The final article I'll include in my discussion of fetal rights is one that takes a very loud, potentially controversial standpoint about fetal rights: that they enslave a woman to her pregnancy. Despite the extreme viewpoint, I think this is something to examine: if we give fetuses so many rights, are we then by default limiting the rights of the woman in question? I've always thought so, that fetal rights inherently give a fetus precedent over the woman, which has never seemed fair to me. Kuswa, Achter, and Lauzon argue that "the fetal body presents a challenge for the pro-life position because its classification as a distinct life is continually in flux. Put another way, the gap between the adult body that usually serves as a sign of the citizen, and the body that is typically imagined as a fetus, helps us understand how pro-life rhetoric works. This move, we argue, invests the fetus with a body, a personhood, and a corresponding citizenship that is separate from and often at odds with its mother" (168).
They continue, "absent a discussion of the pregnant woman and her rights, fetal citizenship is elevated and given access to justice through the values of morality and life" (168). I think that phrase is very important: "absent a discussion of the pregnant woman and her rights." Because in the discourse about fetal rights, rarely do the pregnant woman's rights seem to come up. When they do come up, as discussed in Part 2 of this blog post series, it seems that the pro-life set tries to portray the fetal rights as coinciding with the woman's rights: that an abortion is counter to a woman's rights, and that keeping the baby is the best thing she could do for a myriad of moral reasons.
This article gives a very interesting argument for giving a fetus citizenship. They begin with this: "advocates of abortion restrictions declare that when a woman consents to sex she is simultaneously consenting to the risk of pregnancy" (172). But that argument is flawed, they say, "because even if the woman's consent to sex is explicit, she does not automatically consent to pregnancy in the same moment. For example, when a person decides to engage in a dangerous activity she recognizes that there is a risk of injury but does not necessarily consent to actually being injured" (172). This reminds me of contraceptives: none of them are 100% effective. But if a woman uses them, she's actively trying to prevent getting pregnant, though she acknowledges the small risk that the contraceptive might not work. Here is where the argument gets interesting: "women should have the right to abort the fetus even if they have consented to sex because [...] a person has the right to break a contract at any point in time, despite prior consent to the agreement" (172). So, even if the woman acknowledged the potential for getting pregnant, she can "break" that contract or that "consent to the risk of pregnancy" legally. "Abortion restrictions result in the involuntary servitude of women to the fetus and effectively impede pregnant women from exercising their right to break a contract with the fetus" (172). So even if the fetus is legally defined as a person, by this argument the woman still has the right to break her contract with that fetus--and they aren't even arguing this in the face of a fetus being a person. However, I can see the pro-life objection: breaking a contract isn't the same as "murder."
Another argument they make is that consent laws take away a woman's autonomy, and assume that a woman isn't intelligent enough (or is too much like a child who "needs guidance") to understand what an abortion really entails. "Laws such as informed consent are the state's attempt to persuade women to make the 'correct' choice by providing them with detailed information about abortion and its effects on the fetus. These laws presume that pregnant women are unaware of what an abortion actually is or its consequences" (174). In my posts about abortion myths, one of the myths is that women need these waiting periods to make sure they really want an abortion. The assumption there is that women haven't thought about it before making their appointment, which is insulting. Of course they have.
The woman becomes unimportant in the consideration of fetal personhood. "Abortion restrictions are an example of creating fetal citizenship in that they attempt to resolve conflict between the woman and the fetus while washing away the woman's identity based on gender or pregnancy" (179). This is why it's convenient to align a woman's rights with the rights of a fetus: if the same thing is in both of their best interests, it's easy to forget that the woman's rights to her own body are essentially being stripped away. "The pregnant woman is forgotten in the equation even though she is the essential component: she provides the body necessary for the fetus's existence and survival" (179). If a woman doesn't have the option to terminate a pregnancy, her actions are then restricted for nine months: most of these fetal homicide laws are at least trying to also prosecute women for doing drugs or engaging in risky activities while pregnant. Her own control over her life is limited if she is forced somehow to carry the pregnancy to term. "Representations of the independent fetus contribute to the constitution of the pregnant woman as a child with limited agency who needs help making important decisions in her life" (179). It seems that an individual should know one's body best, and should know what to do with her body better than anyone else. Unfortunately this attempt to give a fetus rights makes the assumption that if a woman chooses abortion, she can't possibly know what she's doing, and needs to be taken to the "correct" choice as soon as possible.
Is this a viewpoint that's too radical, too unfair to the people who want to make a fetus into a person? Or is there some merit here--that if a fetus is given so many rights, the rights of a woman are limited, and there's an underlying assumption that the woman doesn't know what's best for herself?
Source:
THE SLAVE, THE FETUS, THE BODY: ARTICULATING BIOPOWER AND THE PREGNANT WOMAN. By: Kuswa, Kevin; Achter, Paul; Lauzon, Elizabeth. Contemporary Argumentation & Debate, Sep2008, Vol. 29, p166-185, 20p--Alexandra
No comments:
Post a Comment