What kinds of rights are invoked when women demand ‘reproductive rights’? Feminist groups began using the term ‘reproductive rights’ instead of ‘abortion rights’ in the 1990s in response to the criticism that the women’s movement had been reduced to single-issue politics, had lost its radical edge, and was becoming irrelevant to the most marginalized women in our society. By giving priority to the abortion controversy, mainstream women’s groups reflected the interests of mostly bourgeois, white, heterosexual, able-bodied, and married or marriageable women. These women wanted to resist social pressures to be child bearers and caretakers so that they could take advantage of the career opportunities that were opening to women. Women of color, lesbians, disabled or poor women were not typically subject to pressures to reproduce, and were instead, at times, subject to coercive sterilization campaigns and misguided eugenicist policies . Moreover, the latter groups of women did not typically find themselves presented with attractive career opportunities that might suffer from interruptions for childbearing. As the U.S. women’s movement became less provincial and more international in focus, the issues of women in the global south began to be heard. Leaders of women’s groups in the third world pointed out how the concept of “reproductive rights” had been deployed both to sell population control policies dictated by wealthy countries and to market often unsafe birth control products to create profits for multinational drug companies.
As the future of legal abortion in the U.S. becomes increasingly uncertain, feminist groups are gearing up to defend legal access to safe abortion services under the rubric of “reproductive rights.” So it might be good to take a moment and analyze the meaning of ‘rights’ in the context of ‘reproductive rights’ in order to understand what is at stake in this campaign. Are reproductive rights individual or group rights, rights of citizenship or basic human rights, negative or positive rights, formal political or economic rights? Are reproductive rights specifically a woman’s issue—allegedly because of women’s special reproductive capacities—or do men have a stake in the expansion or constriction of reproductive rights? Does the expansion of “reproductive rights” promote women’s choices and social status more robustly than the expansion of people’s economic rights (e.g., good jobs for women), or universal health care and pre-school? Or conversely, with access to good jobs and education, health care and child care, would women have more choices about child bearing and rearing, and also more standing to demand men’s equal participation in unpaid child care and housework? If the latter, then it may be more important for women’s rights groups to fight for the expansion of good jobs, universal health insurance, and national child care policies, rather than let these struggles get derailed by efforts to protect the expanded legal access to abortion services achieved in 1973.
Feminists have explicated reproductive rights in all of the ways enumerated above. Reproductive rights are violated when individuals cannot exercise self-determination over their reproductive capacities, or when groups of people have systematically suffered from population and birth control policies. Reproductive rights have been promoted as the right of citizens to privacy and bodily sovereignty under a liberal democratic state, and as a basic human right to found a family (Article 16, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Reproductive rights are conceived negatively as a right to non-interference from others in procreative matters, and positively in terms of publicly funded reproductive health services. Reproductive rights are conceived as a right women need to achieve formal political equality (i.e., so that “biology does not become their destiny”) and as a right women require to achieve economic security. These different ways of conceiving reproductive rights are not inconsistent or mutually exclusive. And it seems important to elaborate and clarify these different dimensions or conceptions of reproductive rights.
Yet it may be the case that fighting for reproductive rights has kept the mainstream U.S. women’s movement from putting sufficient effort into the struggle for women’s economic rights. If women’s rights groups decided to focus more of their efforts on economic rights and less on “reproductive rights,” then it would be important to examine the moral issues pertaining to economic rights. For example, rather than morally scrutinize the behavior of women who have abortions, we should scrutinize the behavior employers who create and offer poverty-wage jobs to women without health care benefits, or jobs that deny workers creativity and privacy. Rather than ask whether a woman is obligated to support a fetus, we should ask about the obligations of an employer to share profits with those who help create them. Few would defend unequal pay for equal work or glass ceilings for women, but perhaps we need to think of women’s economic rights in more positive terms, as citizenship rights or universal human rights. What moral responsibilities does our government have to develop policies that would expand the number of good jobs available to women, jobs that pay a family-wage and do not require women to sacrifice their family-related responsibilities? What does our government need to do to protect each woman’s basic human right to work under favorable conditions (Article 23, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights)? Lastly, as philosophers, should we strive to change the issues on the table for public debate, or merely offer intellectual insight and guidance on the issues brought forth by various public leaders and political parties?
