Breaking the Abortion Deadlock : From Choice to Consent.
Title:
Breaking the Abortion Deadlock : From Choice to Consent.
Author:
McDonagh, Eileen.
ISBN:
9780195357998
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
1 online resource (295 pages)
Contents:
Contents -- 1 Where Do We Go From Here? -- Intrusion Confusion -- Self-defense -- Having Your Cake and Eating It Too -- Reasons versus Justification for Abortion -- Ethical Models -- The Use of Deadly Force -- How to Get from Here to There -- From Legal Formalism to Policy Outcome -- Self-defense versus Self-sacrifice -- 2 Immaculate Pregnancy -- Women as Vessels -- Fetal Development -- Sex Causes Pregnancy -- Burdensome Condition -- Value to Society -- Policy Consequences of Cultural Codification -- The Fertilized Ovum -- The Fetus as Agent -- Consent to Fetal Intrusion -- 3 Separating Sex from Pregnancy -- The Legal Cause of Pregnancy -- The Medical Cause of Pregnancy -- Fetus as a Separate Entity -- Risk versus Consequences -- Resistance to Separating Sex from Pregnancy -- Different Types of Parenthood -- 4 Consent to Pregnancy -- Consent -- Consent to Fetal Intrusion -- Consent to Quantitative Intrusion -- Consent to Qualitative Intrusion -- Consent to Absolute Intrusion -- Duty of Care -- Consent to Altruism -- 5 Wrongful Pregnancy -- Wrongful Pregnancy as Serious Injury -- Normal Pregnancy as Serious Injury -- Two Modes of Privacy -- Latitude for Self-defense -- Innocent and Weak? -- Freedom from State Intrusion -- Freedom from Private Intrusion -- Stranded in a State of Nature -- 6 Abortion Funding and Due Process -- No State Obstacles -- Abortion Is Different -- Due Process and State Action -- From Private Action to State Action -- State Sanction of Private Injury -- 7 From Due Process to Equal Protection -- Concrete Intrusion -- Absolute versus Contingent Affirmative Rights -- Unconstitutional Means -- Losing Rights at Birth -- Equal Protection of Women's Physical Security -- From Sex Discrimination to Fundamental Rights -- Application to the Fetus -- Affirmative State Action -- Abortion Funding in a Minimalist State.
Grounds for Abortion Funding -- 8 Right to Bodily Access -- Coverture -- Domestic Violence -- From Rule of Thumb to Rule of Law -- The Congressional Alternative -- Congressional Metaphors -- 9 The Politics of Consent -- Good, Bad, and Captive Samaritans -- A Minimalist View -- Women's Victimization -- Self-defense or Self-sacrifice -- A Utilitarian Basis for Abortion Rights -- A Relational Basis for Abortion Rights -- Risks of Changing the Debate -- Betty Crocker versus Little Red Riding Hood -- Self-defense and the Antimother -- From Choice to Consent -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W.
Abstract:
For over twenty years the abortion debate has raged, with each side entrenched in unyielding positions. This book breaks the impasse by using pro-life premises to reach pro-choice conclusions. While it is commonly assumed that state protection of the fetus as a form of human life undermines women's reproductive rights, McDonagh instead illuminates how it is exactly such state protection of the fetus that strengthens, rather than weakens, not only women's right to an abortion, but even more significantly, women's ability to call on the state for abortion funding. McDonagh's approach, by bridging the divide between pro-life and pro-choice advocates, revolutionizes the abortion debate in a way that opens up a whole new avenue for resolving the abortion conflict and advancing women's rights. McDonagh reframes the abortion debate by locating the missing piece of the puzzle: the fetus as the cause of pregnancy. After exposing the myths on this subject, her exacting analysis presents the scientific and legal evidence that the ultimate source of pregnancy is the fetus. The central issue then becomes what the fetus, as an active agent, does to a woman's body during pregnancy, whether that pregnancy is wanted or not. McDonagh graphically describes the massive changes produced by the fetus when it takes over a woman's body. As such, pregnancy is best depicted not as a condition that women have a right to choose but rather as a condition to which they must have a right to consent. Abortion, therefore, does not rest on the intensely debated principle, stated in Roe, that women have a right to be free from state interference when choosing privately what to do with their own bodies. Instead, as McDonagh's book explains, abortion rights flow inevitably from women's more established right to consent to what another agent does to their body. Specifically, women
have a right to resist an unwanted intrusion by a fetus as well as to receive help from the state to stop such an intrusion. Moving abortion rights from choice to consent has broad legal and cultural ramifications tapping into the very cornerstone of the American political system: consent. McDonagh unravels the consequences of extending to pregnant women the same guarantees of bodily integrity and liberty possessed by others in our society. Specifically, she shows why a woman who does not consent to be made pregnant by a fetus, not only has a right to terminate pregnancy, but why the state violates constitutional due process and equal protection guarantees when it fails to provide her with the same protections against nonconsensual intrusions by a fetus as it provides against nonconsensual intrusions by other parties. This book pivotally strengthens, therefore, not only women's right to abortion but also abortion funding. By providing new grounds both for the public funding of abortion and for the removal of government restrictions on abortions, it lays the foundation for enhancing women's rights through major policy changes in legislatures and courts.
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
Genre:
Electronic Access:
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