Pro-choice and pro-gun activists are fighting for the same principle. So why are they assumed to be on opposite sides?
by Mauve Maude
September 20, 2020
I don’t think I’ve ever seen two hourglass issues, two so fundamentally and paradoxically the same, as guns and abortion. And yet, these two are considered two of America’s most divisive topics, if not the two most divisive. Oddly, it seems to me, if you know where a person stands on one issue, you can probably guess where they stand on the other. But being a born intersectionalist, I am no fan of “the same people” arguments–along the lines of “the same people who say ______ are the same ones who believe _____”. So I try to reject them. What we guess is often not the simple truth it seems to be. I’m not sure if mixing the sands on these issues would be more or less divisive. But it does seem as though one answers the other.
Starting with the obvious point: both guns and abortion can legally be used to end one life in order to protect another. Guns enable us to take, or threaten to take the lives of others, outside ourselves, who may or may not be threatening our lives or bodies. Abortions enable people to take fetal lives, inside the uteruses of willing parties, that may or may not be threatening theirs. Though guns are weapons and abortions are medical procedures, we have the Constitutional right to use either, to protect ourselves, in the name of health, safety, and bodily autonomy. How we use them is up to each of us, and the consequences, shall we choose to use them, belong to each of us alone, legally at least. That is how our Constitutional rights currently stand and empower us. The potential loss of rights, and for whom, is where we get all of our controversy and division. Who gets to keep their rights? And who gets to lose?
. . . both guns and abortion can legally be used to end one life in order to protect another.
People tend to come at these debates from two obvious main angles: the supporters and the opposition. Both are interested in protecting lives. But their positions are most likely informed by whether or not they use the rights in question. (Not always though.)
People who don’t use their Second Amendment rights are usually the first to propose banning guns, or at least specific kinds, like “assault rifles”, just like people who don’t use their abortion rights often favor banning abortions, or at least specific kinds, like “late term abortions”. These parties take the position of valuing the lives lost over the lives protected. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t value the protected lives, but most likely that they urge other forms of protection, often at whatever cost saves the lives they see as lost.
Of course, there are plenty of people who neither use guns nor support banning them, despite possibly having a great distaste for them, and holding sympathetic feelings for lost lives. There are a vast many people who’ve never had an abortion, who possibly, personally oppose them, and still support abortion rights. These parties value the lives that are protected. They put their own personal beliefs and preferences aside, leaving individual choices and consequences to individuals, who may or may not use guns or have abortions.
There are also gun owners who support common sense gun laws. And many people who’ve had abortions will speak in favor of alternatives. These parties value the lives that are ended, urging other forms of protection, or regulations, despite their personal experiences using guns or abortion.
But people who exercise their Second Amendment rights, and people who exercise the rights given to them by Roe v. Wade, and others who support them, may bristle under the constant threat, perceived or otherwise, that their rights will be taken away, lost, and therefore their bodily autonomy–the right to make personal choices about the protection of one’s own body–will be lost. They worry that their children will lose the same rights, or that they’ll never have them to begin with. They stress over what a society without bodily autonomy rights would be like. These parties value the lives protected by guns and abortion, leaving personal choices and consequences entirely to the users of these rights. The oddity I mentioned earlier is that most Americans would see these two groups of rights enthusiasts in opposing camps. But in this way, they’re both in the same boat.
bodily autonomy: the right to make personal choices about the protection of one’s own body
Not to be left out of the debate, though, are rights abusers, people who exercise their rights irresponsibly. Abusers are outliers in these arguments, but one abuser can end a lot of lives and do a lot of damage. Their actions tend to come forth loudly in opposition arguments and quietly in supportive ones. Though it’s obviously, incredibly difficult to determine what’s going on inside these people, these parties don’t necessarily value lives lost or lives protected, and they may not be grasping or even considering consequences either.
And consequences are nuanced. We have clear rights and responsibilities to settle up legal arguments over who pays for what actions. What we don’t have, are strict rules and answers to firm up moral arguments, and determine who should live with those actions. This is the source of most of our tension, especially when people call to change the legality.
When we look at the consequences for those who don’t get a choice in another person’s actions, innocents who pay the price, we see that they can take on ripple effects. We see the scores of lives cut short in mass shootings, or gang shootings, or police shootings. We hear the heartbreak of the family and friends left behind to mourn. We are all left to process the news of gun violence, even if it is relatively far away. We have to think about what we would do if we were surprised by an attacker. We have to teach our children. When a pregnancy ends without a birth, hope and potential are lost through the unborn, the beings in every single pregnancy that can’t protect themselves and don’t get a choice. Most likely, someone else is left to mourn–mothers-to-be, fathers-to-be, sometimes people who didn’t know the potentials at all. And the collective grief of these losses, no matter how much they’re personally felt by individuals, have social impact. We have to think about what we would do if we were in that situation, or if our child was in that situation. Our choices, even of those we don’t personally know, do psychologically affect us. Even the most indifferent citizen may be bothered merely by the pressure to have an opinion.
