Bodily rights
Abortion and bodily rights
Many people regard the right to control one's own body as a key moral right. If women are not allowed to abort an unwanted foetus they are deprived of this right.
The simplest form of the women's rights argument in favour of abortion goes like this:
- a woman has the right to decide what she can and can't do with her body
- the foetus exists inside a woman's body
- a woman has the right to decide whether the foetus remains in her body
- therefore a pregnant woman has the right to abort the foetus
The issue brings many ideas about human rights into brutally sharp focus.
- every human being has the right to own their own body
- a foetus is part of a woman's body
- therefore that woman has the right to abort a foetus they are carrying
The important US Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade to some extent supported that view when it ruled that a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy came under the freedom of personal choice in family matters and was protected by the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.
This leads some people to claim is that it is unethical to ban abortion because doing so denies freedom of choice to women and forces 'the unwilling to bear the unwanted'.
Opponents of this argument usually attack the idea that a foetus is 'part' of a woman's body. They argue that a foetus is not the same sort of thing as a leg or a liver: it is not just a part of a woman's body, but is (to some extent) a separate 'person' with its own right to life.
A second objection to this argument is that people do not have the complete right to control their bodies. All people are subject to various restrictions on what they do with their bodies - and some of these restrictions (laws against suicide or euthanasia) are just as invasive.