Are Women Still Human?
The issue of abortion cannot be reduced to the narrow question of the status of the child in the womb. The answers rest upon broader assumptions about what it means to be human. If we are to believe those who defend a right to abortion, it is nothing less than the power to end the life of her unborn child that guarantees a woman her humanity—that is, the autonomy befitting her status as man’s equal. That is a denial of what really makes us human: our natural dependence upon, and obligations towards, one another.
Are women human?
That was the question Dorothy L. Sayers posed in the title of a famous and witty essay. Her answer was a resounding yes, because women and men share a common humanity. Today, such a simple answer would not pass muster, for the question of what it means to be human is itself contested.
When discussing abortion, our debate over what it means to be human or to be a person tends to focus on the baby in the womb. Is the embryo a human being? Is there a meaningful distinction between a human being and a person? Parsing such questions is critical to determining abortion’s morality. This makes intuitive sense, because the answer to these questions determines whether abortion is merely a medical procedure or a form of homicide.
Yet our fundamental disagreements over abortion involve additional questions. How does a society that regards abortion as legitimate understand the humanity of the woman involved? Indeed, how does it understand humanity in general? These questions are pertinent to the moral discussion because the issue of abortion cannot be reduced to the narrow question of the status of the child in the womb. The answers rest upon broader assumptions about the purpose, the telos, of human existence in general.
If we are to believe those who defend a right to abortion, it is nothing less than the power to end the life of her unborn child that guarantees a woman her humanity—that is, the autonomy befitting her status as man’s equal.
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