Tales of people awakening in hotel bathtubs to find their kidneys had been removed were an Internet staple in the 1990s. Vox writer and expectant mother Amanda Taub argues that those bogus stories have something in common with unwanted pregnancies, given that pregnancy is a “category of living organ donation.”
“The idea of forcing someone into an organ transplant is indeed so appalling that it is the subject of several horror films, not to mention urban myths the world over,” commented Taub in a Friday article. “But the idea of forcing someone, by law and against their will, to endure the physical tolls and dangers of pregnancy is somehow considered a mainstream political position.”
Taub acknowledged that “the thought of meeting my baby in a few months thrills me. I am a willing participant in this process. But not all women and girls who become pregnant are themselves willing participants. And that is a distinction that a lot of abortion opponents just do not seem to find very important. The idea that pregnancy and its physical burdens could be forced onto me, or, more specifically, could in many cases be forced onto a woman or girl who has not signed up for surrendering control over her internal organs, appalls me.”
From Taub’s piece (bolding added):
Pro-life activists tend to focus on whether a fetus is a person, and whether life begins at conception. But…the nature of pregnancy is an inarguable medical fact: It involves taking the mother's body — her blood, her uterus, her vital organs — and using it to save the life of another person.
We have a term for that: organ donation.
It is uncontroversial in this country that other types of organ donation should never be forced. Parents are under no legal obligation to donate their organs to save their children's lives after they are born, even though there is no debate about the "personhood" of children who are living outside the womb. Yet when it comes to fetuses whose personhood is a subject of debate, pro-life activists demand that this obligation be legally enforced…
…I'm not just making an analogy between pregnancy and living organ donation. I am arguing that pregnancy is in fact an actual category of living organ donation.
…[T]he fetus is still inside the mother when it uses her organs, and for the most part the mother still gets to share them. But make no mistake: The fetus does use those organs and depend on them for survival, just as organ recipients outside the womb do…
That is miraculous, to be sure. As it happens, I am currently about six months into my first pregnancy, and I am constantly amazed at the way my body turns out to know how to create another human life, without any need for input or guidance from me…
But that also means I have no control over how the baby in my belly can use my body. She has access to my oxygen, my nutrition, my heart, my lungs. My organs respond automatically to what she needs, even if that means I am left exhausted or ill.
To me, that is all worth it: The thought of meeting my baby in a few months thrills me. I am a willing participant in this process. But not all women and girls who become pregnant are themselves willing participants. And that is a distinction that a lot of abortion opponents just do not seem to find very important. The idea that pregnancy and its physical burdens could be forced onto me, or, more specifically, could in many cases be forced onto a woman or girl who has not signed up for surrendering control over her internal organs, appalls me.
…Pro-life lawmakers like to argue that they are opposed to "killing." But really what they are arguing for is different: a rule that forces women to let other people use their bodies to stay alive…
There's another way that pregnancy is akin to organ donation: It comes with some unavoidable physical harm as well as the risks of complications, potentially fatal, for the donor or mother…
…And even uncomplicated pregnancies are still tremendous physical undertakings, with serious consequences and side effects.
Like an organ donation, that is something that makes it all the more beautiful if it's something you've affirmatively chosen, but all the more traumatic if you've been forced into it. The idea of forcing someone into an organ transplant is indeed so appalling that it is the subject of several horror films, not to mention urban myths the world over. But the idea of forcing someone, by law and against their will, to endure the physical tolls and dangers of pregnancy is somehow considered a mainstream political position.
