A right that’s not exactly enshrined in UN constitutions–yet. Joyce Arthur, well-known pro-choice activist, comments on the National Post web site:
Yes Matt W, let’s err on the side of life – WOMEN’S lives. Because the right to abortion is not about a woman’s right to choose, it’s about her right to LIFE – which means far more than just mere physical survival.
Behind your view is the assumption that women are obligated to have babies just because they are capable of it. Not so. Women can never enjoy full human rights or equality unless they can control their fertility. That includes the right to have sex for pleasure, which carries a risk of pregnancy regardless of use of birth control. So abortion must be available as a backup.
The moral status of the fetus, when life begins etc., does not matter, because women need and will have abortions regardless – even women who think abortion is murder. Abortion is legal because it’s widely practiced regardless of any laws, in every society, in every time. Half of all women in the world will have an abortion at some point in their lives. But 68,000 women die every year and 5 million are injured from illegal, unsafe abortion. So please, let’s err on the side of WOMEN’S lives and keep abortion legal.
Her idea of “rights” reminds me of another quote from a different context:
We understand that casual sex is dear to you, but staying alive is dear to us.
–Rev. Sam L. Ruteikara, co-chair of Uganda’s National AIDS-Prevention Committee
Who is honestly going to stand up for our “right” to casual sex (and hey, while we’re at it, can we enshrine that it be really good sex too?) over someone else’s life? Guess Joyce Arthur just did. (It’s also a twisted sense of pleasure that sees women heading to a clinic to put their feet in stirrups for invasive surgery, all as a matter of routine “choice”.)
________________________
Tanya adds: You know, I think a group of Canadian men should rise up (in this same ridiculous fashion as Joyce Arthur and her ilk) and complain feverishly about male equality because they are unable to get pregnant. And they should also revolt against the injustice of how badly it hurts when they get kicked in the groin. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to belittle the issue, but these exaggerations of Canadian women being “obligated to have babies just because they are capable of it” are so tiresome.
________________________
Véronique adds: Well, if a quote ever summed up how illogical the pro-choice position is, this one would take the prize: “Abortion is legal because it’s widely practiced regardless of any laws, in every society, in every time. ”
So is rape, Ms. Arthur, so is rape…
________________________
Véronique, commenting on the comments: The comments about rape — why it is wrong and how it compares (or not) with abortion are interesting. Is rape wrong because it upholds the right to sex for pleasure over other rights or because it denies women the right to control their own bodies? To me, both arguments merge into one as they both involve a sense of individual entitlement over someone else’s body, be it for power, sexual gratification or whatnot. I wish I had more time to explore some of the implications of this but for the time being, I will just ask what makes something wrong: motive or substance? In other words, does it really matter whether a woman is raped because the rapist didn’t respect her right to physical integrity or because he felt that his right to sex for pleasure was paramount? This line of thinking is characteristic of our times where nothing is just plain wrong.
All this being said, my point about rape was more specific to Joyce Arthur’s argument that abortion must be legal because people have been doing it throughout cultures and generations. If the fact that people do it therefore it must be legal/moral/ethical, then it makes a host of deviant behaviours legal/ethical/moral. Rape and murder come to mind.
And I am not even going to touch the issue of whether legality means morality and vice-versa.
by 
Here’s one thing Joyce Arthur doesn’t seem to get – you can’t always live the exact life that you want. Things come up and stuff happens. My mom didn’t want to spend years driving my grandparents all over the place for doctors’ appointments and being the only one of their six children who took the time to understand all of their medical problems with diabetes, dementia, depression, circulation, and amputation, but they needed someone to do it and she did it. Why did she do it? Because they were her family and it was the right thing to do. She didn’t cause their medical problems, but she took responsibility for her family. Why can’t women who cause their own pregnancies take responsibility for their unborn family? I have sympathy for women who are pregnant at a difficult time and feel as though they have no choice but to have an abortion, but I have no sympathy for people who argue that it’s a woman’s right to have all the casual sex she wants, regardless of the lives it can affect and even end.
Does Joyce Arthur believe that MEN can never enjoy full human rights or equality unless they can control their fertility, or is this a full human right only granted to women? Men don’t get to control whether their unborn children are born or not. Men can beg and plead and sob and sign a document stating they’ll take full financial responsibility for the child, and the mothers of their children can go and abort them anyway. But no, it’s more important for women to be able to have abortions and go back to having more casual sex. What a selfish, self-centered, self-important attitude.
Indeed, rape is a result of people valuing the “right to have sex for pleasure” over other more traditional rights.
I read this and immediately found it discrediting, as I’m sure we all did: “Because the right to abortion is not about a woman’s right to choose, it’s about her right to LIFE – which means far more than just mere physical survival.”
– At what point does a child’s life mean the end of their mothers?? It’s so ridiculous I can’t even fathom. The child is not the enemy lady.
No Kevin, rape is the result of people refusing to value the right of a woman to control her own body and to refuse to have sex with men that want it.
Much like those who would refuse a woman the right to control her procreation.
The security of the person and of ones own body is sacrosanct and respected, even if it means that some other person will die as a result. You cannot force me to give up a life saving organ to donate, you cannot force me to carry one within me, if a do not consent. Even if it means certain death for another person (even someone whose legal status and morphological humanness is not in question). Its my body, not yours and you have no say in what I do with it.
