it followed that it had no rights. Only with the rise of rights do we see the claim that a fetus has rights bubble up.

Even so, everyone has always recognized that a mother has obligations to a fetus (not necessarily to give her life for it, but some sort of moral consideration for its existence). Today, we're in a serious moral quagmire because abortion brings to the fore two irreconcilable claims to rights--the woman and the fetus--coupled with a society that shows no interest in obligations it might have to that potential child.

Except, that is, when it comes to abortion, where a huge swath of conservative Christians and others claim that women have obligations but no rights.

Permitting women to make the decision of whether to carry a pregnancy to term is the most just way to go forward. It still leaves the moral element in play, for it leaves with pregnant women what to do with what they actually alone face: Both an obligation and their rights tethered together.

Anything else is just more Machiavelli--i.e., permitting the State to have even more power over individuals.

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Olivia's avatar

The question of what makes a being or thing a person cannot be answered by pointing to our decision to care for that being or thing. Decisions are themselves rational responses, and so the puzzle simply reasserts itself: how ought we to circumscribe the domain of things worthy of being cared for? Moreover, if we agree that personhood is just not the sort of thing that can be read off of a brain or nervous system, we also ought to agree that personhood is not the sort of thing that can be read off of a cultural practice; surely, the latter view is just as crass and reductive as the former.

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