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.
This begs the question as to whether men have parental and reproductive rights, or only obligations.
If we're aiming for true equality, with reproduction being perhaps one of life's most significant decisions, then we can't ethically say that only men, legally, have obligations, but that only women have choices.
There is no equality in reproduction. Men have sperm, women have eggs. If the egg is fertilized, the most radical inequality follows--as in, nothing whatsoever happens to the man's body but women face health risks of pregnancy and giving birth.
For this reason I'd say that ethically men have obligations but only women have obligations and choices. It sounds strange at first glance, but ethics offers many instance of obligations without rights. To offer just one example, we have the obligation to treat animals ethically, but no rights over their bodies. All we have is power, which we use to control or kill them.
As for the law, if men were given rights in the abortion decision, how would that work? The woman wants an abortion but the man says he doesn't. Who would get to decide?
So in other words, we can treat people unequally, based on the physical qualities of their birth gender.
Do you feel this can or should apply in any other area where physical differences or physical roles (fatherhood versus motherhood, for example, or differences in upper body strength) would legitimize treating people very differently - possibly unfairly - based on their natal gender?
It is, in the sense that reproduction and family are life's largest obligations. Choosing a life partner is also one of life's more fateful decisions.
It's difficult to think of anything more important, so it isn't surprising that the half of humanity that controls all aspects of it would never wish to cede any control, or freedom, or "choices," to the other half, despite enormous changes to gender roles, education, occupations, and nearly all other areas of life.
And it seems that people who also demand extensive codes of conduct enforced on others, from regulating speech to all aspects of the economy to how one sits on the subway, suddenly become great champions of personal liberty and individual freedoms, when authority or law or morality may adversely affect them.
That they would not want choices, freedoms, liberties, or fairness extended to others, then, should be unsurprising. Who ever wishes to surrender long held privileges?
First, I am not a radical progressive so bringing up that stuff is irrelevant here. Second, for most of history men have controlled women’s reproduction through law, custom and force. Now, when women have finally gained rights to control their reproduction, many men start arguing that this violates their rights, I.e., that it violates equal rights.
I repeat: pregnancy and giving birth are sui genetics and attempts to give men rights in these things will falter because of this. Only biological females can get pregnant and give birth.
It’s dispiriting to see the way abortion reveals how many men don’t trust women to make what they (men) think is the “right” decision unless they have a big say in making it. Btw, Women with loving partners always include them in intimate decisions like this. What they don’t want to do is to include the State.
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.
Another excellent post, thank you. The abortion issue does seem to exacerbate the gap between meaningless matter (the “is”) and the meaningful realm of human values (the “ought”). Is this a kind of version of the perennial Leibniz’s gap? Is it that for Christians arguing pro-life positions, that all matter is suffused with meaning (God’s), that the fetus is inherently meaningful? I especially liked the bit on baptism and symbolic recognition and makes me think of the idea of endowing a name to a fetus, which I can conceive as being a coercive pro-life political strategy. The potential in a name holding out the hope of a human being, is it not something we also see through, positing futures and paths and a destiny? When something is named, it becomes elevated to personhood, as the totem of a clan is an ur-person out of which names themselves emanate, sketching the limits of a domain. Both pro-life and pro-choice groups seem to have their totems, whose domains overlap. The one, refusing to name, the other, naming too hastily perhaps. Sorry for this free association that muddles your clear argumentation, but it got my gears turning. Lots to think on. Thank you again.
Naming - there was a time not too long ago, certainly in the era of Emily Dickenson, when new born babies were sometimes not given names until they had survived for a while, because so many died so soon after birth.
Highly illuminating thinking along highly original lines -- what we've come to expect from JEH. One quibble: Smith limits the category of persons who should be concerned about surveillance of their bodies to those who "travel illegally for an abortion where it is still legal, or get an illegal abortion where they reside." This leaves out pregnancies that end in miscarriage -- roughly one in extreme abortion restrictions, every miscarriage will need to be investigated as a potential crime. There's no guarantee that cops, prosecutors, and courts will get things right. I worry that this will discourage women from seeking early prenatal care for fear that, in case of a miscarriage, they will be prosecuted.
