A pro-choice argument: "It's the woman's own body, she has a right to it."

Pro-choicers believe that a pregnant woman has the right to choose to terminate her own pregnancy. There are many ways of terminating pregnancies, but one that pro-choicers stand firmly by is abortion. But "abortion" is not just one method either. There are many methods of abortion. Here's a list of various methods of abortion:

1. Dilation and Curettage
2. Vacuum Aspiration
3. Dilation and Evacuation
4. Saline Solution
5. Prostaglandin Chemical
6. Surgery: Hysterotomy or Cesarean Section

Now, here is a very basic philosophical question:

What do all these methods have in common? They are various means to the same end. What is the end? The common description is:

Pregnancy Termination.

Okay, so the pro-choicer says that a woman has the right to pregnancy termination via any of the legal methods of abortion, which include at least the above 6 methods.

Now, what reasons can a pro-choicer give that supports the idea that women have the right to pregnancy termination?

Here is one argument:

1. A woman's terminating her own pregnancy is something she does to her own body (or allows).

2. A woman's body belongs to that woman.

3. All humans have the right to do as they will with what belongs to them.

4. Therefore, a woman has the right to terminate her own pregnancy.


As far as I know the reasoning from 1 to 4 is good reasoning, there aren't too huge of gaps or any obvious logical mistakes. But the conclusion, labeled number 4, is only as good as the premises. If the premises are not true, they cannot give us a reason to believe the conclusion.

Let's look at each premise, 1, 2, and 3.

Premise 1 seems obviously true. Terminating a pregnancy is an action done by humans. If I let the chiropractor crack my back, I have "cracked my back" by giving my consent to the chiropractor. Of course, he too, is correctly said to have "cracked my back". If I said "No!" and he cracked my back, it is not true in any sense that "I cracked my back" by going to the chiropractor. So, the first premise is obviously true.

Premise 2 seems true. Like the car I bought belongs to me, is owned by me, I own my body. I control it, I take care of it, I put my hard earned money into it, via food, or via my trips to the chiropractor. But unlike various things I can buy or build, my body is not chosen. So it seems that my body isn't mine because I didn't choose it.

But, if I inherit a fortune, it is mine and I didn't choose it. So, perhaps it is still true to say my body "belongs to me." It true, of course, like the fortune I inherit, that I can choose to keep it.

Well, not exactly. I can't simply give up my body and get on with life. But there is a very simple argument the proves my body does not belong to me. The first premise, I assume will be rejected by some, but I never claimed this argument was for everyone.

1. God, the Judeo-Christian one, exists
2. Everything in the truest most complete sense belongs to Him, stars, planets, and human bodies, let alone human lives.
3. Nothing belongs to humans unless it is given by God as a gift.

Now the pro-choicer must only reply: But God did give me my body as a gift: if he didn't he'd have taken it back or told me.

Is this a good reply? Perhaps. It is true that he have given me life, so why not think he also gave me a family and a body and all the rest?

Though this may allow the pro-choicer to say, "See, a woman's body does belong to that woman" it also makes it much more difficult to turn back the pro-life arguments. For even if your body is your own, is it true that God gave you the body of the infant growing inside you? Now the pro-lifer does not even need to argue that the body is a person or not. The body is human and so belongs, like yours, to God. He gives that body to the person, just as he did to you. The pro-lifer does not need to argue that the body is a person since the argument above says human bodies belong to God and are given to some person (it doesn't say when); the point is that the human body is not given to you; he already gave you yours.

But this raises an important question. If it is bad to destroy a human body that does not belong to you, then terminating pregnancies will be bad. Thus, if one terminates a pregnancy one does something bad. Doing bad things does not perfect or fulfill any of us. When we do bad things, often very harmful things, we cannot perfect or fulfill ourselves --or others.

But then what about the argument above, 1,2,3, and the conclusion, 4?

I can give all the premises to the pro-choicer, but then the conclusion does not follow.

Let us grant that we can do what we will with our bodies because they are given to us by God. This is to grant premise 3. We've already seen how a pro-choicer can accept 1 and 2. Why do I say, then that the conclusion, 4, does not follow?

Well, it does not make sense to say that we have a right to do what is bad. Why? Because doing what is bad is to do something that prevents us from fulfillment or that makes us more completely human. It would be perverse to say that it is a human right to destroy or prevent one from being human.

Now, this might seem false. We are free, after all, to destroy others and ourselves; is that like having the right to destroy ourselves? This is false because it confuses *freedom* to destroy with having *the right to destroy*. Having the right means that someone else has the duty. So, if we have a right to life, everyone has the duty not to murder us. If we have the right to privacy, then the government has the duty not to invade that privacy. If we have the right to food and nourishment, everyone has the duty not to take away food and nourishment. Rights and duties are like heads and tails on the same coin.

So, to summarize this essay:

First:

Pro-choicers say that a woman has the right to terminate pregnancy

Second, the argument:

1. terminating a pregnancy is an action a woman can do (or allow) to her own body
2. a woman's body belongs to her (or as we modified it, is given to her from God)
3. a woman has the right to do what she will with what belongs to her (or as we modified it, is given to her from God)
Therefore,
4. A woman has the right to terminate her own pregnancy

Third: the assessment

If a body is given by God to some person, as the pro-choice argument requires, then the body of the human in the womb (regardless whether it is then and there a person) belongs to (or is given by God to) someone other than the woman. So, terminating a pregnancy is bad in taking from some person the body God is trying to give to them. But no human right can exist that causes humans to destroy their own humanity. Doing bad things is to prevent us from being human.

Conclusion: So, even if a woman has a right to do what she will with her body, she can only do things to her body that are not bad, but terminating pregnancy would be bad, so she has not right to do that specific thing to her body.