Laurie,
Negative reproductive rights seem based on property rights. It is because women have a property right in their bodies, reproductive capacities, etc., that (as with all property rights) they have a right to use and dispose of that in which they have these rights as they see fit. This seems to be what is expressed in your claim,
"Reproductive rights are violated when individuals cannot exercise self-determination over their reproductive capacities"
But it's important that the stringency of one's reproductive rights should be derived from property rights in one's body or reproductive capacities. (I'm incidentally not sure where the proprietary rights are best or most accurately placed here). After all property rights also serve as the basis for denying the expansion reproductive rights.
You write,
"Reproductive rights are conceived negatively as a right to non-interference from others in procreative matters, and positively in terms of publicly funded reproductive health services. Reproductive rights are conceived as a right women need to achieve formal political equality (i.e., so that “biology does not become their destiny”) and as a right women require to achieve economic security. These different ways of conceiving reproductive rights are not inconsistent or mutually exclusive."
But any requirement to fund reproductive health services or to ensure economic security, etc., ignores (or seems to) the property rights of others. So, on the one hand, property rights do considerable work in the justification of negative reproductive rights and on the other hand those same property rights seem overlooked entirely in the postive version of reproductive rights. I have in mind someone who says "ok, you own your body and therefore you are protected in your autonomous choices about reproduction. But I also own things. By simple parity of reasoning I should be autonomous in my choices to fund or not fund reproductive health care, or to contribute anyone's economic security, and so on. Is that argument unfair? What did I miss?
Quite apart from this I find incredible the number and variety of rights that can be invoked at any given time. Suppose all of these rights really exist. Where on earth do they all come from? It is extremely difficult to provide a convincing basis for even the limited rights in typical social contract theory. I wonder about the basis for what we might call "abundant rights" theorists. Sometimes (I mean, as far as I can tell) these rights appear from nowhere.
Posted by: Mike Almeida | April 15, 2006 at 08:54 PM
Laurie,
Nice post--lots of questions there! My fairly unreflective libertarian side is sympathetic with the concern raised by Mike, and it always gets sensitive around this time of year, when I'm paying taxes and once again made aware of the Child Tax credit (just one way that the childless are made to subsidize others' parenthood). But another side of me certainly thinks that we should fund health care costs associated with preganancy and child-rearing. However, I'm tempted to think this not because parents have a right to the income of childless adults, but because of a quasi-Rawlsian, "we're all in this thing together" attitude that suggests children should be given basic healthcare as an ingredient in equality of opportunity. But, then, this would be a right of the child, not a right of the woman who bears or rears the child. Thus I'm not sure that this kind of thing is best conceived of as a reproductive right. Also, it seems at least possible that we could keep this way of thinking and still ensure economic equity for women.
Posted by: Josh Glasgow | April 15, 2006 at 10:49 PM
Mike, I was wondering if you could pinpoint what you meant by the last sentence of this:
"But it's important that the stringency of one's reproductive rights should be derived from property rights in one's body or reproductive capacities. (I'm incidentally not sure where the proprietary rights are best or most accurately placed here). After all property rights also serve as the basis for denying the expansion reproductive rights."
Are you saying that if reproductive rights include more than simply the negative right not to have one's reproductive activity interfered with (say, the right to have a publicly funded abortion), then that butts up against others' negative property rights?
I've got to say I don't find the property right approach appealing here. First, it seems to rely upon self-ownership, a contentious idea in the first place. Some sort of dualistic metaphysics seems required in order to make sense of our owning our bodies (since ownership itself seems to imply a distinction between owner and owned). And surely reservations about the limits of such a property right would be warranted. Do we want to say that because reproductive rights are property rights that women should be able to sell their fetuses (or the parts thereof), or to sign on for work as indentured sex slaves? The challenge here for non-opponents of abortion is to identify a reproductive right that is (a) grounded in property, (b) justifies abortion in at least some circumstances, but (c) doesn't also license other morally dubious exercises of this property-based reproductive right. Possible?
