Misunderstood Right

"The ability of a woman to have control of her body is critical to civil rights. Take away her reproductive choice and you step onto a slippery slope. If the goverment can force a woman to continue a pregnancy, what about forcing the issue of abortion?" There goes one argument advocating of abortion.

Another argument comes from a lady doctor who confronted the speaker on the evil of abortion with a barrage of objections. "How can abortion be wrong when I have a right over my own body? I am not hurting anyone. Can I not take away a part of my body when I want to? When my hair grows long I cut them, just as I trim my fingernails when they overgrow. So, I can do the same with a foetus. It's my human right!"

Abortion Defined
Abortion is defined clinically as the expulsion of a non-viable foetus before the twenty eight week of gestation, ex: when survival outside the maternal womb is imposibble. This period has been reduced today because medical advances have lowered the limit of viability. There are already cases of 20 week foetuses born alive with favorable evolution.

When the fetus is already viable, we call it premature delivery. But what really characterizes abortion from the moral standpoint is not so much the premature expulsion of the fetus but its death. Logically, when the fetus is not viable, its expulsion is always followed by death.

Euphemisms are used to disguise the real essence of abortion. Terms like "termination of pregnancy", "elimination of an unwanted baby", "pity for malformed fetus", "saving the victims of rape and incest", etc. All of these boil down to killing an innocent person. This is what abortion is plain and simple.

"Right over my body"

"My body belongs to me...! Our abdomen is our possession!" These are some outcries of feminists who consider the fetus as a mere appendage of the mother's body which can be extirpated according to her free decision.

The agurment merely demonstrates a crass ignorance of biological facts. The new human being in the maternal womb possesses its own genetic apparatus distinct from that of the mother. The DNA is self replicating material which is present in nearly all living organisms as the main constituent of chromosomes. It is the carrier of genetic information. If a fertilized ovum has its own distinct DNA from the mother, how could it be considered as simply a part of the mother? It is a separate life. It is another person. A pregnant woman has two lives in her body.

An expectant mother may have the right to her own body. To this we all agree. But she does not have absolute right over the unborn, who is in fact another human being and not just a part of her own anatomy. Terminating the life of an incinient person absolutizes a right which, by its nature, is finite and limited. The right to one's body is never absolute. It is always a limited right. Why is this so?

Nature of a right
A right is something that "is due". The original term comes from the Latin word ius, which in turn became the root of iustitia or justice, ex: the virtue of giving someone what is his due (his right). When that right is given to him we say "we do him justice".

Rights are not just sets of items that are due to me, those that I can demand. Neither are they juxtaposed to me as a human being. They spring rather from the very nature of beings themselves as designed by the Creator. Thus, what is due to someone is likewise something that is good for him, it is what perfects him. Since humans are born imperfect, they have to perfect themselves by receiving from others what is due to them. Those rights are permanently linked to certain goods, such as life, health, education, upbringing etc.

Here we can glean another notion related to the concept of right. Rights serve to develop and perfect humans. They normally refer to realities that improve, enhances and enriches a person. Thus, there is no right to be ignorant, to be lazy, to be cruel, to lie, to murder, etc.

The very first right of a human being is the right to life. This was recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) which was a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 (General assembly resolution 217 A) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected and it has been translated into over 500 languages.

Article 3 of UDHR  states: "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person." The right to life is enumerated first since without life nobody can be a subject of any other right whatsoever. It is the first and most fundamental.

Rights are limited
"Everything that is received is received in the manner of the recipient." Applying this principle, we say that God who is infinitely good and eternal shares his life and goodness to his creatures in a limited way. This finite sharing is not due to God's omnipotence but on the limitation of the receiver.

Thus, whatever we receive from God is partial and imperfect since humans are finite beings. Humans are gifted with freedom and rights. It follows therefore that the exercise of rights and freedom is confined to certain limitations. While it is true that women have rights over their bodies, we have to recognise that those rights are limited by the natural purpose or end of a woman's body. For instance, it would be immoral to use her body for commercial purposes or for mere pleasure.

A woman's right is restricted like all other rights. The rights and freedom of each individual end where the rights of another begin. On one hand, a pregnant woman has a right over her reproductive powers but the fetus in her womb is another person who likewise has his rights. He has the right to life. Thus, a woman cannot affirm her rights to the detriment of a higher right of the child in her womb.

Abortion is actually taking the life of a human person since the fetus is a human being. To claim that it is a part of the mother would be incorrect. Though dependent on the mother in the incipientstage, the fetus has its own life and genetic makeup distinct from that of the mother. Invoking a right to abort it life through manifests a mistaken understanding of what a right is.