The abortion conversation has been stuck in the language of rights for some time. One person argues they have a right to abortion, and another argues a child has a right to life. Unfortunately for the pro-life movement, as soon as we get into a discussion of rights, we’ve already lost.
The way Americans talk about “rights” has no place in the abortion debate. Rights are a negative claim. They tell us what is unjust. “It is unjust for Person A to prohibit or command Person B to do something.” Rarely do rights tell us what is just. We talk about a right to free speech, for instance, but we don’t usually talk about power differences between speakers.
The problem with discussions about rights is they don’t get at the heart of the issue. Everyone is seen as equal. Objectively more powerful people don’t have responsibilities beyond not violating rights. A child in the womb has the right to life, so the mother has the responsibility to not violate that right. But that doesn’t fully capture her responsibility to the child.
For the modern American, each person is a “rights-bearing individual,” defined by their freedom to pursue happiness so long as no one’s rights are violated. However, this idea of the individual is precisely what leads to the justification for abortion.
I’ll explain what I mean.
Does it matter if a fetus is a person?
I was recently sent this screenshot that has been circulating on Instagram. I think it is worth picking apart because it focuses on a central claim of the pro-choice rights argument. Plus, it isn’t an NYT think-piece or political pundit on Twitter. It’s just a regular person sharing their opinion and it was widely circled by other regular people.
The gist of the argument is this:
- No person has a right to another person’s body for any reason unless that person allows it.
- Fetuses demand the use of a woman’s body. Therefore,
- If a woman does not want the fetus to use her body, he is violating her rights.
From there they make the leap that this means the fetus can be killed regardless of whether that fetus is considered a person. It doesn’t follow that violating someone’s rights means you should be killed, but let’s leave that for another time.
The real issue is how this argument conceptualizes the relationship between a mother and her child through the lens of rights instead of the lens of power.
“Abortion rights” ignore power imbalances
This person sees a fetus and his mother as two rights-bearing individuals. These individuals have entered into a sort of contractual relationship where the mother has agreed to use her body to grow the fetus. Effectively, she is a surrogate for herself.
This framing of the relationship is troubling. First of all, because this contract is rather one-sided. The mother has the ability to enter and exit the contract at will, but the child has no such ability. This power difference is a problem for people who want to frame the relationship in terms of rights alone.
This brings us to the second problem. This power difference exists whether the rights paradigm acknowledges it or not. To talk about the rights of these two people before we talk about the power difference is nonsense. It is like a scene in Don Quixote where the character comes across a master whipping his servant boy whom he has tied to a tree. Don Quixote demands the servant be treated fairly, the master promises to do so, and Don Quixote leaves without seeing the promise through or even untying the boy.
The Don asserts the boy’s rights but does nothing about the fact that he is tied to a tree and completely at his master’s mercy.
I know the progressive left understands certain power differences. It is a constant talking point of theirs. The pro-choice stance itself is framed in the power struggle between men and women. Men are naturally free to do what they please. If a woman has to carry a child to term, she is not free to do as she pleases. Abortion is a way to level the playing field, to “untie the servant boy,” as it were.
What I don’t understand is why they cannot apply this same criticism of power to the mother and their child. They recognize women as the victims of a power imbalance, but they cannot recognize fetuses as in the same predicament.
Assuming equality leads to injustice
When we fail to recognize power imbalances, we fail to understand injustice. Injustice doesn’t only occur when someone breaks a contract or violates rights. The gravest injustices occur when someone with power does not use it for the good.
The solution of the progressive left when they see a power imbalance is to level it. The mother-child relationship is proof that such a thing is not always possible. There are necessary power imbalances built into us. And this is not a bad thing.
When we recognize power imbalances, we are able to say what is owed. Rights don’t even need to enter the equation until later, if at all. A mother is the only person with the power to care for the child in her womb. The child is dependent totally on her. Therefore, she must use that power for his sake. She has the responsibility to do so.
Framing the conversation in rights alone inverts this because it assumes everyone is equal in power. If we look at the first proposition from earlier, (“No person has a right to another person’s body for any reason unless that person allows it”), this assumes equality. It doesn’t make allowance for the real-world relationships between persons.
If both the fetus and the mother have this right, they must both be asserting it against each other. The fetus is demanding the mother’s body for its purposes and the mother, through abortion, is demanding the fetus’s body for her purposes. What we have here is a war. And, obviously, the more powerful one will win.
This is why rights language fails the abortion debate. When two people are “asserting their rights” against each other, the stronger one will win. Instead of talking about rights, even the right to life, the pro-life movement should understand these power differences and talk about them more.
Power creates a duty towards the powerless
The very fact that a mother has a certain power her son does not have means she has a corresponding duty to provide him with his needs. A child in the womb receives everything from his mother and is completely dependent on her. She has complete power over him. If a person as dependent as a fetus on his mother deserves nothing from her…who does?
Power is supposed to be used for the sake of the powerless. This is most obvious in the mother-child relationship, but it shows up in all of our relationships.
When my wife is breastfeeding, I have the power to cook breakfast. She does not. I have a corresponding duty to cook her breakfast. In this example, my body is providing something (labor, etc.) for her and she is, in some way, demanding it of me. Is this a violation of my rights?
If we don’t owe anything to our children, we certainly don’t owe anything to each other. Wealthier people would have no obligation to care for the poor. The wise no obligation to instruct. Powerful countries would have no obligation to defend weaker ones. The list goes on.
If you are looking for a world where you are never inconvenienced or even hurt for the sake of another person, such a world does not exist. We live in a world where some of us have power over others. Ignoring the power will lead to injustice. Seeking to level the playing field will ultimately fail. Instead, we should talk about what these power imbalances are and what we owe each other.
Very interesting thoughts. For the record, I’m 100% pro-life.
But could one still approach the debate from a rights-perspective if one considers some rights as greater than others? The right of another to exist has to be understood to trump the right to have absolute control over one’s own body. Or does that leave matters too subjective? For then the question becomes, who sets the objective hierarchy of rights, especially in a secular world that has no cohesive ethical code? Certainly not SCOTUS and its Australia-sized flotsam of plastic opinion in the ocean of ethics.
But if we look at it from the perspective of a power imbalance, is that dynamic universally demonstrable and accepted? I would not be surprised to hear a pro-choice proponent assert that a fetus, by the unwelcome imposition of need, is the one in the position of higher power, and thus has to accede to the wishes of the mother. For at the end of the day, they’re going to seek any twisted justification they can, until their hearts are un-numbed to the horror of infanticide.
I think it has to come down to the core of Catholic teaching that goes beyond rights or power: life is a gift from God, and taking life is evil. The demonstration of the power imbalance reinforces this, but that truth exists outside of the power imbalance. The argument has to be: “It’s wrong to take a life, especially the life of the vulnerable.” It can’t be: “It’s wrong to take the life of the vulnerable, and everybody else too.”