Of course, many more middle-aged legislators were only too happy to move the bill to the Governor's desk. Brian Bosma, the Speaker of the House, said, "Those unborn children are Hoosiers, and they have constitutional rights. . . . We're not making a determination about women's health. We are trying to protect the right of the unborn."
Oh, Indiana.
Children in Indiana do of course have rights, which Bosma did not work quite so hard to protect back in 2007 when he voted "nay" on a bill (HB 1337) meant to outlaw smoking in a car with children under the age of 13. He also voted "nay" on a mandatory seat belt law in that same year for people in the front and the back seats. Presumably, Bosma felt that the arm of government should not reach into an adult's vehicle, and that any rights retained by children in those instances are trumped by the rights of adults to do as they please in their own vehicles, their private property.
So to be clear, if you're the driver of a car, your rights outweigh the rights of others, including children. If you're the driver of a pregnant body, the passenger's legal rights should limit, constrain, and even eclipse yours.
BUT LIFE. BUT UNBORN BABY.
Yes, I know. The state, it is noted in all relevant court opinions, has an interest in life. However, the state's interest in one life does not override another individual's right to self-determination and bodily autonomy - and I am indebted to @absurdist words on Twitter for reminding me about this line of thinking, which is not his originally, but which I had forgotten about until his recent series of tweets.
Courts routinely both respect and protect individuals' rights to put themselves first, even when someone else's life is at stake. The most famous precedent in this regard is Shimp v. McFall, a 1978 case in which Shimp sued McFall, his cousin, in an attempt to force McFall to donate bone marrow. From the court documents: "The question posed by plaintiff is that, in order to save the life of one of its members by the only means available, may society infringe upon one's absolute right to his 'bodily security'?" Although the judge famously characterized McFall's refusal to undergo the procedure as "morally indefensible," he still found that the state could not require McFall to make the donation against his will: "For our law to compel the defendant to submit to an intrusion of his body would change every concept and principle upon which our society is founded. To do so would defeat the sanctity of the individual, and would impose a rule which would know no limits, and one could not imagine where the line would be drawn."
In the 1990 case of Curran v. Bosze, a father tried to save his 12-year-old son by demanding that his three-year-old twins by another mother be tested as possible bone marrow donors. The mother, meanwhile, refused, based on the risks to the twins. The New York Times reported: "Judge Monica Reynolds of Cook County Circuit Court . . . refused to order blood tests for the twins. In her decision, Judge Reynolds said that 'to subject a healthy child to bodily intrusions' would 'seriously infringe and forsake the constitutional rights of the child and render him a victim.'"
What all this means is that there are a fair amount of conservative politicians who want to put women in the position of having fewer rights than 3-year-old children, compelling those women to proceed with pregnancies for the sake of the fetus while pretending that maternal health is not involved, not relevant, not even broached.
Ah, you may say, but these cases aren't ultimately relevant, because unlike those twins, who were simply minding their own little toddler business, women consent to sex, and in so doing, they accept that pregnancy may result! When I get on a roller coaster, I accept that death or injury may result. I am cheerfully, even eagerly accepting that risk, solely for the sake of my own physical pleasure; otherwise, I would never ride the roller coaster. Does that mean that if I am injured on the roller coaster and break my arm, I should be made to heal without medical assistance? I got on the roller coaster. I'd had two beers at the time. All I was thinking about was my own selfish fun. Shouldn't I be made to march about with my arm broken until it heals naturally? Because didn't I know the risks? And isn't that broken arm a fairly minor inconvenience to me that is not putting my life in danger?
Isn't that the basic argument lots of folks advance for compelling women to remain pregnant?
In the real world, obviously, no one equates roller coasters and sex because in America, the former does not register on a moral scale, while the latter more or less IS the moral scale, at least where women are concerned. According to a couple of major religions, I shouldn't be having sex outside of marriage or for any other purpose than to make children, and if I am having sex outside of marriage and/or just for fun, I'm a slut who gets what I deserve: My very own punishment baby. The problem there is that we don't use holy books for our legal code. We keep those things separated. We also don't refuse to treat STIs in men who engaging in sex outside of marriage; deny medical care to convicted murderers in prisons, even if they're on death row; or in any other way insist that people undertake health risks because we find their behavior immoral or even evil. (And if you think pregnancy doesn't screw around with bodily health, you need to do some reading.)
You might regard abortion as "morally indefensible," but you cannot fairly say that women must put their bodies on the line for the sake of life while everyone else in society is excused.
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