Untwisting the pretzel: Unborn babies have the right to be in their mother's womb.

Syndicated columnist, Kathleen Parker discusses what she sees as the difficulty in abortion debate. She writes:

Part of what makes this issue so difficult is that both sides are, in principle, correct. Anti-abortion folks see it as a human rights issue. Given that human life is a continuum that begins at conception, there can be no compromise.

Pro-abortion rights folks see any limitation on abortion as an infringement on a woman's right to control her own body. In their view, the baby isn't a baby with human rights until it leaves the mother's body, thereby becoming autonomous if lacking in self-sufficiency.

No wonder we can't untwist this pretzel.

Ms. Parker sees a conflict between the unborn child’s right to life and the mother’s bodily rights. She could have easily quoted Doris Gordon who, forty five years ago, saw the same conflict:

I realized why the onset of a human being's life, biologically, is at fertilization [still] I remained abortion-choice, however, because of women's right to control her own body. I saw unwanted pregnancy as slavery, or at the very least, as an insoluble conflict of rights between her right to be free versus her offspring's right to life, to not be killed.

By 1975, Ms. Gordon had, in Ms. Parker’s terms “untwisted the pretzel”:

I had become pro-life. What pushed me over the line?... One article in the December 1962 issue of The Objectivist Newsletter was on what parents and children owe each other. I had returned to it to see if they were talking about morality or rights. There it was. They said that the support born children receive from their parents is theirs "by right." Given that human offspring begin life when conceived, and then given parental obligation, it follows that parental obligation begins not at birth but at fertilization. I had to conclude that even given women's right to control her body, prenatal human offspring have the right to be in the mother's womb.

While it’s true that we have a right to control our own bodies, our obligation to care for our children trumps our bodily rights. The location of the child, whether inside or outside the mother’s womb, cannot change the obligation that parents have to their child. This means that born and unborn children have a right to their parents’ care. Or as Ms. Gordon’s put it:

[P]renatal human offspring have the right to be in the mother's womb.

See also Why Parental Obligation?