{"id":225582,"date":"2020-06-14T09:25:26","date_gmt":"2020-06-14T14:25:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=225582"},"modified":"2020-06-13T13:47:07","modified_gmt":"2020-06-13T18:47:07","slug":"abortion-rights-medical-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/abortion-rights-medical-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"The case for ‘abortion rights’ collapses as medical technology advances"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this guest post are solely those of the author and are not necessarily reflective of Live Action or Live Action News.<\/em><\/p>\n

The day is coming when mothers can terminate pregnancies without killing their preborn babies, freeing them from the obligation to raise children they don’t want or can’t afford, and destroying the justification for \u201cabortion rights\u201d in the process.<\/p>\n

In 2017, researchers from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia reported<\/a> that they kept premature lambs — roughly equivalent to 22-week-old babies — alive in an artificial uterus until they were fully developed. This technology isn’t decades away from debuting in hospitals; artificial wombs could be tested in humans<\/a> within the next three years, and it appears that the device, dubbed a \u201cbiobag\u201d by the researchers, as well as related technologies, could gradually push the age of viability below the current 22 to 24 week range, perhaps even to the point<\/a> of fertilization.<\/p>\n

Seeing these developments on the horizon, \u201cpro-choice\u201d advocates are shifting their rhetoric away from claims about \u201cunwanted gestation\u201d to more obscure legal arguments that supposedly justify killing a preborn child, whether it’s viable or not. These justifications don’t withstand scrutiny, but the bigger issue is that the abortion industry is running out of rationalizations to justify its existence.<\/p>\n

Avoiding genetic parenthood<\/h4>\n

The first of these legal arguments goes like this: a woman not only has the right to terminate a pregnancy, she’s also under no obligation to be a \u201cgenetic parent,\u201d to have offspring running around with part of her DNA without permission. Why does she have this right? \u201c[B]ecause a child would come into being with her genetic code that she does not want to exist,\u201d according to Harvard bioethicist<\/a> I. Glenn Cohen.<\/p>\n

This is little more than a bald assertion; rights don’t exist just because we say they do. But there are other glaring problems. If the mother of a preborn baby has a right to avoid genetic parenthood, doesn’t the mother of an already-born child, like a teenager, have the same right? As philosophers Jeremy Davis and Eric Mathison pointed out in a 2017 article<\/a>, this question doesn’t have a satisfactory answer. Either a woman can kill her child at any age, which would violate that child’s rights, or the right to avoid genetic parenthood belongs only to pregnant women — and \u201cthe restriction here looks problematically ad hoc,\u201d Davis and Mathison concluded.<\/p>\n

Viability a legal fiction?<\/h4>\n

Feminist legal scholar Claire Horn has taken a different approach, asserting earlier this year<\/a> that \u201cviability is a legal fiction\u201d because it’s applied inconsistently in different jurisdictions. Canada, Horn pointed out for example, doesn’t limit abortion access based on fetal viability. Therefore, artificial womb technology doesn’t require that we outlaw a woman’s \u201cright to choose.\u201d This is obfuscation designed to avoid the real issue. Governments may legislate fetal viability differently (or totally disregard it), but this doesn’t justify killing<\/a> children when they can survive outside the womb. The scientific facts have to be addressed, not simply discarded out of convenience.<\/p>\n

READ: Why \u201cviability\u201d is a meaningless standard for human rights<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Horn’s last resort was to complain that<\/a>, \u201cNo provision is made for who will ultimately be responsible for the dependency of the fetus and the resulting infant decanted to an artificial womb.\u201d Even if that’s true, why is the default option abortion? Adoption is one obvious alternative, which Horn dismissed in a single sentence, or perhaps the federal government could redirect the hundreds of millions of dollars<\/a> it gives Planned Parenthood<\/a> annually to programs that care for premature children. A little creative thinking goes a long way in this context.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h4>\n

\u201cPro-choice\u201d advocates have never backed down when presented with alternatives to killing preborn children, and new technologies won’t change that. The good news is that abortion apologists are gradually being backed into an intellectual corner, and they know their arguments are becoming less compelling every year. As Slate contributor Sarah DiGregorio acknowledged in January<\/a>, \u201cThe … fact that we\u2019ve defined the right to an abortion by a changeable line is a self-created problem (or rather, a problem foisted upon us by the anti-abortion movement). Roe v. Wade established a cruel zero-sum game: Success in treating premature babies erodes access to abortion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLike\u201d Live Action News on Facebook<\/a>\u00a0for more pro-life news and commentary!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this guest post are solely those of the author and are not necessarily reflective of Live Action or Live Action News. The day is coming when mothers can terminate pregnancies without killing their preborn babies, freeing them from the obligation to raise children they don’t want or can’t afford, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":742,"featured_media":192801,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[15,7077],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe case for 'abortion rights' collapses as medical technology advances<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Abortion advocates are struggling to continue to justify the killing of preborn children as medical technology is moving viability earlier and earlier.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/abortion-rights-medical-technology\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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