Jacques Turner

ENC3315
Prof. Marinara
20 November 2014

Choosing Life

As of November 1st of this year, 1 in 3 women in the US will have an abortion according to a
study done by the Guttmacher Institute. Despite this fact, legislation seeks to undermine the choice of
people to undergo this procedure, by framing the debate in morally charged arguments. People should
be allowed full bodily autonomy as a fundamental human right. It is the fundamental structure behind
essentially every other right and is critical to actually have a free society. Abortion is a heavily
politicized issue; legislation of which deprives otherwise free individuals of their bodily autonomy.
Abortion is fundamentally a personal decision and to twist the procedure with stigmatization and
outright falsehoods is an abhorrent practice.
Bodily autonomy is a concept that in legal precedent dates back to the court case of McFall v
Shimp. In that case, Robert McFall suffered from a rare bone marrow disease called aplastic anemia
and would die without an urgent bone marrow donation. However, the only donor available was his
cousin David Shimp, who declined to go through the invasive procedure of bone marrow donation.
McFall appealed to Judge John P. Flaherty Jr. and insisted that the courts force his cousin to donate the
life saving bodily material. The Judge ruled in favor of Shimp, stating that The common law has

consistently held to a rule which provides that one human being is under no legal compulsion to give
aid or to take action to save another human being or to rescue. and that allowing the donation to be
imposed by the court ...would defeat the sanctity of the individual and would impose a rule which
would know no limits, and one could not imagine where the line would be drawn (McFall v Shimp).
Even if refusal to donate vital bodily material may be considered morally reprehensible, there is no
legal compulsion to infringe upon the bodily autonomy of another without that person's consent. This
rule applies even to deceased individuals: organs cannot be harvested unless a person consents during
their lifetime. Abortion opponents have attempted to negate this legal precedent as it pertains to
everyone with a uterus.
What argument is used to discredit the legal precedent of bodily autonomy? Inherent maternity.
Calvin Freiburger argues that the apparent strength of the bodily autonomy argument ...is deceptive. In
fact, it can be completely unraveled with two little words: 'why not?' He quotes Canadian Center for
Bio-Ethical Reform executive director Stephanie Gray, who states:
The role of woman as mother means that she (like the father) has a responsibility to her
offspring that she does not have to strangers. And while that responsibility does not obligate her
to do extraordinary things, such as taking trips to Disneyland or donating kidneys, it does
obligate her to do ordinary things, such as feeding, clothing, and sheltering her offspring.
To do otherwise would be parental neglect. In fact, Western countries have made it illegal for
parents to neglect their children. And so, maintaining pregnancy is simply doing for the unborn
what parents must do for the bornproviding the shelter and nourishment a child needs. It is
what is required in the normal course of the reproduction of our species.

This counterargument proposes several premises: biological mothers have inherent duties which
are inexcusable to neglect, pregnancy is equivalent to shelter, and the responsibility of a biological
mother to provide for their unborn negates the established precedent of bodily autonomy.
The first premise, that biological mothers have inherent duties that they simply cannot refuse, is

blatantly untrue. We routinely tell moms they do not have to provide nourishment or shelter to their
biological children through a practice that abortion critics champion as a moral alternative: adoption.
The very fact that adoption exists means that there are no obligations imposed by biology alone. We
could follow this line of moral reasoning of biological mothers and fathers having inherent
obligations to morally stigmatize adoption: these people are simply out to upset the natural order of
things. If God wanted you to have that baby, He would have given it to YOU. The roles are
subjective and can be added purely based on speculation. There is no instruction manual underneath
every uterus that says Bring whatever matures in me to term. There is no basis in reality where the
role came from; the argument simply assumes it to be true, because that's how it's always been. It is
easiest understood by adding other vague roles to the title mother and father. Try teacher:
It is the the role of woman as mother means that she has a responsibility to her offspring
that she does not have to strangers. And while that responsibility does not obligate her to do
extraordinary things ... it does obligate her to do ordinary things, such as feeding, clothing, and
teaching her offspring.
To do otherwise would be parental neglect. In fact, it has always been legal in Western
countries for parents to teach their children. And so, homeschooling is simply doing what
parents must do for the bornproviding the education a child needs. It is what is required in the
normal course of the reproduction of our species.
This argument mirrors their argument: I took an arbitrary fact about laws vaguely familiar with the
subject at hand, used some is-ought reasoning, and decided that it was morally reprehensible to let a
stranger teach your children. This is an absurd line of reasoning and in no way should be considered
seriously.
The next premise, that pregnancy is equivalent to shelter, is also blatantly untrue. Pregnancy is a
dangerous process that routinely goes above and beyond the definition of shelter. A shelter, defined by
Miriam-Webster's Dictionary is simply : a structure that covers or protects people or things or a
place to live . Pregnancy is more than that. Pregnancy is also a dramatic shifting of hormones, at times
a complete lifestyle change, and also only a probability. No pregnancy is guaranteed to come to term,

and any sudden anomaly, be it genetic or environmental, can result in the pregnancy's premature
termination. Ironically, like a house lined with asbestos, it is sometimes absolutely necessary to vacate
the situation as soon as possible; this choice to vacate, also like a house lined with asbestos, is
invariably up to the humans involved. Some people can choose to continue a pregnancy that threatens
their lives, but to morally condemn someone who wishes not to be uprooted is a bad argument. At the
very least, no one morally condemns a shelter for not being adequate housing; why is this affordance
not also given to the human lives being used as a metaphor?
Therefore, if there is no inherent responsibility of a biological mother, and moreover the
responsibilities themselves were arbitrarily defined based on fallacious reasoning, the final premise,
that maternal responsibility negates legal precedent, is false. There's no other way around this
conclusion. Something that does not exist cannot legally negate something that does. Much like McFall
couldn't get Shimp to give him dire blood marrow because he ought to, no one has the right to
compel anyone else to donate 9 months of sustainable and pain because they ought to. To say that
they should anyway undermines everything our country stands for.
(Author Note: There is more argument to lay out, as established in the opening paragraph, but I just
need this proofread for now because I'm already late yo.)

Works Cited
McFall v Shimp 10 Pa. D. & C. 3d 90 (1978)
GUTTMACHER INSTITUTE. "An Overview of Abortion Laws." N.p., 1 Nov. 2014. Web.
22 Nov. 2014.
Freiburger, Calvin. "The false strength of the bodily autonomy argument for abortion | Opinion |
LifeSite." LifeSiteNews. lifesitenews, 20 June 2013. Web. 22 Nov. 2014.

"Shelter - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary." Dictionary and Thesaurus
- Merriam-Webster Online. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Nov. 2014.