And rhetorically, property talk plays directly into the views of those who opppose abortion, since it implies that fetuses are commodities created by a women's labor -- not exactly an exalted view of the moral status of the fetus.
And should we be so willing to say that the reproductive right in question is only negative? That position seems to make sense of why forced pregnancy, forced sterilization, compulsory abortion, and abortion bans, are wrong. But it also negelcts the fact that many insurers fund fertility treatments, especially but not exclusively for men. I guess if the reproductive right is negative only, then those policies are unjustified.
If we are to use the language of rights here, I think the notion of rights as claims that protect basic interests is likely to be more fruitful than attempts to reduce reproductive rights to some other right. I also think Laurie is making a really intriguing point about how abortion gets framed as a moral question, namely, as a decontextualized, individual moral choice that women make. This tends to favor (I think) the opponents of abortion who invoke personal responsibility. But if abortion was seen as a choice made in the context of other economic and social factors that could be changed through social policy, factors that provide some women and their families with stronger incentives to have abortions than are provided to other women and families, then discussions of abortion would likely see it as a tragic or awful (but perhaps justified) decision in some cases. To sum up this last point, there's a tendency to conceive of abortion as a choice made in morally ideal circumstances rather than in decidely non-ideal circumstances.
Posted by: Michael Cholbi | April 16, 2006 at 01:02 PM
Mike A. asks some very good questions (particularly in his observations about "abundant rights" -- after all, the UDHR says paid holidays are a basic human right!)
On to Michael C's comments:
Some sort of dualistic metaphysics seems required in order to make sense of our owning our bodies (since ownership itself seems to imply a distinction between owner and owned).
This is very opaque to me. The notion of self-ownership seems to me a very clear and plausible one. Consider the analogous idea of self-government. Is this equally difficult to make sense of, since government "seems to imply" a distinction between governor and governed? I don't see how.
Do we want to say that because reproductive rights are property rights that women should be able to sell their fetuses (or the parts thereof), or to sign on for work as indentured sex slaves?
The former problem is a non-issue for those who think fetuses also have property rights in themselves, rights which would be violated by selling the fetus or its parts. (For those who think the fetus has no rights or basic interests at all -- a position to which anyone accepting a right to abortion seems committed -- selling the fetus seems unproblematic.)
The second problem echoes Mill's worry about whether free people have the right to sell themselves into slavery. His answer was no, as I recall, because the right to liberty is inalienable, and cannot be delegated or forfeited. That seems a perfectly good answer in this case too.
I guess if the reproductive right is negative only, then those policies [that fund fertility treatments] are unjustified.
I don't follow this at all -- can you clarify why a voluntary contract to provide fertility services (or funding therefor) violates anyone's rights, positive or negative? Are you assuming that these treatments are publicly funded?
Posted by: asg | April 16, 2006 at 02:10 PM
Mike C,
I'm not sure how much of your comment was directed to me. But I'll say a few things. My point (in the excerpt you quote) was a conditional one. It looked to me like Laurie was basing reproductive rights on property rights (in this case, self-ownership), since reproductive rights justify an extensive autonomy over one's reproductive choices. But if that is true then the very same basis (i.e., property rights) would justify autonomy over other objects of ownership. And I think this undermines the defense of positive reproductive rights.
On the question of self-ownership, I don't see the conceptual problem. Suppose I am identical to my body. I am then both the object of ownership and the subject of ownership. But then, I can also lift my body and move my body and destroy my body: in these cases too the object (that which is destroyed, moved, lifted) is also the subject (the thing doing the destroying, lifting, moving). No incoherence there that I can see.
But you add,
"If we are to use the language of rights here, I think the notion of rights as claims that protect basic interests is likely to be more fruitful than attempts to reduce reproductive rights to some other right."
I have no quarrel with this formulation. But how exactly do we decide which rights are basic? A typical social contract approach--say an approach like Scanlon's--would use a criterion like "reasonable rejectability". The sorts of protections we get are the familiar negative duties--and correponding rights--that are in the interest of each person independent of other contingent features about them.
