Morality, sovereignty and abortion

Michael Gerson wonders why abortion remains a hot-button issue in American politics. In his latest column, he suggests that the abortion question pits two stongly-held contemporary values against each other. The pro-choice movement appeals to our desire for autonomy, understood as freedom of choice, while the pro-life position (note: for what it's worth my Samsung keyboard app autocorrects "pro-life" to "proliferation," as if recognizing a historic pun) appeals to the same spirit of inclusiveness, Gerson claims, that fuels the gay-rights movement. That doesn't read quite right. The contexts within which homosexuals demand recognition as equal citizens and pro-lifers demand recognition of fetuses as rights-bearing human beings are very different, the former asserting a right to participation in civil society, the latter defending a mere right to exist. Gerson  must realize, too, that many gay-rights advocates are pro-choice on the abortion question in a way that would seem inconsistent were "inclusion" at stake. A more plausible comparison might be made to the debates between those who seek to apply universal standards of human rights worldwide and those who argue not for the autonomy but for the sovereignty of nations. The essential conflict is between a morality that recognizes no boundaries and those who assert the sovereignty of women's bodies. Just as most nations claim that their governments' treatment of their citizens is no other country's business, so pro-choice insists that what happens inside a woman's body is no one else's business, regardless of any notion of human rights. As most countries treat assertions of universally applicable and enforceable human rights as an existential threat to their independence, so pro-choice women see the assertion of enforceable fetal rights as a threat to their personhood. In general, assertions of universal (or "natural") human rights are seen by their critics as rationalizations attempting to justify unwarranted power grabs. In our age of ad hominem skepticism, universalist claims are regarded as no less self-serving than the counterarguments of sovereign critics, with the tie going to those making existential claims (for sovereignty) over those resorting to ideological sophistry. The distinction between existential and ideological right is essential should pro-choicers be asked why their sovereign rights should be respected: sovereignty becomes the necessary basis of inviolable individuality. The gay rights movement is a similar assertion of sovereignty available to some men, while a right to intoxication or a right to smoke might be a question of sovereignty for the rest, though none of these raise the same red flag of power over a helpless other that abortion does. Since the competition of morality and sovereignty is a constant in the history of civilization, the persistence of the abortion question shouldn't surprise us. Thinking of autonomy, Gerson appeals to compassionate solidarity as the remedy for its excesses. Sovereignty marks the limit of solidarity and of what society can demand from the individual, or what the world can demand from any nation, but the border it draws is no more permanent than any on earth. Gerson concludes resignedly that the abortion question and the "enduring divide" that underlies it can "only be managed, not settled." I call him resigned rather than pessimistic, since I suspect that he suspects that a real settlement might be a cure worse than the disease.