A Myth - "It's my body ..."

Pro-choice advocates tend to beat this statement to death: "It's my body. I should have the right to do what I please with it and to it." Now, the former statement would, in essence, be fair - if it were only correct. But it's not correct. It is, indeed, a BIG statement, but one fraught with falicy none the less. The womb belongs to the woman, but what lie peacefully growing therein does not. 

This morning while searching YouTube, I stumbled upon a video entitled, "It's My Body." Sighing, I clicked on it, assuming to be met with a volley of pro-choice statements. But instead, I saw a woman brandishing many coherent and logical truths. As an introduction to her topic, she stated with some reservation that she used to be pro-choice. That is, until she experienced abortion in a most personal manner. After having an abortion herself, she began an inquiry into her own mind, asking herself (my paraphrase), "Do I have four eyes? Four feet? Four hands? Do I have two sets of DNA? Two individual and separate personalities?" Dawn had broken in her mind, and had transfered this ray of light and logic into my own. Indeed, the womb belongs to the woman. Of that statement there can be no dispute. But what lay inside it, the life that is being knitted together within the security of its walls, is most certainly not her body. It contains the body and soul of another -  a unique human being. It contains another set of hands which do not belong to the mother, a unique set of fingerprints, a sparkling pair of eyes that have never been possessed by another human baby, and a distinct personality different from the woman in whose womb he or she resides. Such truths are indisputable. There is more then one body, and vastly more then one soul, involved in abortion. 

But, one might argue, this baby is a paracitic creature. It relies on the body of the mother for survival, and therefore, such reliance should relinquish all "rights" to life. If it cannot survive on its own, then it is not a human being. The former argument is both redundant and foolish. Regardless of popular feminist opinions or the multitude of pithy sayings employed by the enemies of pro-life logic; the truth still stands. The baby's body is not the mother's body. Indeed, a baby, who is essentially a body inside a body, assuredly relies on his or her mother for the continuance of existence. But the facts do not change in light of this reality. Moreover, if we applied this exception to those who are already born, we would have to assume that all those on insulin, all those undergoing dialasis, everyone who is on oxygen, and any person who is currently on life support are not fit to be called a human being. Such a presupposition, when woven into the fabric of our everyday existence, would yield sobering and drastic results.