What you won't find unrejected is the proposal that each contribute to the economic security of specifically women or specifically men or specifically those pursuing a tennis career or specifically surfers, etc. I can't see a positive *right* to any of these things. Seeing to the economic security of others is closer to a duty of beneficence: these duties entail no rights on behalf of the beneficiaries. But I'm prepared to listen to arguments to the contrary.
About contextualizing discussions of abortion, you write,
"if abortion was seen as a choice made in the context of other economic and social factors that could be changed through social policy, factors that provide some women and their families with stronger incentives to have abortions than are provided to other women and families, then discussions of abortion would likely see it as a tragic or awful (but perhaps justified) decision in some cases"
You seem to be saying that the abortion question has more dimensions to it than the moral dimension. If that's it, I agree. But you might be saying that there are non-moral considerations that override moral considerations in this case. If so, I'm sure I'd disagree. I'm not sure I could be persuaded that moral considerations do not trump others. But let me try to be clear about this: I'm not denying that social, psychological, historical, medical, economic etc. facts about particular cases of abortion mitigate strongly against the attributions of moral responsiblity. They certainly do. But I'm making no claims above about attributions of responsibility. I'm rather talking about how we determine the permissiblity of abortion. And that seems to me entirely a moral question (and not a sociological, historical, medical or economic question).
Posted by: Mike Almeida | April 16, 2006 at 02:22 PM
Let me add another vote for finding the idea of self-ownership deeply mysterious, at least if it is taken literally. It is natural to be a Humean about property and regard it as the product of convention and artifice. But the rights that it is natural to ascribe to a person that neo-Lockeans would account for in terms of self-ownership plausible exist prior to the institution of property. It strikes me that insofar as it is illuminating, the notion of of self-ownership is a metaphor and hence cannot do the relevant explanatory work.
"Women of color ... were not typically subject to pressures to reproduce" Um, what neighborhood did you grow up in? Beware of armchair sociology...
Posted by: Mark Eli Kalderon | April 16, 2006 at 02:33 PM
ASG,
Here are some of the main arguments against the notion of self-ownership, cashed out as a property right at least:
Suppose I own myself, i.e., I have a property right in myself.
(a) To have a property right in a thing requires the thing to have been acquired justly. But I didn't acquire myself at all.
(b) To have a property right in a thing allows me to liberate myself from that thing. But I can't liberate myself from myself.
(c) To have a property right in a thing is to have a claim on that thing irrespective of my physical proximity to it (e.g., I don't have to be on my land in order to have a property right in it). But I am necessarily physically proximate to myself.
(d) To have a property right in a thing is to have the right to improve that thing by adding value to it. But if I own myself, I would both have a right to improve myself and have a right to refuse to be improved.
All of these arguments can be answered if we suppose that 'I' and 'myself' in 'I own myself' do not co-refer. So some sort of dualism seems like an obvious route here. Notice even that those philosophers thought to invoke self-ownership, most notably Locke, don't take the notion literally; in Locke's case our bodies are on loan to ourselves as houses God gave us for our souls to reside in. In any event, perhaps some other non-property-involving notion (autonomy is a popular candidate) can license the claims about rights and liberties that property-based self-ownership does. And the analogy to self-government is not very tight: If self-government means something like democratic government, then self-government is not a genuinely reflexive relation. So if it's implausible to invoke self-ownership in general, it's equally implausible to say that fetuses are self-owners.
As for the point about a positive right: As the point about insurers suggests, some people believe, or adopt policies that might suggest, that individuals have a claim on others' resources to enable them to reproduce, effectively making reproductive rights a positive or claim right. This would hold true either when feritility treatments are publicly funded or covered by insurance plans in which there are rules about how individuals can benefit from the common pool of medical resources. So my point was not intended to be about person-to-person voluntary agreements to provide fertility treatments.
Posted by: Michael Cholbi | April 16, 2006 at 02:46 PM
Mike C, you kindly offer these arguments against self-ownership. I'm not so convinced by these.
"Suppose I own myself, i.e., I have a property right in myself.
(a) To have a property right in a thing requires the thing to have been acquired justly. But I didn't acquire myself at all."
