The Abortion Debate: The Unalienable Right to Life and to Liberty [essay]

***

1

Most so-called "social conservative" ambitions are anti-libertarian, seeking to limit or eliminate individual freedom in order to impose behaviors most extreme Christian conservatives approve and prohibit behaviors they abhor.  The majority of Americans continue to reject such restrictions on individual liberty and remain loyal to the most basic rights valued by the founders of the United States.

The standard principle has been and continues to be that an adult individual should have the liberty to do whatever he or she wants, unless doing so would harm someone else.  No one would claim that an individual should have the right to murder his or her enemy, but individual liberty - we seem to agree - should be abridged or eliminated only if the behavior desired would harm another person.

The abortion question is more complex than most issues raised by the social conservatives.  It is also a highly emotional issue that has generated more passion than rational discourse.  For these reasons, we should be especially motivated to bring to bear on the abortion issue some cool reason, based on fundamental American values.

2

Near the end of life, we agree, the individual has the right to refuse extraordinary efforts to prolong her or his life.  Others have no right to prohibit the individual from making such a choice since it would harm no one else.  For example, if an 80-year-old man learns he has colon cancer, he is free to tell his doctors not to operate and not to start chemo- or radiation therapy, but merely to keep him as comfortable as possible as the cancer kills him.

We agree, that is, that society does not have the right to intervene in such a personal choice and to dictate that a life - even an undesired, tortured, intolerable life - should be prolonged.  Only the individual himself or herself can make such a free choice, even if some or even most of us were to think the right thing to do from a moral perspective would be to continue the suffering.

Now, if that same man were facing colon cancer while also suffering a significant level of senile dementia, he would have already lost the freedom to make a responsible choice about his own health.  His liberty would have been significantly lessened, not by others but by "nature" or " chance" or even "God."  So, we also agree that if before losing the capacity to make responsible choices, this poor man had given his daughter the right (the responsibility, the freedom) to make health decisions on his behalf, then she - not he and not society - would have the right to say that her father should not have surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation; and it would be wrong for others to try to intervene, even if they disagree with her decision on religious or any other grounds.  The action chosen could be considered "harming" the Dad, but since he had freely opted for his daughter to make such choices for him, it would be wrong for others to limit or eliminate her freedom to do so.

3

This daughter's legally established freedom to choose her aging father's medical treatment has a parallel near the beginning of life.  If an otherwise healthy one-year-old were severely injured in an automobile accident and could survive only after prolonged, extraordinary medical procedures and if the youngster were unlikely to be able to function independently at any future time, then we agree that the unfortunate child's parents would have the responsibility (the right, the freedom) to decide whether extraordinary medical measures would be continued or the child would be allowed to die naturally.  This is not a matter for legal intervention, or for a public vote; it is a private matter between the parents and their child's doctors.  We seem to agree on this principle just as we do about the end-of-life decision-making.

Incidentally, if the child had been born illegitimately and the biological father had never had any role in the birth or care of the child, then it would also be reasonably clear that the mother alone would have to make the life-or-death decision.  She could consult anyone she wished, but she would decide whether or not her child was to be allowed to die.  This would be her responsibility and her right.

We should acknowledge, however, that a public responsibility is felt for the safety of children in general.  Doctors, school teachers, counsellors, day care workers, and others are often formally required to report signs of possible child abuse, the suspected abusers often being the parents themselves.  In such instances, we think the parents cannot be trusted to make appropriate free choices for their own children.  And we seem to agree that public intervention is warranted in cases of such child abuse.  So, couldn't one reasonably claim that public intervention in a single mother's decision to "let nature take its course," not undertaking extraordinary medical procedures in order to preserve life, is also warranted?

Since intervention in the relation between a parent and her or their child is recognized as a violation of what we usually consider an inalienable right, the liberty to make choices for those for whom we are responsible, unusual safeguards are imposed.  Signs of child abuse must be documentable, repeated, or severe; once reported, a complex process of investigation is begun, and even in a case of abuse it is only after a high level of proof is achieved that the parents' decision regarding the child is contravened.  Such questioning of the person's judgment who is responsible for the well-being of another is recognized as a momentous, extraordinary, and rare event.

4

"Social conservatives" might believe that the mother with a severely injured child would be sinning against God's law if she were to allow the child to die without taking advantage of all possible medical procedures, but while they may have the right to say so, they may not intervene between her and her child's doctors as this decision is being made.

