If the majority of voters in a state want to ban abortion, because that's the policy they want their state to live under, I would say they have figured out what they want.
The concept of "minority rights" would seem to apply. The majority doesn't, in America, automatically get to force the minority to heel.
Is the majority justified in using the power of the state to mandate gestation for members of a minority? Not imo if they weren't justified in forbidding people of different races to marry. Hey, it's a benefit of being an American: some things are private. What is the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" if someone can vote themselves the 'right' to colonize your very uterus, for God's sake?
The idea of government-mandated gestation feels to me very like the Chinese mandated abortion-program instituted to enforce the one-child family policy. Same idea: the state forces its powerful fist into your uterus.
In one case, force an unwilling female to scrape out her uterus. In the other, force an unwilling female to gestate a fertilized ovum for nine months until it becomes a helpless human being.
Yes, I know that the one child policy was about preventing famine, but the thought of it, in action, the thought of the state using its might against an individual pregnant woman has always made my blood run as cold, whether it's forcing her to abort or forcing her to gestate. |
