In a piece published in National Review, Dan Oliver stated that, “the first and central issue in the abortion debate is whether the fetus is a person.†However, this is not true. What makes this issue so tormenting is the uniqueness of pregnancy. In no other case does a “right to life†encompass a right to the most intimate possible use of another person’s body. I have a friend who recently donated a kidney to a father whose kidneys were failing. No law forced him to do so. Neither father nor son had a legal right to so much as a pint of the other’s blood even if the lack of it meant death. The fetus must make use of its mother’s entire body in order to survive and grow so to live it must be legally allotted superior rights to born people.
One could argue that the girl or woman accepted the burden of lending her body to the fetus when she (in most cases) voluntarily engaged in intercourse. One could also argue that even in rape cases the uterus is the natural habitat of the fetus and therefore it is wrong to prematurely expel it from that habitat regardless of the burdens imposed on the pregnant female.
However, there are also intense practical problems in demanding a right to the pregnant woman’s body for the fetus. For example, however helpless a newborn is, a suicidal mother can hand it to someone else, then kill herself without harming the baby in the slightest. If a pregnant woman kills herself in despair, the non-viable fetus automatically dies because, unlike the born, it must use another’s body to survive.
This does not mean that the decision to abort is morally neutral. I personally believe the best course for a female with an unplanned pregnancy is to carry to term and give the baby up for adoption just as I think it is most moral to donate a kidney (or bone marrow or blood) to someone in need. We must do much more to support and honor girls and women who take this most courageous, generous, and difficult route.
