Let's Talk about Government Control of Our Bodies

So there I was, trying to slip an argument in on another thread, when the Big Guy busts me and tells me to put up my own post. Well, clearly I'm not pulling my blogging weight around here lately, but I thought I could slide by one more time. Dang.

Without further introduction or transition, over in the Lies, Damned Lies, and Abortion thread, Cass and Grim got into a discussion of government control over a woman's body in the case of pregnancy.

The pro-choice / pro-life debate is an active one, so we hear about it and about a woman's right to control her body. However, in the context of government control over the body, we don't hear much about conscription, probably because we haven't conscripted for about 40 years, though also probably because it's about men's rights and that's just evil and misogynistic.

Hater that I am, I'm curious about how the Hall sees this. Are these two issues similar in any way? If you are uncomfortable with any level of government control over a pregnant woman's body, are you also uncomfortable with government control over a man's body? Or are they completely different matters?

11 comments:

Grim said...

Well, first of all, I wasn't trying to talk about government control of a woman's body. I was trying to inquire into the specific nature of the right we're trying to attribute to her. The question I meant to ask wasn't about what the government should be able to demand of her, but of what the limits were on the right she ought to be able to express.

In terms of conscription, I think the initial position is probably this one:

1) A volunteer army is not only morally preferable, but usually more effective. The worst guy to have in your unit with you is the guy who really doesn't want to be there, and won't put out any effort he isn't browbeaten into.

2) However, in an adequate emergency, a legitimate state has the right to call upon you to defend it. This is because any polity requires sacrifice from its members for the common good that the polity represents. This is a necessary condition for any sort of government.

(See Aristotle, Politics III, parts 4 and 6.)

If a polity can't command even that much loyalty, it won't last. So whether it's right, wrong, or sideways, it's not long for the world.

Tom said...

True, but it came up anyway.

My theoretical response is that if a nation can't get enough citizens to volunteer to fight a particular war, it shouldn't fight. And if it's a war for survival and it can't get enough citizens to volunteer to defend it, it's probably time for that nation to fall.

That said, I'm more interested in the relationship to the abortion discussion and arguments about what right the government might have to control its citizens bodies.

Cass said...

I think the two scenarios are similar in a way, and different in other ways.

It has always bothered me that men are drafted and women are not. Most of any armed force isn't actually composed of fighting troops: there's always a long logistics train/RBE, and medical/dental care, chaplains, admin, intel: all jobs women can do. That sword cuts two ways, too: not all men who are drafted risk their lives or see combat.

I would say that there's a difference between commanding service (drafting is more like indentured servitude than pregnancy) and commanding a person to literally feed and carry another life around with them 24/7 for 9 months (and then at the end, undergo a process that has the same effect on a person as minor surgery - in fact, for most women either major or minor surgery is involved in the form of a C-section or episiotomy*).

And your body is never quite the same afterwards. That's a 100% certainty, not a risk.

When one stops to consider that women can be impregnated against their will (in case of rape/incest), the differences become even plainer. There's an intimacy about pregnancy - it's literally invasive in a way that being forced to work at a job you don't care for isn't. Even women who are thrilled to be pregnant are often somewhat scared by it at the same time. You pretty much lose control over your own body and these days, you're told that you can't even eat lunch meat (for Pete's sake) or many kinds of cheese without harming the fetus.

*If you're a guy and don't know what this is, be aware that when you Google it, you'll get NSFW pictures.

Cass said...

Here is (I think) the essential difference:

Men who are drafted are being asked to risk their lives to protect their country. Part of the benefit of their service actually accrues to them in the form of national security/freedom from invasion. Also, he will get paid for his work, so he is compensated for the sacrifice.

Women who are forced to bear a child they don't want are being asked to risk their lives to protect a single, future person. If they truly don't want the child, none of the benefit accrues to the woman and she will not be compensated for carrying the child. In fact, she will have significant additional expenses.

In 1979 when I had my first child, we spent about $900 on prenatal doctor's visits. The delivery was about $2000, and we had to put down a $700, nonrefundable deposit with the hospital because we had no medical insurance. That was a LOT of money to us. I was making a bit above minimum wage at the time and my husband was a college student who worked part time during school and FT on vacations and during the summer.

Texan99 said...

It's easier for me to understand a non-negotiable duty of protection to a helpless infant trapped inside my body through no fault of its own, than my duty to a military organization engaged in who-knows-what for possibly incomprehensible political purposes, which will thoughtlessly throw my life away under circumstances that may or may not turn out to have been an honorable sacrifice in a good cause.

There's no doubt that a pregnancy is a huge burden on a woman. Any argument against abortion that minimizes the burden risks being utterly discounted as silly and oblivious. But it's not all about the impact on the woman. At some point, though we may disagree on when that point is, it's also about another completely innocent and vulnerable human being, who has a legitimate call on the rest of us for protection, just as an abused 11-month-old would have.

