Woodworth's narrow-minded fetus focus has left him no room to figure out that the best way to protect fetuses is by helping pregnant women -- including making sure they can exercise their full human rights without discrimination. Fetuses do not need their own legal protection and in fact are better off when pregnant women are respected as the sole rights-bearers.
Does anyone else hear in that statement the sentimentof the Antebellum white supremacist: Blacks don't need their own rights: they're better off being slaves with caring masters!
One aspect of the fetal rights debate that we do not hear, and that we should hear more is that women have a responsibility towards their unborn child.
Joyce Arthur harps on about rights, rights, rights.
And claims that fetuses are best protected when women are the sole rights bearers.
As if Joyce Arthur thinks that women SHOULD take into account the well-being of the fetus.
She doesn't.
If a woman doesn't want to take two seconds to think about the well-being of the fetus and go for an abortion, Joyce Arthur supports that.
So the idea that her arguments are about what's best for the fetus is a farce: she thinks killing them is okay.
Perhaps as a corollary to the debate, we should have a parliamentary motion that affirms that women (and men!) have a responsibility to care for their unborn children.
And also, that killing human beings is not a human right unless it is performed in an act of self-defense.
Yes, I want to see progressives say that killing human beings is okay. Let's unmask their true values.
Fetal protection and anti-abortion laws don't save that many fetuses, so their main effect is to punish women just for being women and getting pregnant.
No, they don't save many fetuses-- ha! Who gives a damn if they die, right Joyce? Right. "Fetuses are not that important" and all that.
Further, despite Woodworth's 30 years as a practicing lawyer, his motion suffers from the exact problem the CRR report raises -- the fundamental confusion between the social and legal construction of personhood, and what a human being is from a biological perspective. By conflating these two different things, Woodworth aims to plant that same confusion in the mind of the public. The danger is that this could lead to fetal protection laws that actually undermine the rights of born human beings and the welfare of fetuses.
Is there anyone out there who really acts like there's a difference between human life, social and legal personhood-- I mean, when the abortion debate is not involved? Does anyone say: well that's a human life, but it's a social person, but not a legal person?
No, of course not.
Because as far as the law is concerned: they're all the same thing.
That's why they're called HUMAN rights.
"The 'war on the womb' is not just about the bizarre notion that a blastocyst should be considered a human being ... It is the radical Christian version of the burka -- designed to keep women in their place, subservient to men." -- Elizabeth Cornwell, Executive Director, Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (US).
Yeah, all us social conservative women, we're all subservient, Joyce. *LOL*. The "pro-lifers want to keep women barefoot and pregnant" line doesn't sound too convincing when so many pro-life women are out in society speaking their minds and making a name for themselves.