So unless you intend to support giving the stat the authority to take peoples internal organs against their will to save lives, to force bone marrow and blood donations, you have no philosophical leg to stand on.
All to say, Kevin, that you are far closer to the attitude of a rapist than anything the pro-choice side advocates.
If you think abortion is wrong, don’t have one. And mind your own business.
Great post! I really enjoy reading your blog. Keep up the good work. I’ve just started a new blog that will be highlighting the dangers of the secular progressive movement (pro-gay “rights”, pro-abortion, anti-religious freedoms, etc). Unfortunately, most Christians still don’t know what’s going on out there and the mainstream media certainly isn’t covering it.
We’re looking to build a solid group of social conservatives who’ll frequent our site regularly and contribute to some good discussions. I hope you’ll check us out!
If you’ll add us to your blogroll we’ll gladly add you to ours. Just drop us a comment over at our blog so that we’ll know to add you. Our blog is called Religion and Morality.
Thanks!
I don’t quite understand how those who are pro-choice can go about claiming that they want the right to consequence-free sex–after all, men have been having consequence-free sex for eons, don’t women deserve the same?
The thing is, with the advent of DNA testing, men don’t have consequence-free sex anymore.
If a woman gets pregnant, and decides to keep the baby, the father will have financial responsibility toward that child until the child is responsible for itself. The man may argue until he is blue in the face that he is not ready to be a father, that he didn’t want the child, that they used birth control that failed, that it was only a one night stand, and, should the woman sue him for paternity, the courts will only say “tough s**t–you willingly engaged in an act that is known to lead to a child; you need to take responsibility for your actions.”
If the courts have the jurisdiction to impose an 18-year financial sentence on a man who is unwilling to have a child, shouldn’t they be able to impose a nine-month sentence on an otherwise healthy woman who is unwilling to have one?
Just my two cents
Re: Mike’s comment. Before I respond, let me say that I don’t consider myself pro-life or pro-choice, so I’m not setting out to discredit you just to prove the opposing side. I just feel that your argument is based on comparing two issues that are not in fact equal to one another, as you so claim. There is a key difference between the two: Choosing not to donate an organ involves a passive choice. You are deciding not to take action in order to save a life. This of course is not morally ideal, but is certainly not the moral equivalent to an abortion, which is a PROACTIVE choice to END a life. Your equating one to the other is effectively like comparing someone who decides not to stop to save a person they see bleeding on the sidewalk, to the person who stabbed the person bleeding on the sidewalk. Clearly they are not the same thing.
I understand that my example is not exactly the same as yours because yours involves a person’s right to control his/her own body, and mine does not….but it still illustrates the hole in your argument, which exists regardless.
I mean, a person’s right to his/her own body certainly DOES supercede all else if the person is in danger of being killed or seriously harmed. If I’m about to get stabbed, I have the right to kill the other person to protect my body. But do I have the right to kill the other person if they, say, simply give me a harmless but unwanted hug? Obviously not. You have the right to your own body, but you can’t just go doing anything to anyone in the name of that right. Abortion is similar. The baby is not setting out to harm anyone… so does your right to your own body give you the right to kill the baby?
Don’t get me wrong. I do believe that there are strong pro-choice arguments out there, which is why I’m on the fence. I just don’t think yours was very convincing.
My initial reaction to Mike’s post was – “this guy is an idiot.” I didn’t post that because I felt his misguided comments deserved a well contructed rebuttal. That has been provided by “In your defence”
So now let me say it, Mike, you are an idiot.
Your argument has no validity because it has no logic. As has been pointed out you are comparing a decision not to act to help someone with the very active decision to dismember another human being in the womb. A helpless creature if ever there was one.
Women, or the men they are with, who don’t want to get pregnant have several choices including the choice not to have sex. But once conception occurs, all parties have gone beyond the sex for pleasure that Joyce Arthur advocates as a right and have in fact created another human being.
If you dispute when life begins, stop denying science and read the report of The Westchester Institute – http://tinyurl.com/699syu
All you people who support abortion for the easy access to sex need to grow up.
@Mike
Speaking of philosophical legs, how can you equate pregnancy with mandated organ donation without anything to back that up? To be (extremely) charitable, that analogy would only apply to cases of rape, in terms of a complete lack of consent. Are you willing to oppose all acts of abortion, except in cases of rape?
Didn’t think so.
Want to try the philosophy thing again?
I don’t agree at all with Ms. Arthur’s conclusion that the right to have sex for pleasure necessitates a right to abortion. She forgets about our responsibility not to cause harm to other people in pursuing our pleasure.
But I also can’t believe how quickly everyone jumped from “for pleasure” to “casual”. The alternative to having a right to have sex for pleasure is having sex only when there is a desire to procreate. I’ve been married for ten years, and my husband and I have sex for pleasure — what’s casual about that?
(Edited to try to make the message seem less “spammy” to the filter — probably the result of using the word “s3x” too many times.
Mind you, I think people have a right to casual sex too, if they don’t hurt anyone else, but that’s a different question…