During the Democratic Presidential Debate last week, the country was treated to a reminder of just how hell-bent the Democratic elite are to make abortion an unlimited foundation of their party platform.  I say “elite” because, for the most part, the party’s extreme position on abortion is far ahead of their constituency.  A majority of Democrats are in favor of the otherwise outdated “safe, legal, and rare” approach to abortion and favor restrictions on abortion.  This doesn’t mean the rank and file are right, but that an ideological mandate is being passed down from above that, once adopted, could make abortion nearly impossible to eradicate.

The mandate is being slipped in under the cover of rights.  In particular, there is a growing insistence that abortion is a human right.  Take as an example, the words of Senator Elizabeth Warren who insisted “I believe that abortion rights are human rights.  I believe that they are also economic rights. And protecting the right of a woman to be able to make decisions about her own body is fundamentally what we do and what we stand for as a Democratic Party.”  Those of us who see abortion for what it really is must be prepared to confront this cooption of human rights head on.

Drowning in a flood of rights, we fail to make key distinctions between “rights” so that it becomes a jumbled mess.  But not all rights are right (which means it is not a right) and not all rights that are right are equal.  The adjective that is attached to the right matters.  That is why designating abortion as a human right can act as an ideological trump card rendering the rights of the unborn irrelevant.  We must then be prepared to challenge this designation and oppose the typical approach of framing the issue as a collision between the right to choose and the right to life.

Rights Language

We speak of justice as rendering to each man what is due.  Rights are the content or the thing that is due.  There are two ways of determining what someone is due.  The first would be because some authority says so.  We call these rights positive rights.  Included in these rights would be civil rights, that is, rights like the right to vote, that belong to citizens by virtue of the fact that they are citizens.  Because these rights are based upon some authoritative fiat, they must be checked both against the common good and human rights. 

Human rights on the other hand are those things that are due to a person simply due to the fact that they are human.  Also referred to as natural rights, these rights are attached specifically to those things that naturally lead to human flourishing.  Put another way, natural rights are those things that all human beings need in order to complete their nature.  Because they are natural, they recognize things that all human need by virtue of the fact that they are human.  To label abortion as a human right is to say that all women, by their nature as women, need abortion in order to truly fulfill their nature. 

Some might challenge what has been said so far and insist that some women need access to abortion in order to flourish.  But that is to misunderstand what is meant by flourishing.  Flourishing only occurs when we act in accord with our nature.  Abortion in that regard is totally unnatural in that it willfully acts against the nature of woman to fulfill herself through motherhood.  This does not mean all women must be mothers, but that motherhood is the means by which women naturally grow in the virtues that lead to their flourishing.  It can happen other ways, but it is the ordinary means by which that occurs.   

While an exhaustive list of human rights is not necessarily possible, there are certain rights that are self-evident.  Pope St. John XXIII in his encyclical Pacem in Terris listed the rights as “(M)an has the right to live. He has the right to bodily integrity and to the means necessary for the proper development of life, particularly food, clothing, shelter, medical care, rest, and, finally, the necessary social services. In consequence, he has the right to be looked after in the event of ill-health…”

Conspicuously absent from the list is abortion because it is currently a positive right.  Through mere judicial fiat, the Supreme Court ignored both the common good and human rights and gave women the right to choose.  While it remains upon this level of positive right, legislation may challenge it and seek to overturn it because of its blatant disregard for the human rights of the unborn and its harm to the common good.  But once it is declared a human right, it becomes something that is due to a woman simply because she is a woman.  This is why this movement from a positive right to a human right, at least in the court of public opinion and jurisprudence, is very important and must be stopped.

Rights and Duties

In addition to challenging the assumption that abortion leads to genuine human thriving that undergirds the human rights theory of abortion, there is another important connection that can be helpful in seeing the truth.  When we speak of rights, especially human rights, there is a connection to a corresponding duty.  A person has a natural right to some thing because it is essential in fulfilling some obligation.  Related to the question of abortion, there is much traction that can be gained by framing the discussion not in terms of rights, but of duties.  Specifically, what are the duties that a mother has towards her child?  When do those duties begin?  If it as birth, then why the plethora of pre-natal interventions?  If it is prior to birth, then when does a woman “officially” become a mother?  If the woman is not a mother, then exactly what is the relationship between the her and the biologically distinct entity that is growing inside of her?  Is it a relationship of dependency only if willed or does the woman naturally have an obligation to care for it? 

The point is that rather than challenging the status quo with the biologically certain question of when life begins, it can be helpful to restate the problem as asking when motherhood begins.  By emphasizing motherhood there can be an awakening of the awesome reality of what the woman has already become and not only what her obligations are, but that the presence of the young life growing within her will ultimately lead to her personal fulfillment.