But there are also consequences for taking rights away from the chooser. Once bodily autonomy is lost, when personal choices are taken away, social boundaries can shift with disastrous results. Removed from one area, protective choices can be removed from another area, what some refer to as the “slippery slope”. Rape and incest, for example, already extremely difficult to regulate, become virtually impossible to regulate. Bodily autonomy–the right to one’s own–and the theft of it, is exactly what qualifies rape and incest as criminal. Without it, rape and incest can become normalized and run rampant, impunitively. When rape and incest then result in pregnancies, lives can be destroyed or literally lost without any hope of justice. Murder and abuse are unquestionably more likely when victims are vulnerable, unprotected. When we lose our right to protect ourselves from other individuals, we lose our right to protect ourselves from larger entities too. Lives are destroyed or lost altogether when one loses the right to protect, and then we all lose the right to protect. This can profoundly affect a society’s ability to function, or just devastate it entirely.
Once bodily autonomy is lost, when personal choices are taken away, social boundaries can shift with disastrous results.
Personal choices, or the lack thereof, have profound effects. That’s why we value them. As it stands, we do have rights to them, that can be used responsibly or taken away. So how practical are bans in alleviating those effects? And how practical is responsibility?
The main argument rights enthusiasts make against bans is that they don’t stop abusers, and this has been learned over and over. Only the law-abiding obey bans. Others, for whatever reasons or circumstances, go around them. They find ways of procuring the banned instrument, whether it be an abortion, a rifle, or a book. So the only ones who really lose their rights are the ones who follow the rules, who are in fact, in the majority. They are widely halted, stifled, and devalued. However, bans do make attaining these tools criminal, and therefore more dangerous. When the law is removed, enforcement and safety go with it. So there’s no telling how high a price a desperate person might pay to get what they’re after. Possibly their lives, or someone else’s. Simply put, bans take rights away and don’t make anybody safer.
So how do we practice responsibility?
This question quickly becomes a network of fine lines, in which context is everything. Who gets to decide whether someone is a user or an abuser, and when? Can we accurately decide before one commits a gun crime or even buys a gun that they will commit a crime? Can we assume every carrier is responsible? When is an abortion responsible or irresponsible, selfless or selfish, humane or inhumane? Can it ever be both? Is it fair to say police officers and soldiers are just in it to kill? Should everyone in a uniform be trusted? Can we always tell where these answers are, even if we’re in context, much less out of it?
In most arguments about these conundrums, people focus on two things, beyond the legality of the weapon or the abortion: motivation and consequence. Why is a person shooting another person? Why is somebody having an abortion? Differing circumstances can provide nearly endless answers to those questions, but most of those answers are going to boil down to protection of one’s life. That’s what these tools are for.
So people ask what put them in that situation? How did their lives come into such danger? And was it their own fault? Was there any other option? Could it have been prevented? Almost anyone would sympathize with a person who is attacked and has no help, no other way to protect themselves, other than to shoot. Just as almost anyone would sympathize with a woman who wants her child, but whose life is undeniably, medically threatened by the pregnancy (for example, someone who’s actively suffering a miscarriage, and needs the fetus removed to prevent a deadly infection). Some people offer much less sympathy to a police officer who shoots a suspect who didn’t threaten their life without a doubt, or an adult who decides to have an abortion after consensual sex. The police officer accepts the danger when he takes the job. A woman accepts the risk of pregnancy when she consensually has unprotected sex. Do either of these choices, these circumstances, mean a police officer or a pregnant person can’t choose to protect their own lives when they find themselves in that situation? Can we accurately say what they should have done, without being in their shoes? And what about all the gray areas in between the home invasion and the officer who shot, the miscarriage and the woman who terminated? Shouldn’t victims of rape and incest be allowed to terminate their pregnancies? Should minors? Should civilians be allowed to shoot people who are engaging in crime, like burglars breaking into a neighbor’s house, when their lives aren’t directly threatened? Should a concerned neighbor be allowed to shoot when they’re attacked by a suspect they themselves pursued? Should a person be allowed to terminate a pregnancy just because pregnancy is a health risk? Or because their birth control failed? What’s the penalty for a parent who shoots their teenager sneaking back into the house at three in the morning? Or a parent who forgets to keep their gun away from their child? If an anti-abortion protester opens fire on an abortion clinic and kills a patient, it’s murder. But how many people did they kill? Who decides?
And if no crime is committed, if one is protecting themselves, does it make a difference whether the life they’re ending is inside their own body or outside of it? Should we make a crime out of something that’s not?
A network of fine lines, in which context is everything
We ask these questions, or refuse to ask them, in order to rationalize, and equalize our own comfort. We often forget that our discomfort is with another person’s situation. We certainly don’t have a legal obligation to protect what doesn’t belong to us. But do we have the right to protect something, or somebody, who doesn’t belong to us? Do we have a moral obligation to do so? A moral right? Do we all belong to each other? Should we have a say, or not? If sometimes, when?
When does it become okay to support one, but not the other?
What do you think? I would like to hear from you, but you won’t find the typical Comments section here. If you have given the issue some thought or have an experience to share, please enter it here, or send your response to Maude@mauvereport.com. I would like to share viewpoints from all sides. You can read what other readers had to say below.
Commentary
“Very interesting parallel that I haven’t thought of – thank you! I have tended to compare and contrast abortion with inoculations, since they both deal with bodily autonomy. But you have made some insightful connections between gun ownership and pro-choice that I, frankly, have never considered, and with deft attention to nuance. Motivation and consequence.” Lisa Wiedmann, Germany, October 27, 2020
“I was recently thinking about how in both cases, even if illegal, these both still happen; i.e. they can both be bought with enough money. Making it harder mostly for the poor when either are illegal; like most things in life. . .” Laurea, Colorado, September 20, 2020