From: dgp@atlas.wustl.edu (Don Porter)
Subject: Re: Biological Reasons fo
Organization: Washington University, St. Louis MO
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 09:35:42 GMT

<1ebjs2INNmmn@hpsdde.sdd.hp.com> (Adrienne Regard) writes"
> A woman's right to abort has nothing to do with her 'right to be a parent'
> or her 'right not to be a parent'.  That isn't a right that anybody has
> (probably on account of it would make for very difficult definition and
> protections).  What a woman has is the right to define how her physical
> body will or will not be used. 

I came into this thread in the middle, so I'm a little unclear
on the context.  If you are describing a solid philosphical 
argument why it is "wrong" for the government to restrict 
abortion, then I won't argue the point with you.

But if you are describing the legal basis for abortion rights in
the USA, I believe you are mistaken.

A woman's right to abortion is based on her "right to privacy"
guaranteed by the US Constitution.  Like many constructs of
constitutional law, it is hard to get a firm grasp on exactly
what "privacy" covers, and what it doesn't.  It is like the
"right to free expression", which covers armbands in public
schools, and flag burning on the public square, but not nude
dancing in a commercial establishment.  The only way to map out
the details is to look at the case law.

"Privacy" has not been interpreted to mean a blanket right to body 
autonomy.  Indeed, in Roe v. Wade, the Court  explicitly refused to 
endorse such an interpretation:

     In fact,  it is
     not clear to us that the claim asserted by some amici that one has
     unlimited right to do with one's body as one pleases bears a close
     relationship to the right of privacy previously articulated in the
     Court's decisions. The Court has refused to recognize an unlimited
     right of this kind in the past.  Jacobson v.  Massachusetts (1905)
     (vaccination); Buck v. Bell (1927) (sterilization).

On the other hand, the "right not to be a parent" has to some
extent been grouped under the privacy umbrella.  Consider the
case of Eisenstadt v. Baird (405 US 438 [1972]) which 
guaranteed the right of unmarried individuals to use
contraceptives.  An excerpt:

	"If the right to privacy means anything, it is the
	 right of the individual, married or single, to be
	 free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into
	 matters so fundamentally affecting a person as
	 the decision whether to bear or beget a child."

Note however that the right to avoid parenthood is a right against
government intrusion, not a right against the actions of other 
individuals.  That is, the government may not force you to become
a parent, nor may it forbid you from becoming a parent.  However,
once you are a parent, the government may force you to carry out
your parental responsibilities to your children.  Legally parenthood
begins with a live birth.

So, I believe a woman's legal right to an abortion is indeed based
on her right that the government may not force her to become a
mother.  Men have the same right that the government may not force
them to become fathers.  However, this right applies to men only before 
conception.  The government could only interfere with a man's 
reproductive destiny by restraining his liberty at a time when his 
actions could influence his reproductive destiny.  After conception,
his acts are done.  It is not the interference of government,
but the independence of his partner which places his reproductive
destiny outside of his control after conception.

But doesn't that give women power over men?  Yes, it does.  That
is the nature of liberty.  When the government keeps its hands
off the liberty of individuals, they naturally develop relationships
of power over one another.  Your employer has power over you.  So
does your landlord.  So does your software vendor.  Such is life in 
a free country.  Get used to it.

Is all this "good"?  Perhaps not, but it is the way our system of
government is set up.  I happen to think this is an area of the law
where our system doesn't work very well.  This is because our system
is set up on the notion that the fundamental political entities are
the individual and the state.  Thus our legal arguments are framed
in terms of individual rights and governmental powers.  However,
reproduction is not an individual act.  By its very nature it
requires a partnership.  Our legal system is not equipped to handle
it well.  

Social and cultural arrangements such as marriage can help take
up the slack and smooth over the rough edges by associating sexual
partnership with broader notions of partnership, commitment, and
two joining to act as one.  But as people abandon such traditional 
arrangements and depend only on legalities to provide order
to their lives, they must accept how truly blunt an instrument
our government is.

"Self-government" does not describe only the representative nature
of our system of government.  It also describes the individual
responsibilty we must take for our own lives in a land where
we are free to direct our lives in directions of our own choosing.
We must truly govern ourselves, and take control of our own
lives.  And men, if you control your lives in such a way that
you give a woman you do not trust power over your reproductive
destiny, where does the blame truly lie?

Stop trying to join in the increasingly fashionable "grievance group"
system of politics, where you try to show that you've been victimized
more than everybody else.  You won't win.  The traditional whiners
have been at it longer, and are better at it than you will ever be.

-- 
|   Don Porter | dgp@saturn.wustl.edu | Washington University in St Louis   |
|  "The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they     |
|   please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we       |
|___risk congratulations." -- Edmund Burke._________________________________|