Any argument for abortion that can't come to grips with the competing rights of that creature also risks falling on deaf ears. The fact that we haven't yet met or become attached to the creature explains our sometimes emotionally muted response to abortion, but it can't entirely answer the social or ethical question, which always boils down to whether we, as outsiders, have a duty to step in to protect an innocent. We'd rather not, generally. We'd prefer not to know, if that's possible. But when asked to vote, we have to choose: can we leave it entirely in the mother's hands and say it's not our business? Or not? If she is convinced that the fetus is a non-human clump of cells, and the impact is felt mostly by her, does that absolve us?

Cass said...

I agree with pretty much everything you've said, Tex. But I can't help noting that all of your comments pretty much equate an embryo or fetus in the 1st trimester with a person/baby.

And the problem, once more, is that there really isn't a bright line wrt to when that tiny life has developed enough that most people recognize it as a person with the same rights as a 1 day old baby, an 11 month old toddler, an 8 year old child, a teenager, or an adult

People want to pronounce both ways: one side says, "It's not a child until it's born" and the other, "5 seconds ago it was two cells, now it's a human being just the same as you or me".

Throughout most of history, even children already born have had lesser rights than adults. Babies could be legally exposed if the family didn't want to raise them. In many societies the father could kill them without facing any legal penalty (especially if he suspected - but couldn't prove - they weren't his).

I'm continually amazed by the moral certainty on both sides of this issue. I know what I feel is right, but cannot understand not being able to see that other people might decide differently.

Just as we don't like thinking about what abortion really is, we also don't like thinking about what outlawing it entirely does to women who find themselves pregnant and - for reasons good or bad - don't wish to give their bodies over for 9 months to a force beyond their control.

In the simple case of an early, 1st trimester abortion, is the fetus capable of being harmed, subjectively? We can choose to assign to it the same rights as a full fledged person, but many people have trouble seeing the subjective harm.

It's not an entirely unreasonable position, and in all honesty I'm more swayed by the dangers of holding life in too slight regard than I am by the prospect of harming a life that I'm not sure has any awareness of harm. The offense, such as it is, seems to be more against society than against the individual.

My feelings take me in an entirely different direction, but it's one I have trouble justifying logically.

Cass said...

Note: " all of your comments" refers to all comments, not just Tex's :)

Texan99 said...

"But I can't help noting that all of your comments pretty much equate an embryo or fetus in the 1st trimester with a person/baby."

And yet I thought I had been pretty careful to avoid doing that, by acknowledging that different people can find the arrival of a "person/baby" to occur anywhere between conception and birth: that's exactly the problem. The only way to come to the obvious conclusion that everyone but the mother should butt out of the abortion decision is to announce that the mother knows exactly when a clump of cells becomes a human being, and no one else has a valid point of view on that hotly contested subject.

I'm queasy about early abortion, but I'm not highly motivated to take political or police action until later in the pregnancy. By the third trimester, I consider an abortion to be outright barbarism, and the devil take the mother's view on the subject. There's a large gray area in there, but it's not all gray, no matter how much I wish it were.

My point really is, though, that it's a very hard question when a fetus becomes a human being entitled to our protection, and I can never absolve myself of responsibility for resolving the question by saying only the mother has useful input into it. She has no special expertise on the subject, and what's more, a reluctant and inconvenienced mother has a disabling conflict of interest. If I confine myself to the mother's point of view, I adopt her conflict of interest. It's just not good enough.

Tom said...

The point about the expense of pregnancy and the conscript being paid is a good one. Maybe if pro-lifers were to offer to pay for the expenses of carrying the child to term and offered an E-1's pay to the mother as well during the pregnancy it would help their cause.

Men who are drafted are being asked to risk their lives to protect their country. Part of the benefit of their service actually accrues to them in the form of national security/freedom from invasion.

This isn't necessarily the case. As Tex points out, the war may harm the nation and the conscript return from a war he didn't want to fight to find his nation worse off than when he left.

Women who are forced to bear a child they don't want are being asked to risk their lives to protect a single, future person. If they truly don't want the child, none of the benefit accrues to the woman ...

Here, too, that isn't necessarily true. The baby will probably grow into a productive member of society, pay taxes and pay into Social Security, etc., so that the woman would benefit from carrying and giving birth to the baby.

Your point about a conscript not necessarily being sent to fight is also a good one. However, many have been sent to fight, some of them have died, been crippled, been wounded, and some bear permanent psychological scars that make getting or keeping a job or having a normal life more difficult.

I know there are many differences, but being in an infantry squad in combat and knowing your actions will affect whether or not your squadmates live or die surely is in part similar to a pregnant woman's carrying another life around. Being forced to kill another human being is also an intrusion into a fairly intimate part of the human psyche.

Next, if we look just at the case of rape, it is in some ways analogous to a conscript being sent into combat. Neither the woman nor the conscript has a choice about being on the receiving end of a violent attack. However, in the conscript's case, the violence may continue for a year or more at a time and his own government is forcing him to endure it.

Tom said...

Or, of course, he can go to prison if he refuses to serve.

Ymar Sakar said...

The government owns slaves, period.