Good, Secular Arguments: Why I Don't "Trust Women"

Much like pro-lifers, pro-choicers spent January 22 blogging. The theme of this year's "Blog for Choice Day" was "Trust Women," which was the mantra of the late Dr. Tiller.

I do, of course, trust women, as much as I trust men (and probably more than I trust boys and girls!). But the issue is irrelevant to the abortion debate. As a rule, we trust people to make the best choices for their lives and their futures. Within certain parameters.

We trust people to make the decision about the best way to support their families. But we don't make theft legal! Because theft is wrong, it's bad for society, it has victims who need to be protected. Yes, we are marginally restricting the amount of decisions we trust providers to make. We don't trust them to decide whether or not to rob a bank, because to allow people to make that choice would hurt others.

We trust people to make decisions about who they want to have sex with. But we don't make rape legal! Rape is wrong, it's bad for society, it has victims who need to be protected. Outlawing rape marginally restricts the rights of men to choose who they have sex with, but it results in a better-protected right of women to make that decision. We don't trust men to make the choice whether or not to rape someone, because to allow people to choose to do so would leave victims in its wake.

Once you've established that the potential cost of misestimating the beginning of life is too great to assume that it's anywhere but at conception, it's clear that abortion hurts people. Yes, to outlaw abortion would restrict the "rights" of pregnant women. But we've established that we can marginally restrict what we trust certain people to do in order to protect the rights of potential victims. We can't trust women to decide whether or not to have an abortion, because to allow someone to choose to do so would hurt the primary victim of an abortion, the child.

We don't subjugate the rights of potential victims to a misplaced desire to trust someone in power to make the right decision for himself, without regard to whether that decision is right for others.