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From: saquigley@watmath.UUCP (Sophie Quigley)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: Who has the right over our bodies?
Message-ID: <7362@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 24-Mar-84 11:44:01 EST
Article-I.D.: watmath.7362
Posted: Sat Mar 24 11:44:01 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 25-Mar-84 09:56:45 EST
References: <581@ihuxn.UUCP>, <76700004@hp-pcd.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 57

I do not think it is obvious that even if the fetus is a person (it is human
obviusly) that its right to life gives it the right to live in another person's
body.  As I pointed out earlier, there are cases where people's right to their
own body is stronger than other people's right to life.  Donating blood, skin,
marrow, organs right now is not enforceable even if the person needing the
donation will die if he/she doesn't get it.  Why should we enforce the lending
of wombs, but not the donation of blood?  Blood donations are less taxing and
less dangerous for the donor than womb-lending is, and the receiver is certainly
a person yet society considers that in this case the rights of the donor to keep
his/her own blood is more important than the rights of the receiver to live.

Seriously, what is it about wombs that make them public property when no other
parts of the body are?

If wombs become public property, what is to stop people from using women as
breeding machines by rape and forced insemination?  what is to stop society
from declaring which wombs should not be used for breeding and enforce sterili-
sation of some women?  If you think those questions are far-fetched, you are
wrong, they are not.  Some pro-life groups advocate the banning of abortion
even in cases of rape.  If this position was turned into law, any man who wanted
a child with a woman could simply rape her and voila!!  Of course if she
mannaged to get him convicted, he might not get to see the child, but if the
man happened to be the woman's husband there is a great chance that he wouldn't
get convicted since rape of one's wife is often not considered to be rape by
many law systems.
As far as forcible legal sterilisation for certain groups of people goes, this
already exists: thousands of retarded or semi-retarded women or women with
mental disorders are sterilised against their will and "for their own good"
every year in America.  The founder of the IQ test, whose name escapes me right
was also pushing for mandatory sterilisation of "inferior" groups, such as
blacks.  His proposal was taken quite seriously by the powers that be at that
time, but was never passed into law.  The nazis (yes, them again) also enforced
sterilisation of people coming from "inferior" races.  This of course pales in
front of the other atrocities that were committed by the same regime.
There are also other signs of the publicisation of uteruses: even though
sterilisation is enforced on certain groups of women, voluntary sterilisation is
often not admitted.  Many doctors refuse to sterilise women who have not had at
least three children, "for their own good".  I don't know whether this has been
passed into law, but I do know of one case of a friend of a friend of mine who
wanted to be sterilised because she was the carrier of some disease.  In all of
Ontario, she did not manage to find a doctor or an agency that accepted to 
perform her sterilisation.

No, the abortion problem is not a one-issue problem.  There is more to it than
simply determining whether fetuses are persons.  The question of what rights
women have over their own body, whether the fetus is a person or not is as
important as determining the first one.  This question of control over one's
body are as far-reaching as the question of fetuses' right to life and it cannot
be waved away so simply.  Why try to simplify a problem that is complicated?
why try to find a right and a wrong when there are no such things, but simply
a gradation of more or less right things and more or less wrong things?  
why try to solve universally a problem that is personnal?
Pretending in the face of evidence that complicated things are simple is just an
act of bad faith.

				Sophie Quigley
			...!{decvax,allegra}!watmath!saquigley