Introduction
At this point, I have had hundreds of discussions with pro-choicers. The conversations have varied in their degree of intellectual rigor, as well as their abortion-related direction. Most pro-lifers who speak on the morality of abortion rely heavily on invoking natural rights that they believe are bestowed upon human beings. The goal typically is to demonstrate that a child in the womb has a “right to life” being violated during an abortion. But I have taken a different approach, one that I have found to be more convincing, less tedious to demonstrate to be true, and easier to grasp for the typical person. This approach is to scope the conversation to be about justifying the act of abortion. Some users of the natural right to life may also appeal to justice. However, I find that they can do so only insofar as they can establish their rights framework as coherent and true. But this is no trivial task, as many pro-lifers often seem to suspect, and brings forth much baggage we can do without.
I want to clarify what I am not doing in this article. The purpose is not to say that those who rely on rights language, especially the supremacy of the right to life, are in the wrong for doing so. Nor is it to say that it can’t be effective. I have seen first-hand how powerful this approach can be in making our case, which is ultimately true. In the end, I want the pro-lifers to win, first and foremost, because I want to protect innocent children. If rights language compels individuals to be on the right side of this issue (pun indeed intended), then use it. Nevertheless, let us proceed with the discussion, beginning with the shortcomings of rights language in pro-life argumentation.
The two primary issues related to the invocation of a “natural rights violation"
First, let us consider the difficulties in defending natural rights. When pro-lifers are asked to defend their conception of natural rights, they find themselves on a few typical paths. Many rely on God’s divine mind to ordain these rights into existence. Some will say that they have been cemented in the foundation of this country. Others would defend natural rights by appealing to what the alternative would be. While not inherently misguided, each point has its shortcomings and unnecessarily complicates the moral discussion.
On God, the question of his existence must be proven to be true, adding another layer to the argument. The likelihood that you will convince your abortion-loving leftist friend of God’s existence is doubtful, especially considering the confines of an abortion-focused discussion. One may side-step the perceived problem of proving God’s existence by showcasing the rich history of believing in God in the United States. Indeed, the conception of an almighty creator, specifically the Christian understanding, is as ubiquitous as any other idea that rightfully finds itself within our history. However, this again adds another layer to the discussion that takes the conversation away from abortion. Furthermore, I find these points to be important in a comprehensive discussion about the issue but not required in a conversation about the morality of abortion.
Natural rights do find themselves in our American intellectual and legal tradition. But if this is one’s sole grounding for their position, it can be problematic. Many Americans are politically illiterate; your interlocutors may not share this understanding. Thus, lots of groundwork will likely need to be established. Secondly, solely relying on an appeal to our history, while I encourage in union with other considerations to be most prudent, is flawed. just because it has been does not mean it has to be or is automatically moral.
Let us discuss the appeal to a world that does not acknowledge natural rights. In principle, some governments have indeed suffered without inculcating natural rights in their laws. However, it does not follow that the absence of natural rights necessarily would produce this effect. I must note that while the basic building blocks of said natural rights existed before the 17th century, the Enlightenment thinkers clearly championed their formal articulations, conceiving of the rights frameworks we are more familiar with today. While Christians have long held the sanctity of human life as paramount in society, I consider the right to life a distinct construction, always existing in an individual-focused rights framework. Those who suggest the world would necessarily be worse without natural rights must also hold, for example, that Christian lead communities in antiquity, oriented to the common good, were all worse off, or any society for that matter, that prospered before the period of said enlightenment. But that notion I find to be absurd. To say, “Without natural rights, the world will be worse off,” without properly considering alternatives, is arrogant and flawed. Certainly, for example, a well-orchestrated political approach that did not rely on natural rights but more so on ordering the law toward the common good could potentially be a better framework.
