Kicking pretensions to the curb

Amanda at Mousewords:

Abortion is legal, so if there is a disagreement over whether to get one, the one who owns the uterus gets to make the final decision. The other can have an opinion, but the owner of the uterus is free to disregard that opinion.

So it's just a matter of who owns the uterus. There are two schools of thought. One is that women have rights to their own bodies, that they are full citizens with equal rights to their bodies that men have. The other school of thought is that men have rights over the bodies of their wives, and therefore if a woman is pregnant it is his responsibility to decide what to do with it. In the latter school of thought, women also are allowed to have input in the decision to abort or not, but they don't have the final say.

I know which school of thought I prefer, that's why I'm a feminist. I understand that one might have a problem with the legality of abortion itself, but that's a whole other issue. It's legal, so the only question in a dispute is who gets to decide.

Posted by Prometheus 6 on July 26, 2004 - 3:52pm :: Race and Identity