An effort at logical coherence is a necessary condition for any intellectual claim and a fortiori for any social theory. Speaking of vice-president Kamala Harris’s stance on abortion, the Wall Street Journal reports (“Biden at Center of Fight Over Abortion After Career of Reservations,” May 8, 2022):
During her commencement address Saturday at Tennessee State University in Nashville, Tenn., [Ms. Harris] said the U.S. was forced to defend principles such as “the rights of women to make decisions about their own bodies.”
Forget about what “the U.S.” is supposed to refer to. Ms. Harris probably means “the U.S. state apparatus.” It is likely that she does not have a clear vision of the problems involved in this way of speaking.
Here is the blatant contradiction that I am not the first one to note. I have never heard Ms. Harris speak about the right of a woman to make decisions about how she uses her own body to work—for example, by accepting a wage below a government-decreed minimum wage if she wants to, as opposed to remaining unemployed. Nor is she known for defending the right of a woman to make decisions about the use of her own body by carrying a handgun to protect herself against anyone who would be trying to use her body in a way she does not want to. (In this later case, an original constitutional Amendment exists that the vice-president could buttress, instead of incoherently undermining it.) Such examples could be multiplied.
Abortion is a complex and difficult issue, but a minimum effort of coherence is required.
Perhaps Ms. Harris is instead speaking of the collective right of 50%+1 of American women to use the body of any individual woman as they see fit? But, then, since any human being can apparently decide he is a woman, is she invoking the collective right of 50%+1 of all Americans to make decisions about the individual body of any minority woman in the 50%-1 group? And why focus on Americans as opposed to, say, Mississippians? Not to speak of women in the rest of the world, whose majority may have a different conception of, say, microaggressions. And what is so sacred about a numerical majority anyway? Logical consistency is not collectivism’s strong point.
READER COMMENTS
Rebes
May 9 2022 at 10:30am
Glad to see Ms Harris is coming around in favor of legalizing prostitution.
Pierre Lemieux
May 9 2022 at 10:43am
Gosh! I forgot to mention that example. But I suspect Harris would say that this is state jurisdiction!
Jose Pablo
May 9 2022 at 9:10pm
Or legalizing drugs.
Apparently making the decision about using opioids on your own body is a “pandemic” and the companies offering them should be prosecute but making decisions about having an abortion or not on your own body is a “constitutional right” and the companies offering them should be protected.
It certainly sounds pretty arbitrary to me.
Jose Pablo
May 9 2022 at 9:11pm
I see David comment now.
Read before writting seems good advice …
David Henderson
May 9 2022 at 11:39am
Related to Rebes’ point above, I will believe Kamala Harris when she apologizes for her actions as a very tough San Francisco D.A., prosecuting people for using their bodies to sell drugs to other people, including women, who used their bodies to ingest drugs.
Pierre Lemieux
May 9 2022 at 1:13pm
Good point, David.
Michael Stack
May 9 2022 at 1:47pm
I’m reading this blog so it’s probably no surprise that I’m a big supporter of self-ownership, and the freedom to make decisions that do not affect anyone else directly.
I find a lot of the leftist rhetoric around abortion puzzling for many reasons. You pointed out one reason – the lack of consistency around the principle of self-ownership.
The 2nd reason is that most pro-choice folks agree with the right of self-ownership. Just as I’m free to swing my fist so long as I don’t hit your face, a woman has a right to make her own decisions regarding her body, provided she doesn’t hurt anyone else in the process.
But, that’s exactly the point of contention here – is somebody else harmed when a woman has an abortion?
I’m not arguing for any particular position here, and I see reasonable arguments for both perspectives.
However, talking about self-ownership re: abortion largely misses the point here, since it really isn’t relevant to the discussion. It assumes what must be proven, that in fact, abortion does not harm anyone.
Pierre Lemieux
May 9 2022 at 3:02pm
Michael: Yes, that is the problem. It is to acknowledge it that I wrote that abortion is “a complex and difficult issue.” In comparison, the other self-ownership issues mentioned above are quite simple.
Jose Pablo
May 9 2022 at 9:41pm
“the rights of women to make decisions about their own bodies.” is a slogan so fallacious (as in “intended to prevent intellectual debate not to facilitate it”), that it is demoralizing seen a US Vice president using it (if there was any room left to be demoralized on this account).
Is not only that the same reasoning does not apply to other “non-harming-anybody” uses of your own body like the ones mentioned in the post and the comments.
It, also, does not apply to other “harming-others” use of the women’s body. Nobody discusses that a woman has not the right to use their own body to kick anybody else to death.
So the main (and impossible to solve) topic remains: is abortion a use of women’s own body closer to the (illegal) use of drugs or to the (illegal) kicking to death of somebody else? Kamala Harris is not helping to advance on this very difficult topic.
But, even worse, Roe vs Wade (supposing Kamala Harris is talking about that when she refers to “the US forced to defend”) was never about “the rights of women to make decisions about their own bodies”. The SCOTUS decision stablished the right of the “woman’s physician” to make decisions about the woman body:
“[T]he attending physician, in consultation with his patient, is free to determine, without regulation by the State, that, in his medical judgment, the patient’s pregnancy should be terminated.” (163)
“Up to those points [viz., end of 1st trimester & viability], the abortion decision in all its aspects is inherently, and primarily, a medical decision, and basic responsibility for it must rest with the physician.” (166)
[Taken from the very interesting Huemer’s post on this topic: https://fakenous.net/?p=3010 ]
Pierre Lemieux
May 10 2022 at 11:16am
Thanks, Jose, for the important point and the interesting link.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
May 10 2022 at 11:19am
Gun ownership and use is a complicated issue. Ob one side are the benefits to owners from the additional safety they feel from own guns. On the other hand widespread gun ownership produces dangers to non – owners. The best solution would be a system of registration and licensing that would allow those who think the need guns and can use them effectively for their personal safety to have them but restrict the availability of guns for criminal activity. Since different populations will view this trade-off differently, this should be mainly a local issue with only enough national involvement to enable states and localities to prevent introduction of guns not regulated according to local standards.
Pierre Lemieux
May 10 2022 at 2:08pm
Thomas: You can make the same argument for free speech and due process (and for elections). Where is the problem?
Monte
May 10 2022 at 4:53pm
I don’t mean to sound non compos mentis, but if pro-choice advocates were to define an unwanted pregnancy as a sexually transmitted infection in the form of a parasite, would that strengthen their argument to legalize abortion on demand?
Roger McKinney
May 10 2022 at 7:52pm
Good points all, but pro abortion women dont seek control over their bodies but over the right to kill the othrr body inside them.
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