Abortion and the republic of the obedient silent

One remarkable fact about the anti-abortionist crusade to make fetuses persons who are bearers of the rights due citizens is that this means that citizens, though they enjoy the protection of the laws, do not have to be conscious subjects of any thinking or feeling; indeed, need not be conscious at all, or capable of being such in their present shape and form. These "citizens" don't have a voice (others must speak in their behalf) and cannot say yes or no to anything. They are therefore unlikely to disobey, and perhaps should be considered as like today's labor unions, which mostly have no-strike pledges. The authorities will decide what is to be done with these citizens who, lacking voice and will, are perhaps the ultimate compliant subjects of governance. Coincidentally, at the same time one-half the population of persons in the old sense have limited rights, their own will being apparently for the government something of a liability.

If fetuses are the standard bearers of rights, then the right to life triumphs over liberty and the right to choose a form of life. This can only be because the latter is biologized. The real problem with this thinking may be that what are effectively animal rights triumph, along with humanitarian charity, over the potentialities of citizenship. Rights to speak and otherwise participate in processes of governance as well as lifestyle choice begin to seem outside the scope of what matters. Just as pregnancy becomes a job one is enslaved to the performance of, as one cannot quit and do something else instead.

It is partly in ways like this that a far-right ideology advances, undermining our republic from within in the interest of the authoritarianism of governance by pure command and obedience.