Defending My “Rethinking” of Roe

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Notes

In reference to Marquis's claim that my argument lacks appeal to actual court cases, there is McFall v. Shimp, which I extensively discuss in my paper. Additional cases include Union Pacific Railway Company v. Botsford (1891), Schloendorff v Society of New York Hospital (1914), Doe v. Doe (1994), and Stamford Hospital vs. Vega (1996), all of which support the primacy of the right to bodily integrity when in conflict with other rights or interests.

I am not the first pro-choice advocate to maintain this. Margaret Olivia Little, Ronald Dworkin, Rosalind Hurthouse, Francis Kissling, and Christine Overall are all scholars who are pro-choice and still hold that fetal life has value.

For example, a woman who aborts and whose only concern is whether she will be well enough to party the same night, a woman who repeatedly seeks abortions solely because she refuses contraception because it doesn't “feel good” (providing absence of health risks from her using contraceptives), a woman who aborts in order to exact revenge from a male partner, a woman who aborts because the fetus is biracial, a woman who aborts because the fetus possesses some perceived aesthetic flaw (I have encountered all these reasons in my research)—all these reasons for obtaining an abortion are prima facie indecent and condemnable.

See David Boonin's A Defense of Abortion (2003, New York: Cambridge University Press).