Women’s Reproductive Rights

Women’s Reproductive Rights Under Irrational Legal Attacks

In many ways, the chapter Women’s Reproductive Rights was the most complete in Let’s Get Civil. But attempts by state legislators to be the first to create the law that eventually is used to overturn Roe v Wade has produced some laws that beg our attention.

Alabama’s law bans abortion at every stage of pregnancy unless the woman’s health is at serious risk, and it criminalizes the procedure for doctors.

Ohio, Missouri, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia ban abortions after 6-8

weeks, the heartbeat law.

Utah and Arkansas ban abortion after 18-22 weeks.

Arguments for these restrictions tend to be sparse. In Alabama, Senator Clyd Chambliss stated: When God creates the miracle of life inside a woman’s womb, it is not our place as human beings to extinguish that life.” Chambliss does not speak to the fact that 31% of all pregnancies end in miscarriages nor to God’s role in those terminations of life.

In the other eight states, the arguments by advocates of their laws focus on the language of law: when does the law go into effect (heartbeat or some number of weeks) and the status of the fetus (full legal recognition of the unborn child, including the right to life). They do not provide any argument for why the state should treat the status of the fetus as superior to the status of the woman and her right to choose. They simply deny women any rights at all after they become pregnant.

One of the main goals of Let’s Get Civil was to improve both how we think and what we think. Importantly, both how we think and what we think in moral philosophy is contained in our arguments. Obviously, there are religious arguments that are not moral. The nature of God, for instance, is a major topic of theology in general, but not of moral philosophy. But to answer the question, Does a woman have the right to terminate a pregnancy? is clearly a moral question. And to answer in the affirmative or negative requires a logical, rational argument.

Supporters of these laws have not presented rational arguments for their conclusions. Rather, they have presented doctrines felt as facts. Doctrines felt as facts are convenient guides to personal behavior, unless of course they lead to bad behavior. But at their best, they do not provide guides to public arguments and the creation of good laws. They cannot be subjected to rational scrutiny because they do not use or depend upon rational arguments.

It is therefore important in the extreme that no legislatures allow laws to be made that are not supported by rational arguments. Such laws can only be imposed on the unwilling. They can never be implemented through programs of public education or journalistic leadership. They represent the voice and acts of a tyrant, not a democratic legislative process. That is a really important point that I will treat as obvious. We just need to say it, and its truth allows it to stand on its own. So let’s get back to the legislatures that are passing these tyrannical laws.

Senator Clyd Chambliss stated: When God creates the miracle of life inside a woman’s womb, it is not our place as human beings to extinguish that life.” Chambliss obviously comes from an anti-intellectual religious tradition. If he came from any kind of intellectual tradition, he would have to support his claim that God has a hand in creating life inside a woman. We all know the biological facts that operate pretty similarly in all mammals and that do not seem to involve the hand of God. Now there is an intellectual tradition that allows us to contemplate the role that God plays. It is found in the Aritotelean-Thomistic tradition that discusses causes: First cause, formal cause, proximate cause, and final cause.

Clearly, God has a place as the First Cause of all that exists. But the formal cause, the design or architecture of a conception seems to be best described in biology and evolution. The proximate, or immediate cause, is obviously the man and woman and the sex act. The final cause is the telos, a concept we discussed at great length in Let’s Get Civil, and is obviously after the facts that interest us.

If Senator Chambliss did not speak bereft of an intellectual tradition, he would not speak so casually and earnestly in ways that make no logical sense. But he could mention the role God plays in placing the soul in the human body. That discussion is at the heart of Catholics arguments about abortion and we subjected them to Catholic rational scrutiny in Let’s Get Civil.

Of course Sentator Chambliss and his religious brethren get to believe whatever they want in their religious community. But it undermines democracy for him to bring religious claims that cannot be subjected to rational arguments to his state’s legislature and with his political allies act as tyrants and make laws that subject the people of Alabama to their religious doctrines.

This is a perfect example of the tyranny of the majority that Jefferson warned us about and attempted to preempt in the Constitution.

Turning to the other eight states, their laws make no use at all of religion, although the same religious groups support them that support legislators in Alabama. More on them later.

These arguments focus on the language of law: when does the law go into effect (heartbeat or some number of weeks) and the status of the fetus (full legal recognition of the unborn child, including the right to life). They do not provide any argument for why the state should treat the status of the fetus as superior to the status of the woman and her right to choose. They simply deny women any rights at all after they become pregnant.

Let me give a conclusion that adds urgency and intensity to this discussion. These laws a extreme acts of misogyny. They deny the full humanity of women and deny women their rights and dignity as human beings. These laws are tyrannical, and they constitute crimes against humanity. Being tyrannical, they threaten our democracy and our democratic traditions. They threaten our entire sense of self as a nation, our identity, who we are. And like all crimes against humanity, they threaten the dignity and worth of all humans, our rights as humans, and the responsibility of our laws and government to protect us all as humans. Hitler is the patron saint of these legislators and the groups that support them.

Since the advocates of these laws in these eight states do not make religious claims, we must subject their claims to the rational scrutiny afforded us by public moral reasoning. And we made that full argument in Let’s Get Civil, starting on page 229. The argument is important because it establishes the full humanity of women as individuals, persons, and selves. It does not deny the humanity of the fetus as an individual, at conception, but it denies even the potential person and self of the fetus until it becomes viable. To make laws that grant greater rights to a fetus than to a woman before the fetus even has the potential to develop as a person or a self denies in a most extreme and violent way the full humanity of women. That is what makes it an extreme form of misogyny and a crime against humanity.