How do you know that? There are quite reasonable views of property acquisition on which you do acquire yourself justly. You happen to find yourself in possession of yourself (Nozick uses the example of luckily finding a $10 bill or luckily winning the lottery or luckly being the object of someone's gift). All chancy events that justify ownership on this (I think fairly reasonable) view. And I'm not even a libertarian!
"(b) To have a property right in a thing allows me to liberate myself from that thing. But I can't liberate myself from myself."
Sure you can. But the liberation is permanent.
"(c) To have a property right in a thing is to have a claim on that thing irrespective of my physical proximity to it (e.g., I don't have to be on my land in order to have a property right in it). But I am necessarily physically proximate to myself."
But you could cease to exist altogether (as above). How is it that you are *necessarily* physically proximate to yourself?
"(d) To have a property right in a thing is to have the right to improve that thing by adding value to it. But if I own myself, I would both have a right to improve myself and have a right to refuse to be improved."
Yes, and you could do the same thing with your land. Since it's yours, you have both a right to improve it and a right to refuse to improve it. You'd waste a lot of time out in the field with that conversation, but you could do it.
Posted by: Mike Almeida | April 16, 2006 at 03:29 PM
Mike A.,
I'm not sure that I'm totally opposed to self-ownership talk, but I suspect (echoing Mark's intervention) that it's derivative of some more basic moral concept. But as to the arguments against it:
(a) You seem to be supposing that this arugment has to do with desert or effort. Nozick's examples of lucky acquisition are still examples of acquisition; something happens that creates my property right. What's the acquisition event (granting that it could be chancy as you put) tnrough which I got a property right in me?
(b) I don't see how "liberation is permanent" (or temporary either). If you kill yourself, you don't liberate you from you. You destroy you. In contrast, I can throw my wallet in the ocean and continue to exist.
(c) As in (b), the intended meaning is that you are proximate to yourself so long as you exist. When you don't exist, there's no you to be proximate to.
(d) Admittedly, this is a pragmatic kind of argument (and probably not the best of the lot).
But again, I think the larger points here are:
[1] There's probably some other moral notion that could do the normative work that self-ownership does without a lot of its baggage.
[2] In the discussion of abortion, understanding reproductive rights as akin to property may prove too much and be profoundly unconvincing to those who believe that the fetus enjoys a moral status quite different from that of property. For them, the fetus' humanity is much more crucial than its (alleged) status as the mother's property.
Posted by: Michael Cholbi | April 16, 2006 at 04:03 PM
Perhaps I should clarify that I was not endorsing a particular conception of reproductive rights, but rather exploring how useful this concept is in promoting some of the goals of the women's and "reproductive rights" movement. I'm somewhat of a pluralist, and can accept that, in different contexts, emphasizing one or another conception of rights may be more or less helpful. Of the various ways to conceive reproductive rights, I don't find the property rights conception particularly helpful, because it fails to resolve some of the difficult issues. For example, even if we have ownership rights over something, our right to exploit or dispose of that thing can (and should) be balanced against public interests (for example, legal restrictions on land development, the destruction of historical buildings or artifacts, trees or habitats, etc.). So conceiving "reproductive rights" as property rights, just shifts the discussion to how my treatment of my body or fetus should be balanced against various public interests (esp. our interest in protecting human life and liberty).
The discussion, though, makes evident why the move from "abortion rights" to "reproductive rights" is probably a wise move. Until abortions could be performed safely, few women's rights or health activists would have asserted even a negative individual right to an abortion. And because an abortion generally requires the skills and cooperation of others (to make it safe), or perhaps because at different historical moments it denotes different practices and procedures, it's difficult to defend abortion (or feticide) as a basic human right, or a fundamental right of citizenship. So "reproductive rights" is a richer concept, not only because it covers claims to more kinds of goods and interests, but because it permits a wider range of moral and political interpretations.
Yet despite its interpretive possibilities, I am wondering if it is really useful for articulating and demanding policies that can address the concerns of those who see unrestricted access to abortion as crucial for women. In other words, if women could compete fairly for good jobs, if more women were socially empowered to demand an equal distribution of labor in the family or home sphere, and if we had universal health insurance and affordable child care, would women need relatively unrestricted access to abortion? And if we focus too much on the latter until we achieve some of the former, will we make too little progress toward the former?