Such conservatives do wish to intervene in some personal decisions.  They clearly think for example that if two men want to marry each other, or two women, they should not be free to do so.  Such an action is so contrary to their religious beliefs that they would have our very legal system prevent it from happening.  They would prevent the two gays or two lesbians from freely choosing to marry, even though doing so would harm no one.  But to intervene would violate the unalienable right to liberty that has been one of the principal cornerstones of our culture. 

"Social conservatives" would do it anyway, if they could.

5

Some of these extremists would go so far as to prohibit the sale of birth control devices to minors and to support the refusal of a pharmacist to sell birth control devices to anyone.  Prevention of conception, however, does not harm anyone, and so in America one has an unalienable right to freely choose to take measures to prevent impregnation.  An individual or even a highly vocal group may believe that to protect oneself from unwanted pregnancy is a sin against divine law, but it remains the individual's own choice whether or not to do so.  (The child who might have been conceived if a woman and man had engaged in unprotected sex obviously does not exist and cannot be said to "have been harmed" by the free choice to use birth control.)

Social conservatives generally also want to prevent an impregnated woman from freely deciding to end her pregnancy by having an abortion.  They might even want to claim that such a prohibition is not a violation of the woman's unalienable right to liberty because in the case of an abortion there is a "child" who does exist who would be harmed by the abortion.

Because this claim could be made (rationally), it is worth our considering whether or not it has any more merit than the desired prohibition of same-sex marriage or of birth control (either of which has little or no merit).

6

Until late in a pregnancy, a fertilized egg or a foetus inside the mother's womb is not only incapable of making a choice for itself.  It is not even capable of surviving without the mother's choice to nurture it inside herself.  It is not reasonable to claim that such an organism is an existing person; thus, it is not reasonable to maintain that it would be criminal for the mother to freely choose to end the pregnancy at such an early stage of gestation.

At some point during the pregnancy, however, the foetus will have developed enough that, if  born, even prematurely, extraordinary "neo-natal" medical devices and procedures could be employed in attempting to save the new-born's life.  At such a late stage of gestation, in other words, it becomes somewhat more reasonable to think of the new-born as "an existing child."  If for some reason such an infant should actually be born prematurely, surely it is the parents' responsibility to decide if such extraordinary procedures should be undertaken or if the underdeveloped new-born should be made as comfortable as possible as nature takes its own course.  This situation would be essentially the same as the decision about the seriously injured one-year-old discussed above and is comparable to the daughter's deciding her father's treatment when he is so near the end of life that she has been given the responsibility of making this momentous decision for him.

In fact, at such a late stage of her pregnancy, for the mother to decide to continue nurturing the foetus inside her is really the same decision; i.e. the choice as to whether the means needed to create a living person will be provided (or continued).  This would be the mother's free choice, it would seem, just as it would be primarily her choice as to whether or not to use extraordinary neo-natal procedures to extend the tenuous life of an underdeveloped new-born.

7

Here is an outline of the argument presented here:

1. An adult individual in America has the inalienable right to the liberty to do whatever he or she wants, unless doing so would harm someone else.
2. Near the end of life, for example, the individual has the right to refuse extraordinary efforts to prolong her or his life, and if she or he has delegated the authority to another in case of his or her own incapacity, the designee is free to do so.  This is not considered "harm" to the aging individual.
3. If an infant can survive an injury or disease only after prolonged, extraordinary medical procedures with little hope of ever achieving true health, then the child's parents may choose whether the child will be allowed to die naturally.
4. If some individuals' choices are contrary to another's values, the second person (or group) does not have the right to prevent the first person from doing what she or he wants unless it harms another.
5. Questioning the judgment of a person who is responsible for the well-being of another is recognized as an extraordinary and very rare event.
6. A mother's choosing to terminate an early pregnancy cannot be considered "harm to another" any more than preventing pregnancy either by use of birth control pills or devices or by abstention from sex can be so considered.
7. The parents of a child born so prematurely that the chances of what they consider "normal life" are small  have the freedom, the right, to tell doctors to withhold extraordinary, neo-natal procedures.  This is parallel to the end-of-life decision of an older person's designee.
8. A mother's choosing to end a pregnancy even late in the gestation period, when medical authorities are doubtful of the foetus's capacity to survive on its own without extraordinary measures, is also the same, isn't it?

The truth or relevance of any of these statements may be questioned, and the logical relations among the statements may also be challenged.  But to make emotional pronouncements about one's religious beliefs would not be convincing or relevant.  And, furthermore, the most complex social issues - including all those relating to our inalienable rights as American citizens - are the most important for us to discuss logically, exercising the very coolest and soundest reason of which we are capable.

***