[Peace-discuss] Conscription and pregnancy

[Bob Illyes]

"Human rights talk", as Belden sometimes calls it, is something
much newer than most people think, and was written about first
in England as a part of the development of the modern democratic
state. Locke is the earliest whose thinking leads directly into
the American tradition of rights, which is what I, at least, am
discussing. It is therefore of interest that Locke identifies
the source of human rights as the ownership of ones own body and
that the authors of the Bill of Rights would have been
acquainted with Locke's thinking and would have largely agreed
that it applied to free men. The application to all men
and to women, unfortunately, came much later.

Both Locke and the American founders would have been puzzled by
Carl's use of the term "capitalist metaphor". The industrial
revolution was still nascent and Marxist terminology had not
yet been invented. And it is precisely the property in ones own
body, which Marx would likely deny, that I argue is relevant.

Of course the body is open to eminent domain, as Carl warns. The
draft is such a case, as is being forced to carry an undesired
pregnancy to term. In both cases, ones property (ones person)
is claimed by the public for the perceived good of others. I am
opposed to both the draft and to forced pregnancy for the same
reason.

I must agree with Mort that I cannot see a 1-celled organism as
a person. I dislike killing of all kinds, and feel bad even at
killing a bug. But even vegetarians rarely worry about eating
one-celled animals. Even if we could by some impossible magic
know that a fertilized ovum is an actual rather than just a
potential person, it does not follow that it is right to
conscript the body of an unwilling woman to sustain the ovum.

I do not see that society's intrusion into a woman's decision
regarding pregnancy does anything but damage to her, to any
children she might choose to have, and to the continuing
evolution of liberal democracy. Shall we enslave women for the
production of children? Shall we enslave African-Americans for
the production of cotton. Shall we enslave the young for wars
of empire? I say NO, NO, NO!!!

Bob