The rights of the born woman

Given the many arguments about abortion, conclusions about embryos and foetuses are neither self-evident nor unambiguous truths – what is self-evident (and a truth) is that a woman has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If  you believe that life is a gift from a god and all fertilized eggs should be allowed to come to term then, logically, no matter the circumstances of fertilization, nobody should stop any embryo coming to term. Of course, this means any woman has a life that is a gift from a god, because she was once an embryo and then a foetus.

In the Republican platform for 2012, we encounter a conclusion with many missing premises. The conclusion is

Faithful to the “self-evident” truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed

We should ignore the specious obeisance to founding documents, and look at what is avowed – for example, is it self-evident that "even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen" (Republican candidate Richard Mourdock)? If we ignore (not so) self-evident truths, the only real premise is

we assert the sanctity of human life

In more general terms, the platform’s argument (or implied syllogism) with its many missing promises is possibly:

• All human life is sacred
• An embryo or foetus in a human female is human
• Humans have a right to life
• The rights of embryos and foetuses (who have not been born) supersede the rights of women (who have been born)

Therefore

• The yet to be born have a greater right to life than any woman

In all discussions of the rights of persons (“companies are people”) we have to decide which rights supersede which other rights – for example, does the right to bear arms supersede my right to decide to ban guns on my property? In this case embryos’ rights supersede women’s rights but, according to the Republican platform, things change – the inalienable rights of the embryo become alienable once the embryo is born. The platform authors “support the right of parents to consent to medical treatment for their children”, and suddenly the rights of children are superseded by the rights of parents – traditional family values give parents the veto. Parents can refuse treatment even if the child’s life is threatened and, because of the parental veto, innocent children can die.

Which group’s rights supersede those of which other group, and why? In politics,  expect less consistency and more expediency. Even in the Declaration of Independence  “all men are created equal” was superseded by expediency, and the fear of slaves.

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