The ironies of ‘my body, my choice’

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/06/2022 (1220 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The unprecedented May 2 leak of a draft opinion showing a majority of U.S. Supreme Court judges supports overturning the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion in America, has catapulted the abortion debate to news headlines.

That debate is just one issue representative of current political polarization, but it has accentuated the irony of arguments made for sides taken on other supposedly unrelated issues.

Robin Stevenson’s 2019 book My Body, My Choice: The Fight for Abortion Rights detailed the myriad dimensions of the conflict over abortion around the world. Curiously, throughout the recent pandemic, many who oppose vaccine mandates have employed the same longstanding feminist slogan to invoke their right to self-determination.

Critics of both stances assess them as essentially self-centred choices that disregard the well-being of others.

The obvious irony is that positions taken on abortion and vaccines are negatively correlated. Proponents of bodily autonomy and freedom of personal choice regarding abortion tend to oppose those same ethical principles regarding vaccine mandates, while opponents of autonomy and choice regarding abortion tend to advance those same arguments regarding vaccine mandates.

One of the core issues in the abortion debate is what constitutes a human body and what constitutes human personhood capable of choice. Pro-choice advocates acknowledge that the single cell zygote resulting from a fertilized egg is a potentially self-sustaining human body, but argue that it is still far from the consciousness, volition, emotion, identity and other capacities that emerge developmentally into personhood.

Indeed, even the ensuing embryo and then early fetus cannot yet feel pain. As Vania Apkarian, director of the Centre for Translational Pain Research at the Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, reported, “There is no rational basis for arguing a fetus can suffer pain before 24 weeks. The anatomy of the brain is not formed enough for that to be possible.”

Even if personhood of the embryo and early fetus is granted, a subsequent question is whether someone’s body has the right to someone else’s body. That may be contingent on whether the life of one body depends on accessing another body, such as the embryo’s life depending on the woman’s body.

But life is not at risk in other below-the-belt moral scenarios. For example, the principle of sexual consent is another application of “my body, my choice.” Accessing another person’s body for sexual pleasure, interpersonal power or even expression of affection without their consent is sexual assault, including in marriage. Furthermore, the differing attractions of sexual orientation is itself a form of “my body, my choice.”

However, does the state have the right to someone’s body in terms of vaccine mandates? The lives of other bodies may not depend entirely on compliance — though not absolutely preventative, vaccines against the pandemic viruses reduce the probability of contraction and transmission, and the severity of symptoms — but the lives of others are nevertheless at stake.

Notably, many who oppose vaccine mandates are nonetheless themselves vaccinated, thereby embodying the “my body, my choice” argument, as do pro-choice women who give birth.

And what about death and medical assistance in dying? Does “my body, my choice” apply equally? Or what about other forms of induced death, such as the death penalty based on retributive justice instead of restorative justice?

No doubt, each issue has differences that determine the (de)merits of “my body, my choice,” but use of the identical rallying cry across the political spectrum is intriguing, and even more so when one camp reverses its position.

For example, conservative Christians have not always opposed abortion. As recently as the early 1970s, prior to Roe v. Wade, Christianity Today, evangelicalism’s flagship magazine, the Southern Baptist Convention, Protestantism’s largest denomination in America, and the Christian Medical Society each wrote strong statements supporting abortion before it was politicized by the New Christian Right.

Most recently, former U.S. president Donald Trump (in)famously reversed his personal position on abortion to capture the white evangelical anti-abortion vote. The irony of that same American demographic, and Canadian trucker convoys, now marshalling “my body, my choice” resistance to vaccine mandates is striking. Will Pierre Poilievre’s wider libertarian cry for freedom — “take back control of your life” — prevail?

Evidently, bodily autonomy and freedom of personal choice are far from absolute ethical values that settle these moral disputes, nor are they distinctive political principles that characterize only certain factions.

Dennis Hiebert is a professor of sociology at Providence University College.