More generally, I think that the total absence of consideration of miscarriage in the abortion debate is a serious lacuna.
Since the decision overturning Roe, everyone is shouting slogans and nobody seems interested in discussing, or even acknowledging, the moral complexities of abortion. Your Hinternet is an island of reason in a sea of emotionalism. Thank you!
The first image is from Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, and the second is from Jane Sharp's The Midwives Book; Or the Whole Art of Midwifery Discovered, Directing Childbearing Women how to Behave Themselves (London, 1671).
"As it happens I think the Roe v. Wade decision was horribly wrong, and yet another symptom of the decline of participatory democracy in the United States." It's fair that you should be expected to justify this assertion. The reference to "participatory democracy" suggests that you assume that we have no rights that aren't demanded of the State, to which we otherwise submit, but it isn't quite clear.
Damn, thank you. I read this just before going to bed last night and had a hard time going to sleep because it just didn’t add up. There are some reasonably strong arguments that Roe was wrongly decided in the first place and not only from the Right - i.e. the legal ground it stood on was shakier than it needed to be. But I had a hard time understanding why Justin would care about that now (or perhaps ever - I certainly don’t). I don’t know that the SC has ever had much to do with participatory democracy - that’s the problem with the court! But that’s debatable and I wouldn’t second guess. Thanks for clearing that up.
Also worth clarifying whether the claim is that the initial Roe v. Wade decision was horribly wrong, or that overturning it was horribly wrong. (I take it to be the latter given that contemporary-seeming reference to the decline of participatory democracy, but it could be naturally read as the former.)
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.
This begs the question as to whether men have parental and reproductive rights, or only obligations.
If we're aiming for true equality, with reproduction being perhaps one of life's most significant decisions, then we can't ethically say that only men, legally, have obligations, but that only women have choices.
There is no equality in reproduction. Men have sperm, women have eggs. If the egg is fertilized, the most radical inequality follows--as in, nothing whatsoever happens to the man's body but women face health risks of pregnancy and giving birth.
For this reason I'd say that ethically men have obligations but only women have obligations and choices. It sounds strange at first glance, but ethics offers many instance of obligations without rights. To offer just one example, we have the obligation to treat animals ethically, but no rights over their bodies. All we have is power, which we use to control or kill them.
As for the law, if men were given rights in the abortion decision, how would that work? The woman wants an abortion but the man says he doesn't. Who would get to decide?
So in other words, we can treat people unequally, based on the physical qualities of their birth gender.
Do you feel this can or should apply in any other area where physical differences or physical roles (fatherhood versus motherhood, for example, or differences in upper body strength) would legitimize treating people very differently - possibly unfairly - based on their natal gender?
I think the same as Justin, as in, pregnancy is sui generis.
It is, in the sense that reproduction and family are life's largest obligations. Choosing a life partner is also one of life's more fateful decisions.
It's difficult to think of anything more important, so it isn't surprising that the half of humanity that controls all aspects of it would never wish to cede any control, or freedom, or "choices," to the other half, despite enormous changes to gender roles, education, occupations, and nearly all other areas of life.
And it seems that people who also demand extensive codes of conduct enforced on others, from regulating speech to all aspects of the economy to how one sits on the subway, suddenly become great champions of personal liberty and individual freedoms, when authority or law or morality may adversely affect them.
That they would not want choices, freedoms, liberties, or fairness extended to others, then, should be unsurprising. Who ever wishes to surrender long held privileges?
First, I am not a radical progressive so bringing up that stuff is irrelevant here. Second, for most of history men have controlled women’s reproduction through law, custom and force. Now, when women have finally gained rights to control their reproduction, many men start arguing that this violates their rights, I.e., that it violates equal rights.
I repeat: pregnancy and giving birth are sui genetics and attempts to give men rights in these things will falter because of this. Only biological females can get pregnant and give birth.
