Thoughts on reproductive rights

I was inspired to post this as a comment to virginia_fell's excellent post regarding reproductive rights and recent legislation, so I thought I would post it here as well. Please, read, and discuss!

Why abortion MUST remain legal, and why we, as a society, have NO legal precedent to outlaw or limit access to it or to any form of birth control.

---

In this country, we do not mandate organ donation, we do not even mandate blood donation. Even in the case of a family member asked to donate life saving bone marrow, we do not, as a society, find it appropriate to make this compulsory, even when we can sit and talk to the person whose life hangs in the balance. Even after death, our wishes with regard to our own physical bodies determine whether our organs may or may not be used to save the lives of other human beings. And it is right that we should not. If the government tried to make these things mandatory under law, I am confident at least as many Christians and religious persons as non-religious would be having fits, and for once I would agree, though doubtless for different reasons.

Do these measures save lives? Of course. Is this a good thing? Naturally, no question. But mandatory, to be legislated and enforced by the law of the land. Absolutely not.

But to remove or restrict the right to abortion & birth control is to remove the control of one human over their body in order to sustain the life of another, something we clearly do not find appropriate. Even if you assume a fetus IS a human being from conception/implantation, if the law of the land cannot help itself to my kidneys when I am dead, nor to my blood or tissue while alive, in order to support the life of another human being, why is it that the law should be able to mandate the use of my body, against my wishes, for a period of nine months, to support the life of another human being? The answer is that it cannot, any more than it can compel organ, tissue or blood donation.

Is it better to avoid the necessity of abortion? Of course. (Better still not make sure that all women have full, complete and informed access to birth control, which will drastically remove the demand for abortion in the first place.) But to make full term carriage mandatory, to be legislated and enforced by the law of the land? Absolutely not.

Keep an eye on this:

"According to the Army Times, beginning in October, the Army plans to station an active unit inside the United States for the first time to serve as an on-call federal response in times of emergency. The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent thirty-five of the last sixty months in Iraq, but now the unit is training for domestic operations. The unit will soon be under the day-to-day control of US Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command. The Army Times reports this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to Northern Command. The paper says the Army unit may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control. The soldiers are learning to use so-called nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals and crowds."

Not to be overly alarmist, but this move, together with Bush's 'emergency powers' executive orders strike me as a potentially Very Bad Thing. Thoughts?

[EDIT: Link to the article: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/]

[EDIT 2: Thanks to lucretiasheart for pointing this out...

A woman's worth....

Yet another borrowed link, this time from anahata56.

A Woman's Worth

If you don't read another linked article today, or even this whole week, read
this one. If you are a woman, love a woman, respect a woman - read this.