“We have that egg Casey must be dismissed, “the Supreme Court declared in a majority opinion against Dobbs on Friday. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. It really bothers me. As far as I can remember, the furious abortion battle has undergone a decisive shift. The wide range of emotions that respond to this decision—from anger to retirement, and everything in between—will be fully visible over the coming weeks and months. Our feelings about this decision are important. However, it is also important to continue to investigate and clarify the benefits of the discussion about abortion.
“Physical autonomy” has become a major debate against abortion restrictions. Calling abortion restrictions “forced childbirth” is common among abortion advocates. Julie Riquelman, who argued in Dobbs’ oral argument at the Supreme Court that he upheld the right to abortion, said that the right to abortion was based on “freedom.” -Viability pregnancy. Supreme Court decision Dobbs correctly rejects the idea that physical autonomy is broad and absolute, so the right to abortion is needed.
Of course, injustice is often written large on the body. And injustice, especially to women, often manifests itself as a lack of power over our own bodies. We see this in myriad ways. According to a 2021 UN report, nearly half of all women in 57 developing countries are denied physical independence due to violations such as rape, forced sterilization, virginity testing and female genital mutilation. In American culture, a woman’s body is often considered valuable primarily solely for sex appeal and beauty. Violence is a constant threat to a woman’s body, with one in five women experiencing lifelong completion or attempted rape and one in four women experiencing domestic violence. In order to build a just society, it is necessary to protect and keep women’s bodies safe. Also, like men, women need to be able to make decisions about their bodies.
But the way we understand and define physical independence has profound implications for our discussion of abortion and how we understand what women’s justice looks like. increase. The Dobbs Supreme Court ruling acknowledged that there is no inherent right of abortion resulting from a commitment to freedom or autonomy. And Casey That is because those decisions destroy what they call “fetal life” and what the law now in front of us describes as “fetal humans.” “
The three ways I feel that the debate over the right to abortion to appeal to physical independence is unconvincing and ultimately detrimental to our understanding of what freedom and humanity mean. It is as follows.
1. Physical independence is limited by our duty not to harm others. We are already aware by law that physical autonomy is limited. Even if you really want to go, you can’t go to the school district at 75mph, even if you walk naked on the street, slow down or put a strain on the driver.
These restrictions came up in Dobbs’ oral argument. Twice, Judge Clarence Thomas sued a woman convicted of neglecting her child for taking harmful illegal drugs during pregnancy.Supreme Court Majority Opinion in Dobbs Responding to this, the appeal for autonomy states that “at a high level of generality, it may grant basic rights such as illegal drug use and prostitution.” Our desire to do what we want in our bodies must be respected, but also limited by the needs and rights of others, including those who live within our bodies. It will not be.
2. The term “autonomy” denies the deep interdependence and limitations of all human bodies. One of the definitions of autonomy is “independence”. However, no one has complete physical independence from birth to death. The natural state of human beings is that they are deeply and irreparably interdependent with each other. The only reason we are all alive today is that someone has taken care of us in the womb as a child, and as a toddler or toddler. Almost all of us take care of us in bathing, changing clothes, eating, and other ways, ultimately depending on the other person, the other human body, through age, disability, or both. ..
The child in the womb depends on the mother for the rest of her life in a way that puts a unique burden on her. However, this burden does not end at birth. Parent-child relationships are painstaking good at any stage. One-year-old babies are dependent on adults for nutrition, protection and care and can be very burdensome, but they cannot claim “physical independence” as a reason to ignore their one-year-old needs. .. Abortion seems to punish the lack of physical independence of the fetus and deny the deep trust that all of us in the body have.
This deep interdependence that we all share creates obligations for each other. We do not always choose how our bodies depend on others. And we often do not choose the obligations placed on our lives by others who depend on us. Covid threw in a sharp remedy that our body and the health of our body depend on the choices of others. I criticized the people on the right to cast a choice as to whether or not to vaccinate the Covid vaccine as a completely personal decision. This kind of individualistic rhetoric is the logic of autonomy itself. In other words, people can do what they want with their own bodies, without worrying about their obligations to others. However, unlike machines, the human body is not simply autonomous. Our choices about our own body affect the bodies around us.
3. The pressing question regarding abortion is whether biological reality needs to be nullified or restored in order to defend “physical autonomy”. In Dobbs’ oral argument, Julie Riquelman explained what women would experience in the absence of access to abortion: Deprivation of her freedom. “
But is limiting abortion the same as forced pregnancy? Is it correct to compare the limitation of abortion with the state of “dominating” a woman’s body or the deprivation of liberty?
What is sex and what it is for-whether it is a sacred act or just a joy of entertainment-all of us are the only ones who have the power to create life. Human activity and all potentially reproductive sexual activity can be agreed to carry some level of risk at which pregnancy may occur. (Contraception significantly reduces this risk, but it does not completely eliminate it because contraceptive methods can fail.) Still, the state does not impose this risk of creating lives. Biology does. With the exception of the dreaded situations of rape and incest, which account for 1% of abortions, both women and men have physical subjects and choices regarding whether to have sexual activity and, therefore, to accept the new life risks inherent in it. I have.
There is no doubt that our body puts a disproportionate burden on women in reproduction. When it comes to creating and carrying life, there are inevitable asymmetries in the male and female bodies. To deal with the specific difficulties that pregnancy poses to women, we need to make fathers more responsible through child support laws. And we need to create a culture that supports women through means such as paid parental leave, affordable childcare access, and free health care, without being ashamed of women with unintended pregnancies. Yet, in the end, the nation cannot and should not completely save us from the known reality of human biology.
The sperm and egg fuse to grow into a human inside the female body. The state does nothing more than force aging, force weight loss from exercise, or take oxygen into the lungs to release carbon dioxide.
Forced pregnancy or the use of national language to “dominate” the female body is to describe biology itself as oppressive and to stop the natural flow of the body as a liberating role of the state.
For both men and women, physical independence means that we can do whatever we want with our own bodies whenever we want, without the natural consequences or obligations to others. You can’t. If this is what we mean by “autonomy,” no one can defend physical autonomy without ultimately claiming harm.
I recently came across a blog post by literary writer Alan Jacobs. This explains Simone Weil’s claim. right, We too, and perhaps more desperately, need a human declaration Bonds.. I think this is beautiful. As a woman, in terms of the female body, we want all women to be safe and free. I want women to be full participants and leaders in public life. We believe that as human beings and as those who have the image of God, we have the right to physical integrity, protection and freedom.
But these rights are also obligatory to others, perhaps especially vulnerable groups that depend on us. This is the heart of the question about abortion: what are our obligations to each other? We have a duty on the fetus. We have a duty to pursue the safety and prosperity of women. These obligations have been at odds with each other for too long, but they don’t have to be, and in order to move forward, we must create a world that never exists.
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Tissue Harrison Warren (@Tish_H_Warren) Is a priest of the Anglican Church in North America and the author of “Night Prayer: For Workers, Seers, and Weepers.”