Charlie Kirk has an interesting business model.  He goes where young adults congregate (presumably college campuses), sets up a booth, and has debates with whoever approaches his microphone.  Then he posts the videos for clicks and (again, presumably) collects advertising revenue.

In this video, he stumps a young woman on the issue of abortion.  Kirk’s states the position that abortion is never medically necessary, to which she replies by asking if he’s a doctor.  He cites ob-gyns who agree with him, and she asks whose decision it is to make between these two camps.  His redirect is to ask if a mother can kill a two-year-old child.  When she replies, “no,” he asks if she’s a doctor.  If she can have a moral position on infanticide, why does the child’s presence in the womb matter?

To be sure, Kirk is bobbing and weaving through some helpful ambiguities, here; while we’ll avoid the slippery act of articulating them, one could imagine circumstances in which we might morally and/or legally excuse a mother who kills her child.  But the video is a helpful reminder that people don’t think through the principles on which they act and vote as well as they should.  The obvious answer to Kirk’s deeper point is that the implicit use of the mother’s body creates a distinction at birth.  Indeed, that distinction underlies some pro-lifers’ allowable exception for instances of rape (if they’re being principled and not just making political concessions).  The mother did not consent to the act that created the baby, and her rapists cannot conscribe her to the carrying and delivery of the child.

While that distinction may allow a rhetorical resting point sufficient for political compromise, it doesn’t supply an end point.  Regardless of the child’s parentage, most people agree (and stories of this sort sometimes reach public awareness) that the mother can’t simply throw him or her in a dumpster to die or abandon an older child deep in the woods.  She has to make some provision for the child.  That, too, is a forced use of her body.  Of course, one could reply that this hypothetical imposes only a reasonable amount of effort, but as a generic proposition, childbirth could be described the same way, and in any event, the comparison is applicable for binary questions of rights and principle.  If the decisive factor is denial of the mother’s control of her body, the same applies to a requirement that she take action.

If birth isn’t a decisive moment for the claims that a child can place on his or her mother, then what is?  We could cycle through the development of this or that organ and system on one side of the big day or the development of consciousness on the other, but then we’d drift from the important observation for this post — namely, that people aren’t generally taking their positions because they’ve thought the questions through, fully.  If they did, the issue would be a lot less polarizing, and a lot less useful for those who profit from division.

Featured image by Justin Katz using Dall-E 40.