It’s dispiriting to see the way abortion reveals how many men don’t trust women to make what they (men) think is the “right” decision unless they have a big say in making it. Btw, Women with loving partners always include them in intimate decisions like this. What they don’t want to do is to include the State.
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.
Another excellent post, thank you. The abortion issue does seem to exacerbate the gap between meaningless matter (the “is”) and the meaningful realm of human values (the “ought”). Is this a kind of version of the perennial Leibniz’s gap? Is it that for Christians arguing pro-life positions, that all matter is suffused with meaning (God’s), that the fetus is inherently meaningful? I especially liked the bit on baptism and symbolic recognition and makes me think of the idea of endowing a name to a fetus, which I can conceive as being a coercive pro-life political strategy. The potential in a name holding out the hope of a human being, is it not something we also see through, positing futures and paths and a destiny? When something is named, it becomes elevated to personhood, as the totem of a clan is an ur-person out of which names themselves emanate, sketching the limits of a domain. Both pro-life and pro-choice groups seem to have their totems, whose domains overlap. The one, refusing to name, the other, naming too hastily perhaps. Sorry for this free association that muddles your clear argumentation, but it got my gears turning. Lots to think on. Thank you again.
Naming - there was a time not too long ago, certainly in the era of Emily Dickenson, when new born babies were sometimes not given names until they had survived for a while, because so many died so soon after birth.
Highly illuminating thinking along highly original lines -- what we've come to expect from JEH. One quibble: Smith limits the category of persons who should be concerned about surveillance of their bodies to those who "travel illegally for an abortion where it is still legal, or get an illegal abortion where they reside." This leaves out pregnancies that end in miscarriage -- roughly one in extreme abortion restrictions, every miscarriage will need to be investigated as a potential crime. There's no guarantee that cops, prosecutors, and courts will get things right. I worry that this will discourage women from seeking early prenatal care for fear that, in case of a miscarriage, they will be prosecuted.
More generally, I think that the total absence of consideration of miscarriage in the abortion debate is a serious lacuna.
Since the decision overturning Roe, everyone is shouting slogans and nobody seems interested in discussing, or even acknowledging, the moral complexities of abortion. Your Hinternet is an island of reason in a sea of emotionalism. Thank you!
This was enlightening and nuanced. Two aspects I haven't seen in the Roe commentary. Thanks for it. Where are the first two figures from?
The first image is from Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, and the second is from Jane Sharp's The Midwives Book; Or the Whole Art of Midwifery Discovered, Directing Childbearing Women how to Behave Themselves (London, 1671).
"As it happens I think the Roe v. Wade decision was horribly wrong, and yet another symptom of the decline of participatory democracy in the United States." It's fair that you should be expected to justify this assertion. The reference to "participatory democracy" suggests that you assume that we have no rights that aren't demanded of the State, to which we otherwise submit, but it isn't quite clear.
You're right, that wasn't quite clear. I've edited it for clarity.
Thank you. I had been somewhat baffled, but I know not to make assumptions about your perspective on anything!
Damn, thank you. I read this just before going to bed last night and had a hard time going to sleep because it just didn’t add up. There are some reasonably strong arguments that Roe was wrongly decided in the first place and not only from the Right - i.e. the legal ground it stood on was shakier than it needed to be. But I had a hard time understanding why Justin would care about that now (or perhaps ever - I certainly don’t). I don’t know that the SC has ever had much to do with participatory democracy - that’s the problem with the court! But that’s debatable and I wouldn’t second guess. Thanks for clearing that up.
Also worth clarifying whether the claim is that the initial Roe v. Wade decision was horribly wrong, or that overturning it was horribly wrong. (I take it to be the latter given that contemporary-seeming reference to the decline of participatory democracy, but it could be naturally read as the former.)
wish you had extended your discussion of personhood to include corporations
The legal fiction that corporations have the same standing as persons is arguably the root cause of the bad effects of capitalism as we have it.