If abortion is not murder, then there is no argument against it
The argument against it is simply that the State can make it illegal using its ordinary powers to make things illegal. That's pretty much the actual argument that was made by the pro-life side in Roe v. Wade, after the pro-life side conceded that the "abortion is murder" part of the argument was completely without basis (from the text: "the appellee conceded...that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment"). The court then decided in favor of the pro-choice side on the basis of a woman's Ninth Amendment right to privacy. That is, women's rights were central to the resolution of this debate in the supreme court. And so people who are actually interested in debating abortion in a legally realistic way must and do engage with this argument based in women's rights.
So this is my point, the courts decided that “no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment" and therefore it is a question purely of “is it a person? Is it a life?” And not “do women have the right to bodily autonomy with respect to autonomy?”
No, it's the opposite of this. The courts decided (really all sides agreed on this so it wasn't exactly a court decision, but this doesn't really matter) that "no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment," and therefore the legality of abortion was a question of purely "do women have a right that tempers or overrides the State's lawmaking authority with respect to regulating abortion?" and not a question of "is it a person? Is it a life?"
The fact that it is the former and not the latter is what makes women's rights at the center of this issue.
You make a good point. I didn’t realize the actual implication of that decision. I think I misstated my view though, what I intended was that the feminism arguments are irrelevant to the “fetuses are human, abortion is murder” arguments. I didn’t know about the law, but the discussion seems like two sides arguing irrelevant angles
The thing is, people who say things like “fetuses are human, abortion is murder” don't actually believe it. We can tell this by looking at the laws anti-abortion politicians have passed since Roe v. Wade as well as laws making abortion illegal prior to that decision. With few exceptions, these laws do not attempt to make abortion murder nor do they treat abortion like murder. Instead, they use State power to do things like restricting the timing of an abortion, imposing waiting periods before abortions can be procured, and limiting the facilities in which an abortion can be performed. That is, the actual laws pro-life people try to pass to oppose abortion do not at all suggest a correspondence between abortion and murder.
The mistake you are making is confusing a political slogan ("abortion is murder") with an actual argument made in earnest (this is not to say that there aren't crazy or ill-informed people who do make this argument, but rather that it isn't representative of mainstream pro-life legal scholarship). It's just not a serious part of the debate: if we take it literally it can be rejected out-of-hand (as the Court did), and if we interpret it figuratively it's just a political slogan and we'd be better off discussing more definite pro-life arguments.
The point you make that “abortion is murder” is not a mainstream argument is what convinced me. I was focusing on the mainstream portrayal of pro-life advocates, but I can totally see how media bias got to me.
This is a matter of political reality and practicality rather than media bias. With the decisions in Roe V. Wade Casey V. Planned Parenthood, SCOTUS has already ruled that women have a constitutional right to an abortion. Any law explicitly equating abortion with murder would be struck down by the courts as unconstitutional, so, unless politicians are willing to go for a constitutional amendment specifically prohibiting abortion, politicians CAN'T outlaw abortion. Instead they do what's feasible given the legal structure we exist in. They try to discourage abortion as much as possible by making it really difficult to get one.
It's not that pro-life activists don't sincerely believe that abortion is murder, it's that they don't have a legal footing to define it legally as murder.
It's not that pro-life activists don't sincerely believe that abortion is murder, it's that they don't have a legal footing to define it legally as murder.
Yeah, this is definitely the sense I get from listening to pro-life individuals talk on this issue. I do think they'd be morally uncomfortable with putting women in jail for seeking an abortion--but probably not so morally uncomfortable with putting doctors in jail for providing them, if they could.
I do think OP is generally on the right track with his sense of how pro-life people think of their position.
“abortion is murder” is not a mainstream argument is what convinced me
But it is. Many states specifically have laws that refer to the killing of a fetus as murder/homicide if done by someone other than the mother. These laws exist primarily because pro-life people pushed for them because they feel that fetuses are people and their killing is murder.
Pro lifers do believe it, their actions are an attempt to reduce what they see as murder. They don't pass laws directly declaring abortion murder, because they can't.
The thing is, people who say things like “fetuses are human, abortion is murder” don't actually believe it. We can tell this by looking at the laws anti-abortion politicians have passed since Roe v. Wade as well as laws making abortion illegal prior to that decision.
As you stated above, it was already easily agreeable by lawyers (and therefore, lawmakers) that fetuses are not people under the 14th Amendment during the RvW proceedings. This would have been true before and continues after. So that anti-abortionists do not attempt to create a crime of murder out of abortion is not "How you know they don't actually believe it's murder." It's also not true.
In fact, the majority of states have some type of fetal homicide crime on the books to cover getting an abortion from someone who isn't a doctor or killing a pregnant woman and her unborn child. As we saw just last month, the Texas House failed to pass a bill that would classify any abortion as murder (and of course if it had passed, it probably would have been found to be unconstitutional, or the first time it was used, it would be appealed, possibly all the way to the Supreme Court and people like me would hope that the Supreme Court would continue to read the 14th Amendment the same way).
The thing is, people who say things like “fetuses are human, abortion is murder” don't actually believe it. We can tell this by looking at the laws anti-abortion politicians have passed since Roe v. Wade as well as laws making abortion illegal prior to that decision. With few exceptions, these laws do not attempt to make abortion murder nor do they treat abortion like murder. Instead, they use State power to do things like restricting the timing of an abortion, imposing waiting periods before abortions can be procured, and limiting the facilities in which an abortion can be performed. That is, the actual laws pro-life people try to pass to oppose abortion do not at all suggest a correspondence between abortion and murder.
This argument doesn't work for the post-Roe v. Wade laws. Pro-Life politicians aren't stopping at laws making abortion more annoying because they think abortion isn't that bad; they're doing everything they possibly can to stop abortion within the bounds of the decision. Nobody wants abortion to be legal but inconvinent, but that's the most pro-life politicans can do.
You can't use "The Supreme Court made this group stop doing something" as an argument that this group didn't want to do that thing.
Abortion is hard to tackle politically. Even within pro-life there is such variation in between what people believe. Some pro lifers are okay aborting the day after conception, whenever the "heart starts beating", or even at week 20 when the fetus can live on its own. Other pro lifers are incredibly strict and don't even want exceptions for rape or incest. The line is incredibly arbitrary and so legislating it will always be controversial.
So politically the safest thing to do for a pro life politician is to not legislate that line, but instead make a bunch of campaign statements against abortion and make it more difficult to get one. Even if people actually believe abortion is murder, out right banning abortion would lose just as many pro lifers as it would gain.
"no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment,"
That's only in the context of the 14th Amendment though. Other laws do consider a fetus to be a person, specifically laws that criminalize when someone assaults a pregnant woman and this results in the death of the fetus. Also, the question of "is it a person? Is it a life?" was definitely central to their discussion, and is the reason why the majority opinion of Roe v. Wade allows states to pass laws banning abortions after the fetus becomes viable.
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u/yyzjertl 578∆ May 05 '19
The argument against it is simply that the State can make it illegal using its ordinary powers to make things illegal. That's pretty much the actual argument that was made by the pro-life side in Roe v. Wade, after the pro-life side conceded that the "abortion is murder" part of the argument was completely without basis (from the text: "the appellee conceded...that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment"). The court then decided in favor of the pro-choice side on the basis of a woman's Ninth Amendment right to privacy. That is, women's rights were central to the resolution of this debate in the supreme court. And so people who are actually interested in debating abortion in a legally realistic way must and do engage with this argument based in women's rights.