Whose body? Whose choice?
There may be good arguments for abortion access or against vaccine mandates, but it is time to challenge the assumptions behind this popular slogan
Recently, we have seen two protests by two very different partisan crowds catch the media’s attention with the familiar rallying cry: “my body, my choice.” One of these groups is pro-choice, protesting Texas’ restrictive new abortion law. The others are opposed to COVID-19 vaccination passports, or calls for mandatory vaccination.
“My body, my choice” fits neatly within our liberal political canon, which has come to define the way we look at politics and law today. This canon views the individual as an atomized unit, free to make choices so long as these choices do not bring harm upon or violate the liberty of others.
Even under this liberal framework, both the pro-choice and anti-mandatory-vaccine groups have a lofty argument. The pro-choicers will inevitably be met with the objection that a fetus is a person, and so, therefore, terminating the pregnancy is an act of harm upon another. The anti-mandatory-vaccination crowd will be met with the objection that their refusal to be immunized could cause them to spread disease to others, and so therefore their choice is not harmless.
Of course, these two groups will inevitably accuse the other of hypocrisy all day with little accomplished. But what about the framework itself? What does it mean to say that having a body gives one these valued sets of choices and inalienable rights?
One argument is an argument from utility. That is, one may argue that it is optimal to have this conception of embodiment and choice in place. It may create a sense of certainty for people, who want the reassurance of the control they have over their bodies.
So what is the utility of a rule that puts the individual fully in charge of their bodies? For one thing, it creates an expectation of personal control. Laws are in place to create a sense of certainty among the citizenry and create reasonable expectations against bodily interference. As such, a general rule of “my body, my choice” could provide assurances that you are free to do what you choose with your body. While this freedom is not some sort of natural right, entrenching it may be an ideal way to structure society because of the assurances it provides to citizens.
But it could also be unideal. Is what we need more selfishness and more atomization? Treating peoples’ bodies as isolated units that have no bearing on the bodies of another can have negative social utility as well, and places us in a similar state of uncertainty when others’ bodily choices start to impact us. For a lighter and funnier example, I reminisce to one of my old ballet classes when I was around 12-13, and not everyone had learned about using deodorant yet. My teacher stopped in the middle of class and sent everyone to the bathroom to wash ourselves because the room smelled terrible. To say “my body, my choice” at that point, or to have that as a rule in that setting, would have negative consequences. The simple fact of the matter is that it really is not always your choice, and that we are sometimes better off when that’s the case.
Another approach to supporting this phrase is deontological and argues that regardless of social utility, we have an inalienable right to control all aspects of our embodiment. As such, it would always be wrong to interfere with one’s control over one’s body. Of course, this framework might bring us to a similar problem as above: is abortion really exercising control over my body if it is impacting a distinct human being? Further, is it really only impacting myself if the father of the prospective child does not want me to abort it? Is not getting vaccinated an exercise of autonomy or are too many impacted by this decision to make it a matter of personal autonomy? Clearly, these are issues of greater gravity than the right to exercise control over, say, whether to get a tattoo.
But perhaps the problems this framework brings us make it an inadequate framework. That is, the liberal idea of freedom to choose anything so long as it does not harm another is lacking in both correctness and social utility.
The harm principle and its liberal individualist tradition carry with it an assumption that we do not have positive obligations toward one another; rather, we only have prohibitions about what we cannot do. As such, we are not socialized to feel like we are a part of something beyond ourselves, but rather that we can do what we want with impunity with minimal limits. This does not seem ideal to me. Instead, it leads to a kind of compensation in light of a lack of community. We unite by antagonizing others and trying to undermine their intelligence, instead of trying to connect our struggles and understand our shared fates.
The lack of obligation toward one another and this crude form of liberal individualism may be appealing if you find yourself on the right end. That is if you are on the end where you are free to act without a sense of obligation so long as you do not harm others. This is particularly the case when selfishness is exalted as self-care or something morally righteous.
Behind this is an indication that people are reluctant to live for something outside or beyond themselves, which is at the heart of our dominant secular, liberal individualist ethic. It’s Rand’s “virtue of selfishness” repackaged for the entire political spectrum.
But further, the idea is that the body does not have meaningful interaction with anything beyond the mind that controls it when clearly this is not the case. Do you “own” yourself? Sure, in a sense. But you are embedded within a community that is impacted by your embodied being. Women who choose to get abortions are probably not doing so out of selfishness in most cases, but it is not the case that the abortion can only impact them because they are not doing this in a vacuum. Those that choose not to get vaccinated are likely not (gasp) trying to be selfish, either. But the argument is moot if the concern is about spreading disease (since vaccinated people can still spread the disease, a better critique would be, for instance, that these vaccines do not properly align with the purpose of the mandates).
Treating our bodies as isolated units that do not interact with the bodies of others may not only have immoral consequences, but is simply not a correct approach. I do not think it follows that having a body means having unlimited choice about what to do with it. There are good arguments to keep abortion legal and good arguments against mandating COVID vaccines, but it is pushing a rhetoric of selfishness and atomization to justify these things by claiming that having a body is a blank check to do what you want with it, and it is not correct to treat one’s body as an isolated item that does not impose itself on others.
These are just my thoughts as someone who has heard the slogan from pro-life education since age 15, and am not thrilled about its implications. Instead of emphasizing how atomized we are from one another, more effort should be put toward recognizing our shared fates.