Recently on this page, the concept of individual sovereignty was introduced to the abortion debate. The argument is powerful. Like anything powerful this argument should be considered in full and applied with care. This need care and consideration are especially incumbent on us when the result of the application of said power is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
Presumably, most of the people who read LewRockwell.com regularly will accept the primacy of individual sovereignty. Perhaps there are some socialists, liberals (oops, redundant), statists, and neocons (oops, did it again) who hang around just to raise their blood pressure and who would not concede the point. For the sake of brevity, never my strong point, I'll assume the point, address the rest of the denizens in the choir and leave the collectivists to fend for themselves.
Insufficiently applied, the concept of individual sovereignty as a means for evaluating abortion rights will necessarily stop short of reaching the desired goal of a consistently principled and moral conclusion on this critical subject. To cede to a woman the power of life and death over the life inside her body because it is inside her body is just such an early terminus.
Let's examine this line of reasoning. Changing a couple of words but maintaining the logic of the argument can, perhaps, be instructive. By substituting the words "government" and "borders" the argument could be used to justify Waco. Make it "alliance" and "continent" and we will have excused Belgrade. Use "landowner" and "plantation" and it serves nicely as a defense of slavery. All of these practices – slavery, government murder and abortion – are abominations and they exist precisely because they extend the right of sovereignty insufficiently to some but not all.
The argument falls short when it concludes that a woman's sovereignty over her body gives her sovereignty over the life and body of the child growing inside her. You might call it a person or you might call it a fetus but it is undeniably a life and it is as much an individual as is the mother and therefore possess all the same rights to individual sovereignty. In the age of genome mapping there is no denying that when the sperm and the egg join, the DNA is set. The joining produces a unique individual. It produces life. If individual sovereignty is to mean anything then all individuals must be sovereign, including newly created ones.
To say that because this happens inside the body of the mother she has sovereignty over the new life as well as her own is to say that having the power of life and death gives us the right to exercise that power. At its root this is saying no more than that might makes right. If we will not allow this line of reasoning to be used to excuse the taking of lives in Waco or Belgrade or to allow owning slaves how then can we accept it in the case of the most defenseless lives of all? I do not believe we can.
For any individual to be sovereign over himself at any point in his life all individuals must be recognized as sovereign at all points in life. This requires defending human life, especially when it cannot defend itself, as at its beginning and near its end. It means defending life against the exercise of external power whether by the state and its armies of soldiers or by the mother and armies of abortionists. The principle is the same and our response must be the same if we are to be principled, moral people.
The importance of winning the struggle against abortion cannot be overstated. If you seek the causes of school violence, societal breakdown and lack of respect for individual sovereignty you need look no further than Roe v. Wade. While not the sole source of our decay abortion is crucial to that process. Can we expect moral, civilized behavior from children who have grown up in an America that has ended forty million lives over the past twenty-five years by aborting new life? Can a society that not only allows but enables and even encourages such a practice survive? Should it?
I recognize that the battle must be won as it was lost: over time by winning hearts and minds. Jailing mothers who have matured in the culture of death that we have allowed to develop is neither compassionate nor productive. But that does not mean we can afford to settle into comfortable positions on some abstract moral high ground and take satisfaction in assigning blame. To end the slaughter of abortion, and it must be ended if we are to continue, indeed if we are to deserve continuance, we must not mince words but neither may we be satisfied with heaping opprobrium over the fence onto our neighbor. We must encourage and teach with patience and we must be consistent in our advocacy of individual sovereignty no matter the individual.
Ed Cobb is a printer in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. He is a northerner by birth, a southerner by choice, and a Catholic by the grace of God.
April 28, 2001