The second major issue that I see is the battle on how a hierarchy of rights is organized. Often, in these discussions, individuals do not disagree much with what rights exist but question how they interface with each other. For example, one may agree that all humans have a “right to life” but that all humans also have a right to bodily autonomy. Much can be said about the scandalous and misunderstood notion of bodily autonomy that I will surely address in the future. Nonetheless, most pro-lifers will accept these common rights and try and prove that the right to life is paramount. That the right to life is the capital of rights, and all other rights must be subordinate to it. But this is a troublesome approach for a few reasons. One, it seems to lack explanatory power to say something like, “Without the right to life, no other rights exist. Thus, your other rights must yield to the right to life of the baby in this situation”. While, in the past, I have partaken in this approach, the established hierarchy is not immediately apparent to the pro-choicer. I find the defense of this to be weak. Second, the abstractness of rights in nature isn’t entirely understandable regarding how they operate or what they mean in these moral dilemmas with respect to our actions. If the argument is that people have both a right to life and a right to liberty, then when a mother is denied an abortion, the pro-lifer may be led to acknowledge that, in some ways, she is being denied her right to liberty. In the natural sense, this seems to suggest that she is being treated unjustly. But there is nothing unjust about being denied abortion. One way to sidestep, which I would suggest if you must be tied to a rights discussion, is to define the right to liberty as the right to “do what you should.” But this just seems to move the argument into a discussion about what is just to do, and if that is what the conversation is about, why not start there? I suspect that it is more likely that a pro-choicer will find it intuitive to consider whether abortion is justified before they are willing to accept that definition of liberty, which strays so far from the modern liberal conception of freedom, making it likely almost impossible for a liberal to understand. Thus, we have arrived at what is truly at the core of this issue, the unjust treatment of a child.
Focus Purely on Justice
Let us first define what Justice is. Justice is the virtue of rendering to one what they are owed. This definition is rooted firmly in our world and intuitive for most. When I am treated justly, I am being given the respect I am due. When I treat others justly, I give them what they deserve. While all concepts are abstract, this one suffers less from being disconnected from reality as the idea of an intricate hierarchy of supposed natural rights often does. For example, I suspect people will likely question what it necessarily means to actualize their daily right to life or be in accord with their right to liberty. But I would find it hard to believe the same person would be disconnected from what it would mean to treat someone just throughout their day, without any rights considerations. Or, for that matter, how it feels to experience just treatment themselves. People naturally will feel more in tune with what it means to be a virtuous and just person than someone who appropriately made use of their rights. Justice being more universal to our minds than natural rights should not be taken trivially; an approach more accessible to the intellect lends itself to having greater explanatory power for someone. In the same way, you will understand your native language better than a foreign language, so we should tune our argument to align with how people think about issues.
In my approach, I focus simply on the question of whether the action that a woman takes when she aborts her child is justified. Individuals, I would argue, particularly mothers, know how to treat children properly. When the focus is on what is the just treatment of a child, abortion never fits that criterion. There is no need to evoke God, no need to get lost in complex rights discussions, and no need to rely on the American Constitution.
The biggest burden of this argument lies in the idea of what a child is. Of course, biologically, the organism is a child in relation to its biological mother. The more seasoned pro-choicer will take issue with calling the human organism a child as they will see no person present in the womb until a certain point. This is outside of the scope of this article but has been addressed at length by many individuals and will be thoroughly dealt with by me in the future. Nonetheless, this burden is present within any pro-life argument, with or without rights language. The difference is that the abstract discussion of rights must be fought for and proven, whereas I take justice as almost always understood, agreed upon, and valued between those arguing. In essence, to add the rights discussion in a moral debate is unnecessary and causes more problems than it may solve.
Conclusion
Rights language can muddy the waters on this issue when the focus is really on whether a mother is justified in getting an abortion. Thus, I recommend cutting the rights and appealing to natural justice instead. By knowing that every abortion results in killing a child, it can never reasonably be said that killing the child is a just treatment of the child.
It may be argued that rights discussions already touch on the just treatment of a child. However, rights language is unnecessary in discussing justice. Instead of quibbling over whose rights framework is correct, focus on the dimension that all abortion discussions hinge on: the childhood of the being inside the womb. Once this is demonstrated to be true by the pro-lifer, there is no reason to believe that abortion results in the just treatment of the child. The dimension not addressed in this article, but I plan to discuss in the future, is the legal approach. To give a glimpse of my view on the matter, no one should have the legal protection to kill their own child.
I seek not to eradicate rights language from the discourse on this issue. As I suggested at the onset, when it finds use, let us benefit from its framework. I see this article not as completely transforming pro-life ideas but more so adjusting our focus to be more concentrated on what is essential in hopes of bettering our activism. If the pro-life movement is akin to a captain at sea, then this is more a slight shift in the heading than a ninety-degree turn. Of course, a slight adjustment over a long period can be the difference between finding treasure (let’s say stopping baby murder) and being lost at sea (living fully under pro-choice laws).