My almost-eight-year-old daughter and I have been reading the Little House series, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, together. As a child, I loved every one of these books, and it’s so lovely to share them with her, and see how much she’s loving them too. (There are some problematic elements to the series, specifically racism, and some body image issues, and we have used them as an opportunity for discussion).

The other day, my daughter asked me why Laura has to be a schoolteacher rather than just picking her own job. When I explained that the idea of people picking their own jobs, rather than doing what their parents wanted them to do, was a very recent phenomenon, it was somewhat gratifying to see how hard it was for my little girl to get her head around this concept. I felt somewhat proud of the fact that she’d managed to get to nearly eight years of age without encountering the idea that someone might put limits on someone else’s career or life choices. Her natural instinct in favour of freedom and choice was very evident.

Humans all share this instinct for liberty. We all dislike, often strongly dislike, having our choices taken away from us, and this is quite evident to those of us who are pro-choice, or who spend time with and understand pro-choice people. It is a simple fact that parenting massively impinges on our freedom and choices, and the idea that someone might find themselves having their freedom so severely curtailed without having chosen to put themselves in that position can feel like a massive injustice.

I think in the case of abortion though, people who raise arguments based on “choice” are often drawing on two distinct types of freedom. We have blogged about these two different versions of freedom before. One concerns bodily autonomy specifically: the right to not have your body used against your will. The other concerns general autonomy: the many real ways in which parenting restricts your autonomy.

One point I blog about a lot (sorry, I know I’m a broken record) is the difference between personhood and bodily rights arguments, and why it’s important to keep the two debates separate. If someone is raising bodily rights arguments, it’s important to address that point, rather than to respond using personhood arguments. In other words, it’s important to show why bodily autonomy does not override the right to life, rather than to just show why the unborn baby is actually a person. However, I think I’ve missed a trick here. Personhood arguments don’t work if someone is raising bodily autonomy arguments – but they may be very appropriate if you’re talking to someone who is raising general autonomy arguments!

One way to think this through is to try Trotting out a Toddler. If someone says that they support abortion because no one should be forced to provide bodily support to someone else against their will, then trotting out a toddler won’t work. You can try saying something like “Would it be OK for someone to just choose not to feed their toddler?”, because the obvious answer is, anyone can provide food for a toddler, and providing food for a toddler does not require the use of your own body. However, if someone says they support abortion because the responsibilities involved in raising a child are just too great, and so many women simply are not in a position to do so, and we should respect their decision and their judgement and not insist they are in a position to raise a child when they are sure that this is not the case, trotting out a toddler can work very well here! We can ask whether the fact that there are parents who genuinely feels that they is not up for the responsibility of raising her toddler, and are quite sure that she is not in a position to do so, is reasonable grounds for infanticide. In this case, the reason someone might want to justify abortion but not infanticide is not based on providing bodily support for the baby or toddler, and is instead based on something else – the most likely candidate being, the person sees that the toddler qualifies as a rights-bearer, but doesn’t think unborn babies do. At this point, you can use something like the Equal Rights Argument to show why you think unborn babies are rights bearers.

I still think it’s important to distinguish between bodily rights arguments and personhood arguments. However, I have come to a new appreciation of the importance of also distinguishing between bodily autonomy arguments and general autonomy arguments. Bodily autonomy arguments require their own set of responses – but general autonomy arguments really collapse down to personhood. If we agree that unborn babies have the same rights as a born toddler, we can agree that restrictions on general autonomy – as opposed to bodily autonomy – can be justified if the purpose is to prevent a rights-bearing human from dying. This is a crucial distinction, and it’s one that we should think through carefully.

So the next time you hear a pro-choice person talk about the importance of “choice”, take some time to figure out which type of choice they’re concerned about – and regardless of which type of “choice” they’re talking about, make sure you validate their concern before you start to make a counterargument. Freedom is important – pro-life people would do well to remember this.