The world just had its jaws dropped. The latest Texas ruling on abortion rights has sent shockwaves across the globe. Lawyers are watching with piercing eyes on what follows next in the courtrooms. In a country known for its ardent support for individual rights, is abortion really a rights issue? Or is there something more to it?
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Child-bearing is a physically and emotionally demanding journey. Having the ability to carry a human fetus to term is a scientific marvel as well as a personal triumph. But it requires a willing and able body to do so. Those who choose the abortion path are not heartless human beings; they have untold stories where no empathy is asked but a choice sought. Others who take the adoption route must confront a different set of emotional agony that spans across generations.
Child-bearing is, therefore, a personal decision that one undertakes in a private manner based on one’s own set of beliefs and values.
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Although most developed countries have cemented significant individual rights over the past 50 years, the rights to abortion remain contentious no matter which side wins the argument. A peek into the history of religion can help us understand why abortion has more to do with values than rights.
Throughout recorded history, religion has played a vital role in defining moral values in part to reward one’s afterlife immortality. From Buddhism to Christianity and Hinduism, each school of thought has its views on abortion. Cultural preferences, such as those that prefer males over females, carried an influential role as well. Even in some cultures, natural miscarriages were disdainful because they represented signs of curses.
Different socioeconomic circumstances also called for varying attitudes toward abortion, where such procedures were privy only to the wealthy and maintained as best-kept secrets to protect reputations. A suite of abortifacients prescribed in the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus attests to the practice of abortion during that time.
Despite the strict moral codes inscribed in the religious dogma, people sought religion because it offered spiritual guidance and social support. Religion was also an equalizer, where everyone was subject to the same code of conduct. Meal-sharing was a common theme to mend the impoverished bodies, and ritual cleansing was a way to purify the bedeviled souls. Except for the privileged, committing abortion meant humiliation, exile, and a hellish afterlife. One could not easily forget Dante’s trip down to the “Inferno,” where benevolent salvation was the only way out of such a harrowing passage.
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Fast forward to the 21st century. While religion continues to play a key role in many societies, it has morphed into brands of identities where each is a microcosm. The teaching of moral values is no longer confined in places of worship but lies within our circle of influences.
Who we are is more about our group identity and less about our individual moral values.
But the notion of salvation and the afterlife remains a core part of religion. The morality of abortion is no longer just a matter of personal value but augmented by our identity with where we belong. Consequently, religion becomes the agent of fervent arguments in the abortion debates.
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Although advance in science has granted us freedom in family planning, fetal gestation remains possible only in the human womb. Albeit, the right to the womb is not something the womb-bearer can definitively have, which is contrary to the concept of rights in a democratic society.
As in the case where a home owned by an individual or entity means the owner carries sole rights to the home, womb owners also hold natural rights to their wombs. Restrictive abortion means womb-bearers are deprived of their natural rights to their wombs – where one must bear a fetus to term and confront all the physical, psychological, emotional, and financial consequences of such acts.
Of course, a piece of real estate is in no way comparable to human life by any measure. But the notion that ownerships and rights are inherent features in a democratic society means we carry certain inalienable rights. Meanwhile, one could also argue that a fetus has the right to live. After all, if fetuses were considered individuals, they should possess the same natural rights.
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While abortion remains a moral dilemma, it has been weaponized for political gains in a manner that one is either in the ‘for’ or ‘against’ camp. Anti-abortionists (pro-life) argue that a womb-bearer must yield to the fetus’ rights. Meanwhile, pro-abortionists (pro-choice) center their defense on the bearers’ rights to their own wombs.
The fact is that any debates on opposing moral values seldom yield satisfaction for both sides, let alone an intimately emotive issue like abortion. One way to make sense of this irony on rights is to consider fetal termination a judgment of moral values, not a matter of rights. The question would then be —
Should a government or some arbitrary person or entity have the right to impose its moral values on a private citizen whose act causes no injury to the public?
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The Texas decision on abortion rights is a staunch reminder of what could happen when the line between societal moral values and individual liberty is crossed. Setting boundaries to protect our wombs from interference is to respect our human dignity.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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