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People should be consistent about their beliefs. Let’s put a bodily autonomy situation to the test.
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Major Premise: Any moral principle protecting a woman’s bodily autonomy and safety must be applied consistently to all areas where her biological sex is directly relevant.
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Minor Premise 1: Abortion rights protect a woman’s bodily autonomy.
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Minor Premise 2: Female-only spaces protect a woman’s safety and dignity, which are inseparable from her biological sex.
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Conclusion: Therefore, just as abortion is morally protected for bodily autonomy, the right of women to control access to female-only spaces must also be morally protected
Let’s consider a possible counter –
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Trans inclusion claim: Some argue trans women should access female spaces.
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Counterpoint: Biological sex, not gender identity, determines risk factors (e.g., privacy violations, physical safety concerns), which are the basis for female-only spaces. Moral protection of women’s autonomy and safety therefore cannot be overridden by gender identity claims.
This (and logic generally) only works if you belief in objective truth and a shared common reality. Social constructivists are bound by neither, so this argument probably wouldn’t work well with them.
Wow, if you ever need to get your blood pressure up just look up the abortion tag in wordpress. The amount of anti-woman propaganda that is out there is deeply depressing. Thankfully the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada has a nice mission statement summarizing why abortion is necessary:
Our Mission
Our Mission: To ensure women’s reproductive freedom by protecting and advancing access to abortion and quality reproductive health care.
Our Vision
The ARCC is “pro-choice” and affirms the following:
* To achieve equality, all women must have the right to decide for themselves whether and when they will bear children, and how many. Without control of their fertility, women cannot have autonomy over their lives and cannot play a full and equal role in society.
* Women have a constitutionally-based right to unrestricted, fully-funded abortion, without legal or other barriers or discrimination due to gender, class, ethnicity, race, age, location/region (or area of residence), or any other characteristic, including reasons for choosing an abortion. The rights of pregnant women must not be abridged—a pregnant woman is “one person” under the constitution.
* Women have the right to receive a full range of reproductive healthcare options, services, and information, including (but not limited to) medical and surgical abortion, contraception, family planning services, and comprehensive sexual health education.
* Women have the right to access reproductive healthcare services safely and in a timely manner, in an atmosphere of dignity, privacy, respect, trust, and compassion.
* All abortions are medically required—not “elective”—and fall under the protection of the Canada Health Act (just like all childbirths). The delivery and funding of abortion and other medically required reproductive healthcare services must meet the Act’s five principles.
* Providers of reproductive health care services have the right to deliver such services free of discrimination, harassment, and violence.
Read the first part here and part two here , part three here part four here if you need to catch up.
Conclusion: The Digital Revolution: Evolve or Die.
“In order to secure for individuals in society an adequate information environment, we would have to provide for resource spaces within which no one is susceptible to manipulation by others, at least not as a result of legally-backed rights to provide or deny access to information and communications resources. We also would have to secure sufficient minimal access to the means of producing and exchanging information and cultural expressions so as to provide to all a robust and diverse set of perspectives on how life can be lived and on why life is better lived one way than another.”
-Yochai Benkler -SIREN SONGS AND AMISH CHILDREN: AUTONOMY, INFORMATION, AND LAW
Part 4 is fresh off the press, read the first part here and part two here , part three here if you need to catch up.
Section Three: Evolution, Reactions and Compromise.
“The Internet is the widest public space that mankind has ever known. A space where everybody can have their say, acquire knowledge, create ideas and not just information, exercise their right to criticize, to discuss, to take part in the broader political life, and thus to build a different world of which everybody can claim to be an equal citizen”
–An excerpt from the proposed Internet Bill of Rights.[1]
[1] Collaborative work. “The Internet Bill of Rights” Last updated: November, 2005. http://internet-bill-of-rights.org/en/appeal.php Accessed: August 10, 2008.
Part 3 is fresh off the press, read the first part here and part two here if you need to catch up.
Section Two – Democracy, Autonomy and Copyright.
“I argue that a purely market-focused information policy—in particular one focused on exhaustive propertization of the physical, logical, and content layers of the information environment—exacts a significant normative social cost in terms of personal autonomy”.
-Yochai Benkler –SIREN SONGS AND AMISH CHILDREN: AUTONOMY, INFORMATION, AND LAW.
The introduction can be found here
Section One: The Permission Culture – Antagonist or Friend of Free Culture?
“Copyright may be property, but like all property, it is also a form of regulation. It is a regulation that benefits some and harms others. When done right, it benefits creators and harms leeches. When done wrong, it is regulation the powerful use to defeat competitors.”
– Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture.
The internet has drastically changed western culture. It has opened up new avenues of communication and ways for people to share information and ideas. Lawrence Lessig is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the school’s Center for Internet and Society and Author of Free Culture a work the essay is based on. Yochai Benkler is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard, and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, I used his article Siren Songs and Amish Children: Autonomy, Information, and Law to look at issues of autonomy, freedom and how they intersect with the digital world.
It is a long essay, so I will post it in 3 parts over the next couple of days.
** Note, this essay and other essays on the site are for educational purposes only. Plagiarism is a serious academic offense. This blog is not going anywhere so cite a reference if you use my work. Plus, if you can google this essay, so can your prof. **
The introduction and thesis: Read the rest of this entry »
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