That an argument as chilling as this appeared in one of the country’s most prestigious philosophy journals is deeply troubling.
The push for unlimited abortion access is now advancing beyond the issue of “choice.” A newly published article in Ethics, the University of Chicago Press’s prestigious peer-reviewed journal, argues that pregnant minors must abort — even if that requires coercion and force.
The authors, a University of British Columbia philosophy professor and an aspiring philosopher, emphasize the fact that minors are children. From “Justice for Girls: On Provision of Abortion as Adequate Care” (citations omitted, my emphases):
Both opponents of abortion and liberal defenders of a woman’s right to control her own body make a mistake in relation to impregnated children. They both overlook that an impregnated girl is a child. As such, the adults responsible for her care should never pressure or compel her to continue a pregnancy. Nor should they confront her with the three “options” of abortion, adoption, or mothering, as medical professionals are currently advised to do. Instead, her adult caregivers should view her impregnation as a malady and take steps to terminate it.
On the transgender issue, we are continually told — I don’t know about these particular authors’ views — that a minor girl can decide to have her puberty blocked or breasts removed. Somehow, when it comes to continuing a pregnancy, she can’t?
The authors coin a term, “antigirlism,” to describe young females as victims:
The widespread lack of attention to the position of girls in the ethics of reproduction and abortion is surprising. Girls, like women, face sexist discrimination. However, the position of girls is unique because, as children, they have specific vulnerabilities to discrimination and wrongful treatment. As noted above, we term the specific discrimination and wrongful treatment of girls as antigirlism. Let us defend briefly this choice of terminology.
The term ‘antigirlism’, like the term ‘antisemitism’, underscores that the injustice at issue targets a specific demographic. As such, it differs from other designators of injustice such as ‘sexism’ and ‘racism’ that leave unspecified which sex or race is the target of the injustice. Since we are concerned with a demographic—girls—it makes sense for us to speak of “antigirl” prejudice, and we reserve the term ‘girlism’ for a positive defense of girls, akin to feminism.
(The authors also describe how boys are victimized: “While this article focuses on girls’ experiences of injustice, we appreciate the need for a sibling analysis of antiboy injustice, which might consider, for instance, how boys’ socialization to glorify war enables society to recruit them to become cannon fodder when they are too young.”)
The authors claim that abortion is always in the best interest of girls because of the many supposed harms of giving birth, mothering, or allowing the baby to be adopted. Failing to immediately abort costs girls their “carefreeness,” don’t you know.
More stridently, they argue that allowing a girl to give birth is akin to allowing her to be a living organ donor, which would be illegal. Pregnant girls must therefore be forced to have an abortion whether they want one or not:
Providing abortion care to such a girl is an admittedly grim prospect, especially since she might resist the treatment. Providing care might then require sedation or physical restraint, which could be traumatizing, especially since this is a girl who most likely has already had her bodily integrity violated by someone. Compelling abortion care for an unwilling girl thus might seem to compound the harm she has already endured.
Here, it is worth considering that, while it may be distressing for parents, medical caregivers, and the patient herself, the use of restraint (chemical or physical) on children to provide lifesaving or life-altering treatment is used in other areas of medicine, including in procedures such as surgeries and cancer treatment, and is justified as a last resort when it is necessary to provide adequate care.
Good grief.
But what about the potential trauma of a girl being forced to end the life of her gestating baby?
A critic might still worry about our best-interest argument. While we show that gestating and mothering radically set back a girl’s fundamental interests, it seems likely that a compelled abortion would set back some important interests too. What matters is that the harms of gestation are worse than those of abortion. Ultimately, this is an empirical claim, and it is one about which we cannot fully satisfy a skeptic because there are no comprehensive data analyses on girls’ experiences of compelled abortion care.
Then why make the claim? And wouldn’t the experience of one girl giving birth be different from that of another?
The authors conclude that when it comes to children, we should all be “pro-abortion”:
Our analysis shows that both sides of the abortion debate err in their position on girls. The liberal proponent of women’s reproductive rights disregards girls’ vulnerabilities when she champions the right to choose, while the opponent of abortion denies girls the care to which they have a fundamental right as children. The calcified “pro-choice” versus “pro-life” binary overlooks that, in relation to children, we should be “pro-abortion.” . . .
Just as in organ donations, the only time caregivers could permit a child to continue a pregnancy would be when she was genuinely uncoerced, faced minimal risk, and had her best interests as a child served. Since carrying a pregnancy to term in childhood will fail to meet some or all of these requirements, caregivers have a moral duty to provide impregnated children with abortion care. There is no justification for sacrificing the interests of a vulnerable, protected person for the interests of another or potential other.
There is a word to describe “philosophy” like this: totalitarian. Indeed, it reminds me pungently of China’s “one-child” policy that also involved forced abortion.
For those who say that girls will never be forced to abort, just remember that about ten years ago journal articles started pushing puberty blockers for gender-confused children, in some cases regardless of parental wishes. We all know how that turned out in places like California.
In any event, the fact that an article as authoritarian in its argumentation as this one appeared in one of the country’s most prestigious philosophy journals — and passed peer review, no less — is deeply troubling.