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Edited on Mon Nov-07-05 04:22 PM by kenny blankenship
Individual rights start with your body. THat is why corporal punishment (eg: hacking off fingers, hands, gonads, noses, feet, etc. as still practiced in some areas of the world) is not an overt feature of western jurisprudence anymore (although it sneaks back in the penitentiary system through the use of chem- burning agents which often leave scars on inmates). That is why branding of convicts skins is not practiced anymore.
That is why slavery is not legal in western societies anymore (although it sneaks back in in the form of conscripted prisoner labor).
That is why you cannot be compelled to present yourself in church anymore whether you believe or not. And yes, church attendance used to be compulsory in many countries where individual liberty is now respected. (Maybe I should say where individual liberty is "for now" respected, because it's clear that there is a movement afoot here and elsewhere in the world, even as the nation-state weakens because of borderless capitalism, to recapture what's left of the state's power by various fundamentalist sects.)
That is why the state cannot compel you to undergo a surgical procedure. That is why the state cannot decide to euthanize people carrying a contagious and fatal disease. That is why the state cannot compel couples to produce a quota of children for the maintenance of the workforce or the armed services or the consumer force.
Because the right of the state or anyone else over your physical person ends at your skin. It is foundational to the political philosophy that led to our laws and Constitution that your body is your sole and exclusive property. There is no property right, for example, without this foundation. Why is it there? Well, to make the world safe for property accumulation to be sure, but also to safe guard the
A woman's right to choose whether or not to carry her pregnancy is NOT A SPECIAL "ABORTION" RIGHT. It's not a special right at all. It is only one instance of the otherwise respected right of an individual person to total sovereignty over their body and its labor--the material basis of their life. In all other categories of experience this right is respected by our government and laws--and where there are breaches of this rule there is always outrage. In this one case though, people just can't get it through their heads that they are called on by the principles that underlie all the freedoms they benefit from in our culture, to respect the sovereignty of women over their own bodies.
If the state can cross the line that traditionally has been drawn (in western political thought since the Enlightenment) at the outside of people's bodies, and it can forbid women to abort pregnancies at their discretion, then there's no reason it could not cross that line on a slight angle, and likewise compel them to become pregnant to serve state interests.
Never in American history or in Britain (which also believes strongly in the primacy of the individual and property-rights) has there been a law authorizing the state to compel me to donate my organs to save lives of victims of disease or accident. Not even after my death can the state reach into my body and forcibly take my organs away with the purpose of saving the life of another whose existence as an individual with consciousness and memory cannot be doubted. But when it comes to women and pregancies that they don't want, the legal situation somehow is supposed to be COMPLETELY different according to fundamentalist woman-haters. The woman has no say or right all of a sudden about what is happening to her body. She must bear the pregnancy because it is life. Whether it is conscious life or life that can exist outside her body without constant support is inconsequential to their argument. That's because their position rests on a universe of mythical assumptions beginning with a male Deity which creates individual souls with as much fanfare as He created the entire Universe, and these souls are implanted in bodies even when there is nothing of a body to recognize, nothing in it to think with, even when there is nothing more than a tiny collection of cells, this mass of tissue is supposed to have a "soul". And that is why the law they say has to be completely different in how it deals with women's bodies, and their wombs, from the way it keeps a respectful distance from my male body and the kidneys and lungs that it could donate to preserve life for someone else who is inarguably a human individual, and who will die without them.
Well I don't see them arguing for compulsory organ donation. So I have to demand that they keep their sick fucking religion to themselves, and that they respect the Founders' idea of a state that has no duty to conform to religious and metaphysical notions about souls but merely a duty to maintain an orderly peace among bodies, letting souls to take care of themselves in churches that the state does nothing to promote, or discourage, or prefer. If you think you have a soul, cultivate its relationship to the Creator, or to the Universe, or to the Nada or whatever with my blessing; but leave the rest of us alone.
And if you don't like the idea of a woman having an abortion, don't have one!
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