Question One of the most common justifications I hear for abortion is "a woman should have control over her body." If humans reproduced oviparously, would that change the debate? Let's say a woman conceives a child, and then immediately lays an egg. The egg would still need incubation and maintenance, though this could be performed by any party, not just the mother. After nine months of development, the egg would hatch into a baby human. Would a woman be justified in crushing this egg? This mimics the abortion debate, except that in this case the fetus cannot be addressed as part of the woman's body. Would that invalidate any abortion arguments?

Accepted:
November 10, 2008

Comments

There are several different questions here. The first is whether, in the circumstances imagined, one would have a right to kill the developing ovum, or whatever. The second is whether a negative answer to this question would invalidate arguments in favor of the the permissibility of abortion.

Let me answer the second question first. I think the answer here is "No": At least, I don't see that there are any very plausible arguments it would undermine. If you consider, for example, the central argument of Judith Jarvis Thomson's famous paper "A Defense of Abortion", it depends crucially upon the fact that the developing fetus is dependent upon the woman's body and that the woman's body is affected by the presence of the fetus. Thomson then argues, largely by analogy, that a woman is not morally obligated to carry a fetus under those circumstances. It's this kind of argument that I take to be summed up by "a woman should have control over what happens in and to her body".

Thomson actually does consider the question whether a woman has a right to see to the death of the fetus, as well as having the right to remove it from her body. I don't recall exactly what conclusion she reaches. But my recollection is that she does not come down strongly in favor of saying the woman does have a right to see to the death of the fetus. What complicates the issue is the supposition that the woman is supposed to bear some responsibility for the fetus after its disconnection from her, and you do not say whether you are supposing that there would be such a responsibility if reproduction were oviparous. If not, then it's very hard to see why the woman would have a right to "crush" the egg. If so, however, then there is more to discuss.

What's important here is that this kind of argument, concerning the responsibility a woman would, in your example, have for the egg and its eventual human product is quite different from the control over one's body argument, and one could perfectly well have different views about them.