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January 22, 2006
Her body, Damnit!
Mr. Soapy makes a good point
here about the rights of fathers:
There's the question of men and choice. Currently, a man who fathers a child does not have an equal say on whether the baby is carried to term or not. There have been arguments floated that offer men a "choice." That "choice" is whether or not to financially support the mother and the child if the mother chooses to keep the child. While I don't think "financial choice" is a good option, I do think abortion right advocates and those who support reproductive choice (like me!) need to be more inclusive when it comes to fathers than they currently are. Using language like "It's a choice between a woman and her doctor" does more to drive men into the anti-choice camp by excluding them from the pregnancy.
Now, as it happens, I respect Mr. Soapy quite a bit. And he is absolute correct about the likely effect of being excluded from the parenting choice has on men. I even tend to think that men have some rights over the disposition of the fetus. Indeed, that fetus has some right over the disposition of itself. However, and this is the critical part, as long as we believe that each woman a thinking and sentient individual, we must also grant her lexical priority* over her body. No matter what or has claims over a woman’s she herself has prior claims over her body...
Lexical priority is the order words are in the dictionary. Each letter of the dictionary has "lexical priority" over the letter after it. SZ _always_ comes before TAA. No matter how many "A"s get added to the T, SZ will always be first...
Posted by Andrew at January 22, 2006 10:21 PM
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Comments
"we must also grant her lexical priority* over her body" I don't know if this is the case. It seems that there are at least times when it shouldn't be the case, such as if a pregnancy is lasting longer than expected so is past the 9th month date, and the woman for no medical reason at all simply decides that she wants to abort the fetus. I tend toward thinking that this is not permissible, even though I think she should be allowed to have labor artificially induced so long as this doesn't create a serious threat to the fetus' health. There is a time when other peoples rights count, such as when you add sufficient A's to the fetus' T.
Posted by: RevChad at January 29, 2006 03:35 PM