Today, I would like to discuss the difference between deciding (or believing) that life begins at conception and deciding (or believing) that legal personhood should begin at conception. This idea was brought up at a meeting I attended recently and I think it's a great way to look at and think about Initiative 26 in Mississippi.
I attended a meeting last week to hear a representative of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women speak. She discussed several important problems with Initiative 26, and then facilitated a question and answer/brainstorming about what to do next session. And someone else at the meeting mentioned this idea, the difference between when life begins and when legal personhood begins (I would credit her if I knew her name!). Basically, no one in the medical/scientific fields can reach a decision on when life begins (though the general definition for pregnancy is when the fertilized egg has implanted and not when the egg is fertilized). So if we can’t decide when life begins, how are we to decide when legal personhood begins?
David McCarty has written a great piece on the personhood amendment and what it will actually do. He makes direct reference to Mississippi’s Bill of Rights and many of the times that the word person is used. His point is that is eggs, blastocysts, zygotes and fetuses are legally persons, then all these person references will now apply to them. He then writes out many of these rights, including the phrase “including zygotes and fetuses” to point out how ridiculous it is. One example is this:
The right of every citizen, including zygotes and fetuses, to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person, or property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall not be called in question, but the legislature may regulate or forbid carrying concealed weapons.
Now, if you read all the comments on this page, there are people crying out for McCarty to stop discussing the ridiculous aspect of the initiative. One commenter, who wrote in several times, said,
The bottom line is that if you support legalized abortion you either don't believe a zygote/embryo/fetus is in actuality (not just the legal sense) a person, or you just don't care that abortion causes the death of a person. In that case, I probably won't change your mind about opposing prop 26. I'll be the first to admit there are going to be more legal consequences than just abortion if somehow this were passed and it survived judicial scrutiny (which it won't). By all means, if you don't believe life begins at fertilization, vote no. But don't oppose the initiative because you are afraid of giving fetuses the right to bear arms.
He wrote this comment after saying that the legal consequences of Initiative 26 are just not as bad as we Vote No-ers are making it out to be and then being proven wrong by other commenters, including Atlee Parks Breland of Parents Against 26. What bothers me is the last sentence of his comment, because it entirely misses the point of McCarty’s piece. McCarty doesn’t oppose the initiative because he’s afraid of giving fetuses the right to bear arms. I’m pretty sure that, while if this passes fetuses will technically have that right, none of us are very worried about how they will choose to exercise that right. (Pregnant women swallowing guns for their fetuses? I doubt it.) The point is that if we vote to make fertilized eggs legal persons, we are endowing them with way more rights than they can or should have. A bundle of cells inside another human being should not have the right to peaceably assemble and petition the government. They can’t do it, physically, emotionally or mentally, so why should we be worried about their right to do so? And of course, I know that the pro-26-ers are not worried about that right; they are worried about the “right to life” (a phrase I hate, since I am very much pro-lives and against 26) and making abortion illegal. But this initiative goes too far. That is the point of McCarty’s piece. When we are endowing rights upon creatures who are not capable of exercising them, there is a problem.
As I’ve written before, the slavery comparison keeps coming up. But Allison Korn of the NAPW made an excellent point when she spoke last week. When we gave slaves the full rights of “persons” in this country, we simply gave them rights. We did not take away rights from anyone else; those rights didn’t come at anyone’s expense. We simply expanded the legal definition of a person. But this bill is different. This bill would be expanding the definition of a person at the direct expense of women. Women would lose their rights to decisions about their bodies and their families.
This bill is not pro-life or pro-lives. Pro-lives would mean taking care of the children we have. Pro-lives means dealing with problems like inaccessible health care, high infant mortality rates, high teen pregnancy rates and high child impoverishment. If Mississippi were truly pro-lives, we would be handling those problems. By illegalizing abortion and taking rights away from women, all of these problems will get worse. That is not a pro-lives, pro-Mississippi or pro-women solution.
I love this distinction, and the point about how ending slavery didn't infringe on the rights of the slaveowners.
ReplyDeleteThe example that's really resonating with me right now is the issue of women who have IUDs in place. It's not really in question that IUDs would be prohibited under a personhood regime, and logically, that would also apply to existing IUDs -- the illegal act is the implantation failure caused by the IUD, not the insertion. That sets up a situation where the microscopic embryo's "right" to life may require forcing women to undergo IUD removal.
It's bad enough when the government tells you what medical procedures you can't have. It's a whole lot worse when they tell you what medical procedures you MUST have.
We have a commenter on our endometrial-ablation post who's been busy explaining how personhood would require that sterilization be performed if endometrial ablation is desired. Honestly, I find that chilling.
That is, I find it chilling because the embryo's "right to life" comes into direct conflict, and presumably trumps, my right to choose medical procedures.
ReplyDeleteEctopic pregnancy treatment is another good example, because a vocal component of the pro-life movement opposes methotrexate. For them, the embryo's rights supersede a woman's right to choose how to treat a life-threatening condition, or how best to preserve her fertility, even in the face of what everyone agrees is a 100% necessary termination of a doomed pregnancy.
Respectfully, the entire "when does life begin" canard is a red herring that you shouldn't even try to debate on the merits. "Life" does not begin at birth or implantation or fertilization. "Life" is an ongoing process that started something like 40 million years ago and shows no sign of stopping. Puppies and kittens are "alive," and yet none of these "pro-lifers" have a problem with thousands of them being put to sleep every day because shelters can't find homes for them. Cows, pigs and chickens are "alive" but we slaughter millions of them every year under appalling conditions for food. The relevant question is not "is this fetus alive or not," but rather "is this fetus a person." Make them answer the question of "why should I treat this lump of cells or this tiny thing no bigger than my thumb as being the equivalent to a breathing, talking human being capable of interacting with me as a fellow member of the human race."
ReplyDelete@Alan: What this article very precisely says is that the attempt of Initiative 26 to dictate when "life" begins is as futile an argument as "the chicken vs. the egg." There is no answer that is easily ascertained, either through science or religion, therefore it is an answer that none should bear personally responsible (or worthy) to resolve.
ReplyDeleteThe point that you make so overwhelming clear is that people who are are pro-26 are acting in an uninformed and hypocritical manner. Where as most people have no problem with exterminating puppies and kittens or killing en masse cows and chickens, these same people deeply and morally oppose the government denying the rights of "lumps of cells(...)no bigger than my thumb".
Those against this amendment are the ones who actually agree with the argument you make here, not those who oppose it. It is not a question so much of "when does life begin" --this is a query that has no definitive answer as of yet. This amendment, instead, challenges us to face the implications that arise from giving something that has not the ability (mentally or physically) to exercise the rights of "personhood." Instead, we should be focusing on this amendment as something that denies the rights of citizens.