Moreover, if "reproductive rights" is just a better banner for "abortion rights," then discussions about women's rights will get bogged down in discussions about permitting women to take actions that appear to many to be morally questionable.
On the issue of women of color and pressures to reproduce, I meant general social pressures, not family or other pressures. There is a growing body of evidence that women of color in the U.S. (esp. Native American, African American, Mexican American, and Puerto Rican women) have been subject more than other women (even poor white women) to forced sterilization and coercive birth control practices. See, for example, *Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice.* I take the general social pressures and messages women of color still experience (by doctors, government agencies, employers and co-workers, etc.) that their desires for children are irresponsible, as a lower level of pressure (if not negative pressure) to reproduce.
Posted by: Laurie Shrage | April 16, 2006 at 04:14 PM
In other words, if women could compete fairly for good jobs, if more women were socially empowered to demand an equal distribution of labor in the family or home sphere, and if we had universal health insurance and affordable child care, would women need relatively unrestricted access to abortion?
I'm definitely not following you here. How would any or all of these policies render the idea of unrestricted access to abortion less compelling, for those who believe in it? I mean, obviously "affordable child care" would mean that women might be less likely to choose abortion, since the cost of raising a child would be reduced, but unless you are writing off those at the margin -- the ones who don't want children period -- then you will still need access to abortion. Unless, of course, you are positing some kind of system where the rule about who gets access to abortion is not identical for all women.
Posted by: asg | April 16, 2006 at 05:32 PM
One aspect of the abortion debate which is often obscured is that, for those who do not hold extreme views on abortion (e.g., every abortion or no abortion should be allowed), the debate is really over how restricted or permitted it should be (up to 3 months, 6 months, in cases of medical hardship, social hardship such as incest and rape, when there are fetal disabilities and how severe...?) In fighting to defend Roe, reproductive rights activists are fighting not for legal abortion but to maintain legal guidelines that significantly limit how states can restrict abortion (e.g., they can do it by removing public funding or requiring counseling and approval for minors, but not by prohibiting 2nd trimester abortions in healthy pregnancies). As someone who is "pro-choice," I'm less convinced that the legal guidelines in Roe are worth fighting for if it means women's groups alienate a large segment of the public and fail to win support for other initiatives. I think moderately restricted access can be morally and politically justified (e.g., unrestricted access for 3 months and then after that only in cases of serious medical and social hardship), and such access would address many of the concerns both feminists and some "pro-life" folks have. Moreover, if by defusing the issue, some of the punitive restrictions on funding were removed, then we would create a system where access to abortion was more rather than less identical for all women.
As a historical note, I remember in 60s and 70s, many feminists defended legal abortion in terms of women's sexual rights rather than reproductive rights. The idea was, without access to abortion as back-up birth control, women would not really have an equal right to sexual expression and freedom. For somewhat obvious reasons, we don't hear this argument as much today--probably because it proved to be less politically effective and it relied on fairly narrow and heterosexist notions of sex. In a more or less liberated era, pressing for the right to intercourse with men without consequences just doesn't fly, either with feminists (post-Andrea Dworkin :)) or conservatives. But the notion of "reproductive rights" did fly, and I'm wondering if it's not as useful as it has seemed for several decades now.
Posted by: Laurie Shrage | April 16, 2006 at 07:27 PM
I'm going to posture more than argue because I'm tired after a long drive from a very nice conference in Missouri. But I want to endorse Mark K's idea that it is a mistake to ground rights to autonomy of various sorts in property rights. And even if you think that it would be a good idea to do so, I can't see why one should attribute that idea or commitment to anyone who doesn't explicitly endorse it. Why think that rights to certain sorts of control over oneself have to derive from anything of this sort?
And, it has by now long been a standard move to point out that property rights consist in a "bundle" of other rights, which could be mixed and matched in various ways (I first heard this from Josh Cohen, but I think the idea is due to the legal realists of the early 20th century.) These are rights to use, control, benefit from, exclude others from, bequeath, destroy and so on. It does not seem to me that they form a natural or moral kind such that one could not coherently think some of these rights are worth having whereas others are pernicious.
