The murder of George Tiller last weekend, recent polls suggesting Americans are more pro-life than pro-choice and Obama’s Notre Dame speech have renewed interest in the abortion debate.  I have read with great interest many opinion columns and so forth in ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ papers about the debate.  Alongside the labelling of pro-lifers as radical, right-wing, misogynist, fanatics; two other claims pop up with depressing regularity.  Firstly, that no woman takes abortion lightly, and secondly, that pro-lifers shouldn’t press their moral world view onto other people – also read as ‘don’t like an abortion?  don’t get one!’  I’ll write about the latter.

At first this idea of that pro-lifers are all ‘megalomaniac -wannabe -women -controllers’ with their hands on ‘my uterus’, pushing their morals in everyone’s faces and controlling what people do with their bodies makes for a fine pro-choice argument.  Many people believe in the benefits of small government, or at the very least that government has no business poking it’s nose into how people run their lives.  Hooray for the pro-choice freedom fighters!  But it’s a bit more complicated than that…

Government does have more than a passing say in how we run our lives and it does push a certain sets of morals and values onto the population – and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Unless you are an extreme libertarian then you sign up for this too.  There are things that we in the West consider to be vital to a basic fairness and justice in society.  It is illegal to murder, it is illegal to steal, it is illegal to rape.  Imagine the outcry if a rapist was to turn around and say ‘hey, don’t push your morals on me!  I wanted to have sex with her and so I did – it’s none of your business!’  Well, it is the business of society we would rightly cry – we must protect the woman!  In the case of abortion, pro-lifers argue that is in the interests of society to protect the child.  The child’s need for protection, their bodily integrity, takes precedent over the woman’s as the life of the child is at risk, and this outweighs the woman’s discomfort I appreciate that there are cases when the woman’s life is in danger, and for the overwhelming majority of pro-lifers this is when abortion becomes legal and tragic cases of choice of the families concerned).  In the same way the protection of the woman’s safety in the rape case overules the man’s desire to have his gratification (be it in terms of power lust or whatever).

You could well argue that I am being extreme and that no sane person would question the ethics of pressing the morality of murder or rape or stealing onto a populace.  The case of abortion is a matter of bodily integrity and the right to do as you please with your body, and not the business of government.

Well, government does have a fairly large say in what we do with our bodies and what rights we have regarding them.  For example – the use of drugs.  I am restricted by law with regards to the recreational use of drugs.  Why?  It’s my body, surely I can do what I like with it?  Similarly, look at anti-prostitution laws.  Why can’t I sell my own body?  What about the legal limits as regards the age of consent?  Why can’t I have sex with a consenting 14 or 15 year old just because I am 40 or 50 years old?  What about the right to be naked?  Why can’t I walk down the main street of town completely starkers?  It’s my body and I’ll bear the risk of sunburn/freezing as I wish. 

As a society we allow government to pass and uphold these laws as they are mainly deemed to be beneficial to as all – they either protect the weak, protect private property or just plain enforce a set of arbitrary morals upon us.  

What about when a government pushes its morals onto a population?  Is that always bad?  What about the death penalty?  It hasn’t been in practice for decades in Britain, and yet countless polls since the last execution showed a majority of the populace in favour of capital punishment.  Here, the government stepped in in order to protect the criminal from the ultimate punishment.  During the time of the British Raj in India the government cracked down on the Hindu suttee ritual  – the burning of the widow (alive) with the corpse of her husband.  Was this the right thing to do?

The point I am making is that it is not the preserve of ‘anti-abortion’ activists to want to restrict the ‘rights’ of others to do as they wish.  Regardless or whether or not you agree with the rights and wrongs of the legalities of the examples mentioned above, I would be willing to bet quite a lot that the majority of people in the West feel it is the duty of governments to restrict the ultimate freedoms of individuals. 

Most people feel (subjective, I know) that laws which protect the weak from the possibility of the tyranny of the strong (or at least the stronger ) are beneficial.  As an individual I have a responsibility to ensure that my desire to live as I wish must not encringe upon others basic liberties.  The most basic of these is the right to life.  It may impede the way I live my life to carry a baby for nine months, but my desire to live in a certain way is surely overidden by the need of government to protect the weakest members of its society.