PBA210H: Bodily Autonomy

• Does the unborn unjustly use his/her mother's body?
• Addressing Bodily Autonomy and duty of care in parent/child relationship

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkLzpLjizrc

This objection attacks the first premise (that it's always wrong to directly and intentionally killing an innocent human being); abortion is permissible because pregnancy involves an extraordinary act on behalf of the mother.

Suppose that you are in need of a kidney transplant in order to survive, and that your mother is the only person in the world who is a physical match, meaning that she is the only person who can provide you with a kidney and hence preserve your life. Do you have a right to your mother’s kidney?¹⁾
- Dr. Andrew Sneddon, University of Ottawa

The objection is that while it would be nice (permissible, even laudable) to let her pre-born child use her body, a woman should not be forced to do so (not obligatory).

The analogy:

• concerns two people in a parent-child relationship
• both uncontroversially full members of the moral community, with all of the rights that come with such membership
• One person (the child) requires the other person’s body (the mother’s) to survive

In the kidney case, my right to life and my need for my mother’s body to survive do not deliver any right whatsoever to her body, let alone a right that trumps her rights to control her body. The same goes for pregnancy.

This is a slightly improved analogy from the famous violinist argument, which makes a similar claim but with a more melodramatic and less comparable analogy.

• Key question: What is the nature and purpose of the kidney versus the nature and purpose of the uterus?
  • Function of kidneys versus uterus: Kidneys exist in a body, for that body. The uterus exists around a body (a pre-born child's), for that body. A woman can live without her uterus but a fetus cannot; the uterus exists more for the pre-born child than for his or her mother.
• Duty of Care: mothers (and fathers) have a responsibility to their offspring that they don’t have to strangers²⁾, not to do extraordinary (burdensome ) things, but to provide the basic/ordinary necessaries of life, such as feeding, clothing, and sheltering children in one's care.
  • Maintaining pregnancy is simply doing for a pre-born child what parents must do for a born child—it's what's required to provide the shelter and nourishment a child needs in the normal course of the reproduction of our species.
• The method of refusing care is not analogous: With abortion, a pre-born child is directly and intentionally killed in the environment made for them. In contrast, the kidney-disease patient dies directly as a result of the kidney disease—not because of the choice of another person. The kidney case would only be analogous if, once denying a kidney to her child, the mother would dismember, decapitate, and disembowel him too.
  • With the kidney, if nothing is done, one person dies; in the pregnancy, if nothing is done, no one dies.
• Stephanie's cabin analogy: if a woman wakes up found abandoned in cabin with newborn child (not her own), and there is formula in the fridge (or she recently gave birth and is capable of breastfeeding), would even she have a duty to provide that child, who is under her charge and who she is uniquely and solely able to provide for, with the necessaries of life?

It's not sufficient to say that there's a moral obligation, but also that there is justification for this obligation being legal as well.

• First, the only way out of the parental obligation to provide the necessities of life in pregnancy it is to directly and intentionally cause the death of the pre-born child – it's abortion that should be illegal first and foremost, and the parental obligation almost just follows from that
• Our Criminal Code recognizes a duty for parents/guardians to provide the necessaries of life to children in their care, Section 215:
  • (1) Every one is under a legal duty
    • (a) as a parent, foster parent, guardian or head of a family, to provide necessaries of life for a child under the age of sixteen years;
    • (b) to provide necessaries of life to their spouse or common-law partner; and
    • (c) to provide necessaries of life to a person under his charge if that person
      • (i) is unable, by reason of detention, age, illness, mental disorder or other cause, to withdraw himself from that charge, and
    • (ii) is unable to provide himself with necessaries of life.
  • with some exceptions in Section 2 if the person's life would be at risk or the health of the person would be “endangered permanently”
• Duty_to_Rescue in some jurisdictions
  • e.g. Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms: “Every human being whose life is in peril has a right to assistance…Every person must come to the aid of anyone whose life is in peril, either personally or calling for aid, by giving him the necessary and immediate physical assistance, unless it involves danger to himself or a third person, or he has another valid reason.”
• Dependency implies an increased responsibility: Rather than a duty of care to vulnerable people relinquishing a right to life, in every other circumstance we acknowledge that a duty of care to vulnerable/dependent persons in our care actually results in an increased responsibility. This is not just a flawed argument in favour of abortion, but it's actually another argument against abortion!
  • Using Power Responsibility: Captain of the plane that landed in the Hudson River (walked the aisle twice) versus the Captain of the Italian cruise ship
    • Chesley Sullenberger, US Airways flight
    • Captain Francesco Schettino of the Costa Concordia abandoned ship