I have another abortion-related post gnawing on the inside of my skull, but just as I was about to get the thing down in print, I remembered Ryan Harkin’s deft comment from two days ago, responding to Here’s Johnny’s argument that “given that we concede to government the right, in limited circumstances, to end innocent human life when a greater good is perceived (by some), why cannot we cede that right to women, in limited circumstances when a greater good is perceived?“ I had been prepared to point out that Kant (as usual, dismissing special circumstances) holds that it is never ethically acceptable to sacrifice a life “for the greater good,” and that the aborted human life would certainly have a different perspective on that conclusion. Ryan Harkins, however, had more and better to say, and did, in this Comment of the Day on “Regarding the Ohio Right to Abortion Amendment”:

[Notice of Correction: For some reason, I attributed this COTD to Null Pointer, who promptly alerted me to the mistake. My apologies to Ryan.]

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In general, the answer to this is that government and individuals have different roles. Government exists to set the boundaries, enforce the boundaries, and exact penalties for the failure to comply with those boundaries regarding interpersonal interaction. Individuals cede that responsibility to the government so that there is an agreed upon entity to handle those interpersonal disputes, for otherwise everything becomes vigilante justice. Whoever is stronger wins.

The view of government we have is that because the strong and the powerful can impinge on the rights of weaker individuals, government intervenes to protect the rights of the weak. I know there are other forms of government out there, ones that favor the strong and crush the weak, or favor the clan at the expense of outsiders, and so on. But here we formed a government of the people, by the people, for the people, with the thought that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, which include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We profess that the government exists to ensure that the enumerated rights of the weak are protected against the strong. To turn and delegate the decision making to the individual returns the power to the strong to crush the weak as they see fit. It is anathema to what our nation stands for.

Before any consideration can be given to a woman’s so-called “right to choose”, the question needs to be settled whether a child in the womb is one of those human individuals that have the right to life. The government so far has been ambiguous on this, allowing abortion at times, but charging people who kill a pregnant woman with double homicide. The child is considered a person if it is wanted, and soulless clump of cells if it is not. Efforts to draw a line where we have a human person deserving of legal protection and where we have a human being with no rights consistently run into contradictions.

A woman’s “right to choose”? Choose what? To kill the child in her womb. Whatever dire situation that woman is facing in carrying the child to term, she could be potentially facing with her born children. Poverty? Emotional burden? Abandoned by the father? Loss of job opportunity? Loss of sex partners? If any of those things justify a woman in killing the child in her womb, why do they not justify her killing her two-year-old?

As to a man’s “right” to insist on an abortion, I have a hard time seeing that as anything other than abuse. A man who is willing to have sex with a woman and not own up to the natural consequences of sex abuses the women he sleeps with. Plain and simple. He states, “I’m willing to force you into painful situations, and I will not support you at all through them, all so that I can gratify myself with your body.”