Re: Women Have Always Had The Power of Life and Death

Suppose you wake up one morning and find yourself in a hospital room. 
In the bed next to you, there is a famous violinist.  You find that
both you and this famous violinist are hooked up to a machine that
allows the violinist to use your blood, your kidneys and your
circulatory system to sustain her life while she recovers from a
mysterious ailment.  She needs you to remain plugged in for nine
months.  If you unplug from her, she will die because there is no
other person who has the right blood type.

Here is a situation where the violinist's right to life comes into
conflict with your right to control what happens to your own body. 
Can unplugging yourself and withdrawing your support of the violinist
be justified?  Even if it is certain that she will die when you do so?

In a free society, the rights to privacy and bodily integrity are just
about absolute, even overruling the right to life.  No one may attach
him/herself to another person and access his/her bodily resources
without that person's explicit and ongoing consent.  This is true even
when withholding the donor's bodily resources would result in the
death of the beneficiary.  These fundamental rights to privacy and
bodily integrity have been repeatedly affirmed by the courts, and they
apply regardless of whether the beneficiary is a born person (even a
"famous violinist") or a fetus.

We can agree that donating an organ or blood, or bringing a child into
the world are wonderful things.  It is a precious gift to offer one's
very self to someone else in order bestow life and health.  What makes
this gift precious is that it is freely chosen.  To force someone to
bestow this gift without her consent strips her of moral agency and
violates the sanctity of her very being.

That's where pro-choicers and anti-choicers differ - anti-choicers do
not value the woman's moral agency or her privacy or her bodily
integrity.  If women lose the ability to say "no" to pregnancy and
childbirth, they will also lose the ability to say "yes" in any
meaningful way.