Curmudgeonly Thoughts #2: Abortion is NOT a "right"

This may or may not be a highly controversial post. I write it a little bit tongue in cheek, a little bit to get hits, but mostly I write it with compassion. Those who have chosen abortion should be understood, not condemned. I was holding a conference once with a student who burst into tears and said her parents had recently forced her to have an abortion (this was in the '90s). I suspect that is far, far more common than anyone can imagine. And, I do resent men getting outside their lane on the matter of the pregnancy experience.  I think every pregnant woman faces that moment when she realizes something terrible and fatal could happen in the pregnancy and birth process.  It might be fleeting and highly unlikely, but it's real. So, read on, and don't say I didn't warn you.

There is a big blue bulletin board message (it's one of those that changes) in East Ridge, TN, visible to those coming into Chattanooga from the south. It is sponsored by Planned Parenthood and asserts "Abortion is a right."

Oh, yeah? Is it more or less of a right since 1973, or since the leaked opinion this week?  Timing is everything.

And, well, Chattanooga doesn't have a freestanding clinic and there probably isn't one within 90 miles--Atlanta, Knoxville, and Nashville probably have them. But not here. It shut down years ago and was bought by the crisis pregnancy center (where I am happy to say I used to volunteer). So I'm not sure why PP wasted their money in the reddest of reddest states and the buckle on the Bible Belt to put up that message. There's preaching to the choir and then there's the opposite, preaching to the totally disinterested.

So I'm not dilettante in this culture war. If the SCOTUS actually does overturn Roe, abortion will not end, it will just be a state issue, and perhaps Congress will make laws about it. I am all for that.  As much as I believe every abortion does end a life (although I would not call it murder because a. women are usually getting abortions under duress and b. there is some level of privacy in that health care decision), I advocate that abortions lessen. Today there is really little reason for surgical abortion as a practical matter. We have excellent contraception, we know more about fetal life than we did, we have far better medical interventions (surgeries in the womb, anyone?). And unfortunately or fortunately, we have abortion "pills," which I imagine might become more popular. No, abortion won't go away.

But more to the point. The SCOTUS in 1973 decided that there was a right somewhere hidden for many years in the constitution that allowed women to terminate pregnancies. Somehow it is rooted in the first amendment (rights of conscience and privacy, apparently) and fourth amendment (unlawful search and seizure). At that time any state law forbidding abortion was deemed unconstitutional. The result was Roe made abortion legal. It did not make it desirable, right, moral, or a good result. 

Legal scholars have argued for decades over this reasoning. Ruth Bader Ginsburg said it was a badly reasoned decision and placed the "right" in the fourteenth amendment, equal protection (which does make a bit more sense to me, since women carry a larger burden in pregnancy that men don't, but it's still problematic.) The leaked opinion would send it back to legislators, where it belongs. 

But back to the "right" matter.  I don't think people understand the legal, philosophical, and practical definition of a right, or where rights come from, and how they operate. Nowadays we have rights to do everything we want, just about, that we didn't used to.  And that, as some of my favorite pundits have pointed out, have been seen as threatened if Roe falls, specifically same-sex marriage but even interracial marriage (that one was before Roe, so the connection is weak, and it's unlikely Clarence Thomas would vote against that....)  We now have a right to education, higher education, free higher education, health care, free health care.....We can make rights out of whole cloth. Animals have human rights, too, in some thinking.

I would challenge the reader to study what a right is and where it comes from. If it comes from being biologically/genetically human, fine, then the fetus is that, and therefore has rights. If it comes from being ambulatory and able to live without physical dependence on another, then a lot of people have no right to keep living under that standard. 

Abortion is not a right. It's a cruel act that deprives a biological human of life. It can affect the woman for years. It is sometimes a necessity, though, so it can't be entirely illegal, absolutely illegal. It is an act of conscience at times. There should be some protection and some sense of the "time line." So I'm not an absolutist; however, I think people who are pro-choice absolutists should interrogate their reasons. I have my own theories about why some women are bent on the pro-choice position, but I'll keep them to myself. We do not need to judge, but we do need to reason.