Rachel’s Hobbit Hole: When a Corpse Has More Rights Than a Woman
But take a minute to think about what would happen if hardcore pro-lifers (who are the ones setting the direction of the movement) actually got their way here. American women would have less rights over their bodies than corpses.
A corpse’s wishes as to what happens to its body are respected. If a person wanted to take perfectly healthy organs with them to the grave, we shrug our shoulders, and say, “Well, so be it. That’s his choice.” And no matter how many lives those organs would have saved, we tell the dying people what amounts to, “Tough shit. We have to respect that corpse’s wishes.” Not only are pro-lifers not actively campaigning to save these wasted organs — and all the people that they’d preserve — but many pro-lifers actually actively campaign against the dead giving organs (generally with scare tactics like these). So, to the pro-lifer, the corpse’s right to stuff its organs into a concrete hole to rot is either undisputed or sacred. But a living woman, deciding who will use her body? Even if she’s evicting a fetus that’s killing her? Even if that fetus will not survive her death? Based on how anti-choice laws are implemented all over the globe and in “pro-life” medical facilities right here in the States it’s clear: the “pro-life” view is that she does not have a right to preserve her own body and/or life. Unlike every other “threatening situation” (from, “oh my god, there’s a black kid carrying skittles as he walks down the sidewalk!” to “I’m having a heart attack; quick, save me!”), the religious right argues that she alone doesn’t get to take the steps necessary to save her life. She doesn’t get to take the step necessary to preserve her bodily integrity. She has to die, even if the fetus dies too. Because, unlike the corpse, a pregnant woman’s rights cease to matter in the pro-life worldview.
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Have to wonder what would happen if a dead fetus’s organs could be harvested to save the life of an American Taliban… .