Reproductive rights and responsibilities

Mixing rights and responsibilities is tough. With rights, e.g., individual freedom, come responsibilities. However, that does not appear to be the case when it comes to "reproductive rights."

The justice department upholds "the right to control one's own body," but just not in the case of mandatory masks, lockdowns for vaccines. Abortion is NOT about "one's own body," it's about another life, gestating in the womb. The determination as to "when life begins" is a scientific determation, not a political or personal choice. Per usual, the last thing a woke progressive wants to do is to "follow the science."

Consider another approach. What if we are wrong about rights? I have posed that question in the linked article and always like to offer the additional contrast my father offered when he made the commencement speech at his former high school back in 1962, when he spoke on personal responsibility. In brief, I find it difficult if not impossible to accept rhetoric about rights unless the claimant is willing, even eager, to speak about the accompanying responsibilities. Better yet, an argument that begins with an acceptance of responsibility creates a better context for a healthy discussion of rights, before assumed and asserted.

Reproductive "rights" are especially problematic due to the inability of proponents to accept the nature of the origins of life. While proponents may defend "life" is something that would need to be viable outside the womb, that does not address the concern that the fetus is alive. Worse, given technical improvements, the concept of an artificial womb is not a pipe dream. Even today, eggs fertilized outside the womb then, as a fetus, are implanted in a surrogate or even back in the woman who produced the egg, shows that life can be transplanted, from petri dish to womb.

As to responsibility, consensual sex without acknowledging the possibility of a pregnancy, is a simple denial of either partner's responsibility. It reflects the advice I offered my eight grade religion students: The greatest lie we tell ourselves -- or perhaps it's the devil himself who tells us this -- is that actions don't have consequences or that we are not responsible for the outcomes of the choices we make, intended or not.