Kate Michelman's Endorsement, And Abortion As A Positive Right

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

In the course of going all John Edwards crazy in this space every week, I've taken pains to highlight his socially liberal views.  The readers of this blog are exactly the people whom I want to make aware of things like Edwards' strong support for abortion rights and his vote against the Flag Desecration Amendment.  So I'm happy to tell you that Kate Michelman, for 20 years president of NARAL, has endorsed him for president. 

I was interested to see Amanda tie the endorsement back to the economic issues that Edwards is better known for.  Citing Michelman's comment that "he knows that most Americans in poverty are women and children", she points out that a lack of money is one of the foremost barriers to reproductive choice in this country, and expresses hopes that an Edwards Administration would try to overturn the Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal funds from being spent on abortion:

In fact, it’s somewhat tough to characterize abortion as a right when it’s only your right if you’ve got a few hundred laying around to pay for one, and since 1976, women who qualify for Medicaid are basically shit out of luck because Medicaid doesn’t cover the costs of abortion.

In comments, Robert argues that the right to an abortion doesn't mean that the government has to cover the cost of your abortion.  In his view, it's similar to the right to bear arms, which doesn't commit the government to buying you guns, and the right to drink alcohol, which doesn't commit the government to buying you alcohol. 

A couple things should be said in response.  First, despite the fact that we don't have a right to some things -- say, fireworks on the 4th of July -- it's possible that the government should still pay for those things.  In the case of fireworks, a local government might be the optimal provider because it's hard for a private business to collect money from all the people who benefit.  People can see fireworks for miles around, and a private fireworks exhibitor couldn't collect money from all who benefitted.  So this may be a job for government.  If you think that a good government should also respond to the diminishing marginal utility of money by buying life-changing medical services for the poor, you get an argument for publically funded reproductive health care, including abortion, even if you don't think that anything called a 'right' is at stake. 

But the deeper disagreement here is about whether there really is a right to have the public pay for your abortion.  I'm going to spell out how the case for such a right might go. 

I hope it seems fairly plausible that people have a right to publicly funded education.  There's something tremendously unjust about social institutions that let the lottery of birth -- and in particular, something so removed from your own worth as the financial status of your parents -- determine whether you have any shot at prosperity.  If you want to stipulate that the only rights are negative rights, you'll probably be unhappy with this conclusion.  But if you want to use a notion of rights that corresponds with the things we're interested in when we talk about rights in deciding how to set up society -- rights as the things that must be protected if social arrangements are to be just -- this conclusion should seem correct to you.

We are born not only in different social circumstances, but in two genders.  Just as we don't choose whether our parents will be rich or poor, we don't choose whether we'll be born to the gender in whose body a fetus can grow, or the gender whose destiny it is to be free of such troublesome entanglements.  And if you're with me on the right to public education, you can see how the right to publicly funded reproductive health care takes shape.  A society that allows biological differences to saddle women with a far more onerous set of burdens and obligations (which is what happens when no attempt is made to compensate for the situation) is unjust in the same way that societies with hereditary aristocracies and societies which lack public education are unjust.  Giving women not only the permission but the power to control their own reproductive destiny is a straightforward way to deal with this problem.  And assuming that superior remedies to the situation aren't available, this gives us the right to publicly funded abortions. 

Here I ignore arguments involving the fetus' right to life, which I've dealt with before.  I don't see how an organism without even the capacity for pain (as a fetus is until the third trimester) can be a bearer of rights at all.  We attribute rights to creatures based on the nature of their minds, and withhold the right to life from creatures with minds far more complex than that of a first- or even second-trimester fetus. 

You might think that the position I've outlined leads us down a slippery slope.  If failing to compensate for inequalities of birth like different financial status and gender differences makes a society unjust, what other rights might people have?  Perhaps those with congenital illnesses will even have the right to health care!  As it turns out, I've always been the sort of philosopher to reach for my sled when I see a slippery slope, and I'm fairly optimistic about where this path might take us.