Reality and the Politicisation of Abortion

Induced abortion is examined against reality, not political utility, as the proper standard for adjudicating claims about bodily autonomy and healthcare. Bodily autonomy, properly understood, extends beyond sensory or psychosomatic interest to the fuller good of the human person, since the body is the sign of the person, a union of body and rational soul, rather than an object owned by the self. Through this lens, autonomy carries limits that mirror the limits of every human right. That is, one person's autonomy cannot be exercised at the cost of another's. The child in utero is a distinct person from the moment of conception, standing in an asymmetrical, though not absolute, relation of dependence on the mother. Resultantly, abortion negates the child's bodily autonomy rather than preserving anyone's. The essay closes by weighing this metaphysical account against the documented psychological cost abortion imposes on women and argues that any law treating abortion as a right divorces itself from what is true about the human person, with consequences that outlast the political moment that produced it.