Under what circumstances should we permit the government to require a pregnant woman to continue her pregnancy against her will?

I. We should not treat the issue of pregnancy as we do, say, the measles or some other disease. Pregnancy may not always be a matter of choice, but it is always a question of choice of action and of personal responsibility. By this we mean that the woman had to decide to engage in certain activity in order to become pregnant, and that choice has created a life that now comes under the protection of the law. The unborn child is a human being and deserves the protection of the law. The government has not determined that a woman should get pregnant, but once she is pregnant, the government has the responsibility to protect the child.

Even the court that imposed the Roe v. Wade decision on America in the first place could see a reason, a rationale, and a responsibility for requiring a pregnant woman to continue her pregnancy against her will, under certain circumstances. Justice Blackmun wrote the majority decision for Roe v. Wade and affirmed the opinion of seven justices that there was a constitutional right to abortion. Blackmun wrote:

[A] state may properly assert important interests in safeguarding health, in maintaining medical standards, and in protecting potential life. At some point in pregnancy, these respective interests become sufficiently compelling to sustain regulation of the factors that govern the abortion decision.

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they are also very much a part of the argument over women's right to equality and its relation to woman's "difference," her pregnant body. It was in the late 1960s when the demand for abortion came to include the issue of sex equality and that the argument was framed in terms of women's right to equality as "individuals." Eisenstein writes: "Abortion became a prerequisite for other choices in women's lives. . . It is impossible to understand abortion as an issue related to equality without recognizing that it is also tied up with the issues of sexual freedom and sex 'difference.'" In other words, the issue is one of fundamental fairness in which the government should be supporting the rights of women to make their own choices and to determine the course of their own lives. This is not to say that human beings of either sex have the right to hurt others, but the idea that the fetus is a human being is based not on science but on religious faith. The Constitution mandates a separation of church and state, and public policy should not be based on the religious doctrine of any particular sect or belief. The religious community does not agree on this issue. Catholics believe that life begins at conception and that abortion is
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