If that's right, when someone wants control over a certain aspect of their lives, calling it a property right doesn't really help us justify it. Because we can, consistently with that thought, combine it with any or none of the other rights in the bundle that usually make up property in a given society. You're going to have to make the argument as to why this right should be in the bundle at that point, and that presumably will involve defending the right in question on its merits.
If anything, it seems to me, that the order of explanation would have to be the other way around if you thought that some particular package of rights was the correct package to attribute to people. You would have to argue why including each one of these in the package was a good idea. Different sorts of theorists will do that differently - consequentialists of a certain stripe might argue that this package including this element would, if recognized, have better consequences. Certain sorts of deontologists would possibly argue that what these rights protect is an essential human good of the sort that we owe it to each other to respect the exercise of the capacity protected by the right in question and so on. Unless you thought (implausibly I believe) that some specific bundle could be shown to be special without engaging in argument defending the particular components, I don't see how calling this a property right advances things.
Posted by: Mark van Roojen | April 16, 2006 at 07:43 PM
". . . when someone wants control over a certain aspect of their lives, calling it a property right doesn't really help us justify it. Because we can, consistently with that thought, combine it with any or none of the other rights in the bundle that usually make up property in a given society."
What is the argument supposed to be? There is this "bundle of rights" relative to X only some of which on some occasions are entailed by a property right relative to X? Or is it something like, no member of this bundle of rights relative to X bears any logical relation at all to the possession of a property right relative to X, so we are free to "combine" the property right with any subset of these?
I can't tell, but the claim seems be that the vagueness of 'property rights' precludes the appeal to property rights in justifying one's extensive control (and, worse, this has been known since the early 1900's or so. . .!). Something like this. So what the heck, suppose the phrase is vague. Still, when someone claims control over X, claiming that one has a property right over X does justify that claim to control. Of course the extent of that control might be indeterminate. But the suggestion that it "doesn't really help" in the justification is just incredible. On the other hand, am I supposed to believe that bundle of rights talk is more perspicuous here than property rights talk? Of course the appeal to property rights helps, even if the control justified by such rights is indeterminate.
Posted by: Mike Almeida | April 16, 2006 at 09:29 PM
Thanks Laurie, I see better what you meant about the pressure to reproduce among women of color. The original link to the piece on eugenecist policies was about Native American women and did not support your general claim. But I still suspect that the relevant sociology is hard to assess. Thus for example teenage pregnancy rates are higher among African American women than among white women, but this is probably better explained by class than race (given the relative numbers below the poverty line). But notice that's not family or personal pressure, it's the effects of poverty.
The fact that the relevant sociology is unobvious effects in obvious ways your suggestion about how the abortion debate should shift since the shift you recommend depends on undefended explanatory claims.
Posted by: Mark Eli Kalderon | April 16, 2006 at 10:26 PM
Mike,
I guess I think I can live with ordinary vagueness in the content of a right if there are central cases and the central cases are the ones we are talking about. That is supposing that the right we are using for the justification itself has been justified in some independent way. But here I think there just is no moral unity to the different sorts of control that have come to define property rights in an advanced capitalist economy. I think there are social and economic stories to be told about why they go together in our society, but that is different.
Since I think there is no moral rationale for treating each of the rights in the current standard bundle as on a par or as part of one master right, I think you are better off making direct arguments about each component, such as for example the right to make decisions regarding reproduction. (And with respect to rights of control over ourselves, I think that the analogy with property under-emphasizes their importance or status.)
You could of course show that I'm wrong by providing a justification of the standard bundle that showed that each part (or most of the parts) of the bundle were required by an argument of roughly the same sort. I guess you could also think that it was just intuitively obvious that property as normally constituted in our society was a natural kind with basic moral relevance. But I don't have that intuition and I would be inclined to think that there were sociological explanations if people did think they had such an intuition.
As for my comment that the idea of a bundle goes back a long ways, I was just trying to point out that there was nothing much original in what I was saying - that others had said it before. I'm sorry if that came off as an insult.
Posted by: Mark van Roojen | April 17, 2006 at 11:21 AM