Whose Body Is It?

Whose Body Is It? November 5, 2015

A year ago, Sarah Ditum wrote a piece for The New Statesman that compared abortion with organ donation, pointing out that the demands on a pregnant woman’s body are far greater than the demands laid on organ donors: “giving away a bagful of gore or a chunk of liver that you’re not using because you’re dead is trivial compared to what is asked of the pregnant woman. For at least nine months, she must dedicate her body to the sustenance of another. She will probably experience weeks of sickness and tiredness. Itchiness, varicose veins, chronic heartburn and piles are among the common unpleasantnesses; diabetes and high blood pressure are rarer and more life-threatening, but still routine.”

Why is abortion a fraught moral issue, and organ donation not? “I think I know why: because pregnancy is the only form of corporeal generosity that is specific to the female body. We recognise males as entire beings with an independent moral nature, and understand that it would be an obscenity to compel any man to give up even part of his body for another’s benefit. We see women as a partial, provisional sort of human with bodies intended as a resource for others to use – and yes, we generally accept that some pregnancies need to be terminated for the good of the woman, but we still see legal abortion as a sad necessity rather than the liberating good it actually is for many women, and we cavil about what is really necessary.”

That’s an exceedingly weak argument. Kidney donation doesn’t have the moral weight of abortion because both the kidney donor and the donee can live. Except in horror movies, kidneys are not complete systems that can live on their own. Kidneys have no plausible claim to be persons.

Still, Ditum’s point puts one issue in very sharp relief. The question truly is, Whose body is this? Don’t I have the right to use my body as I please? The claim to autonomy is rarely put so forcefully.

The Christian response has to be that everyone’s body is to be given up for another’s benefit. Ultimately, our bodies belong to God. You are not your own, Paul says, therefore honor God with your body. In marriage, husbands don’t own their bodies, nor wives theirs. The unmarried are to give their lives and bodies to the service of others. Far from being a burdensome detraction from the good life, pregnancy is a supreme illustration of the life that we are all to live.

This isn’t some tangent in Christian theology or ethics. God enters the world by taking flesh from pregnant Mary, who becomes a model believer for her willingness to give her body wholly to the incarnate Son. At the heart of our faith is trust in a God who took a body and then gave it for our benefit. At the heart of our worship is reception of the body given for us and the blood shed for us. The autonomy claimed by abortion advocates is a heresy, and a fundamental one.


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