Do our fellow citizens have an interest, and so can they take an interest, in our reproductive behaviour? Of course they do and can. But can the state, on their behalf, take an interest in our reproductive behaviour? Pro-Lifers say yes; pro-Choicers say no. Who’s right hangs entirely on what one takes to be the relation between the individual and the state.

On the Hobbesian account we make a voluntary covenant with each other as to which powers, and no others, we’ll second to the state. For example, we cannot be understood to have seconded our right to self-defence, which explains why we have to be led to the gallows in chains. We can imagine a circumstance – a plague has rendered all but a half dozen women in the world infertile – under which we would include our reproductive behaviour in that secondment. But under more quotidian conditions I suspect we would not.

On the Platonic view, by contrast, all agency resides in the state from the get-go. So we can enjoy reproductive autonomy if but only if the state as it happens is indifferent. It wouldn’t be indifferent if it were worried about either overpopulation or underpopulation. Or if, for some reason, a critical number of its citizens were worried. And maybe that‘s what Trump is responding to. But even if so, the pro-Life lobby does not consider the criminalisation of abortion a simple matter of where the political pressure lies. So it can’t comfortably avail itself of this rationale.

And, finally, on the theocratic account the state is the servant of God‘s druthers. Deciphering God’s druthers is no simple task. He has, after all, emptied as many wombs as He’s filled. And it’s a contentious one. Which is why the theocratic account requires, well, a theocracy, which most of us have reasons to reject for a goodly number of other reasons.

At any rate, unless you can instruct me otherwise, these three views, the Hobbesian, the Platonic, and the theocratic, seem to exhaust our options.

What might disappoint the pro-Choicer is that the Hobbesian account does not guarantee her reproductive autonomy. Offer her the choice between a) no such choice but all the other comforts of civil society and b) a return to the state of nature, a.k.a. war, but reproductive choice for the little it may then be worth, and she’ll chose the former every time. Which, come to think of it, is the choice she is being offered in half the states in America today. But the other two options, Plato’s and the Church’s, are certainly no better.

Citing what’s called ‘the hermeneutics of suspicion’, some feminists argue that pro-Life isn’t about the foetus at all. It’s about controlling women’s bodies, and through their bodies controlling women full stop. Presuming to pronounce on ‘what’s really going on’ is always just that, presumptuous. There are people who genuinely believe the foetus is already a citizen. Indeed, Judith Jarvis Thompson’s famous “Defence of Abortion” accepts that premise. But, she asks, what exactly does that citizenship entail? And an answer to that question, it seems to me, would be much more fruitful than clashing intuitions about the metaphysicls of ensoulment.

My own view? I’ve made no secret that I believe it depends on the race of the foetus. If brought to term, twenty years hence will it likely be making curry or haggis? Everything else is just special pleading.

Categories: Everything You Wanted to Know About What's Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask, Social and Political Philosophy

Tags: abortion, hermeneutics of suspicion, Hobbes, Judith Jarvis Thompson, Plato, pro-Life, theocracy