Yes, but whose self-ownership?
I am rather keen on the notion of self-ownership. Both as a moral principle and because, as a matter of practical politics, it is usually disastrous for a free society to attempt to deny folk self-ownership because it is beyond its capacity to deny folk effective use rights in their own body, though it can cause much misery in attempting to do so.
It can regulate such rights somewhat, if it does not overdo it. Liquor licensing laws, for example, can be made to work. Stopping folk from drinking alcohol entirely, can't. The US kindly having conducted the definitive social experiment in that so the rest of us don't have to.*
Admittedly, ownership of one’s body is ownership in a very distinct sense, since you cannot live anywhere else. Nor do we allow sale of the body - slavery being an offence against any strong notion of universal ethics. Banning slavery is a form of personal entailment that protects personal autonomy. But that we do not allow anyone else to own your body does not mean you don’t. Nor that your use rights over your own body are less ownership than a slave-owner’s legal rights would be. Such concerns and constraints protect and support personal autonomy, rather than undermine it.
Given my views, I was interested to read this attempt to marry conservative (Catholic) morality to self-ownership. There is something inherently odd about doing this, since Humanae Vitae makes it quite clear the Catholic Church rejects self-ownership, particularly of our sexual organs.
Humanae Vitae is also, of course, the most rejected (by Catholics) of formal Papal pronouncements over the last forty years. (See previous comments about not having the capacity to deny folk effective use rights over their own body, or even, indeed, getting them to seriously believe -- taking their behaviour to be revealed belief -- that they don't.)
From a self-ownership perspective, the debate over abortion can be understood as a debate over at what point - and in what ways - the self-ownership of the unborn child overrides the self-ownership of the mother and what the implications are for women of putting such limits on their self-ownership. It is surely reasonable to hold that a person has to achieve a certain level and stability of cognitive development to count as an adult. It does not seem odd to suggest that a certain level of cognitive function is required to count as a person and that one's level of self-ownership therefore operates in a graduated way depending on cognitive function.
Catholic Natural Law philosopher Edward Feser (author of a good book on the Philosophy of Mind) spends a great deal of time building up the case for the fetus as a self-owning person and no time on what the implications for women are from putting such a completely trumping claim over their rights of self-ownership. Yet that is the other half of the hard bit. The question only become simple if you assume the claims of one side (the fetus or the woman, as the case may be) are completely trumped by the other.
Which is not where most folk are, hence majorities are generally in favour of some abortions being permitted, though the later in the pregnancy (i.e. the more developed the fetus is), the less people accept abortion: which makes sense as seeing it as a balancing of competing claims where the balance shifts from mother to child as the child develops and depending on the risks to the mother.
This discounting of inconvenient self-ownership is even clearer in Feser's argument that it would be perfectly OK to publicly anathematise homosexuality. Surely it is also reasonable to ask what the consequences to them of denying the same-sex oriented self-ownership is. Though some will clearly have problem taking that question at all seriously: those terribly concerned about the effect of accepting homosexuality on children are typically not concerned about the negative effects of such anathematising on same-sex oriented children as they grow up - the question rarely, if ever, strikes them: one can read the experiences of such young people here (pdf). The issue of consequences also applies more widely: once one group has been cut off from “counting”, it is easier to cut off another group.
None of these concerns seem to strike Feser at all. So one can make self-ownership work for (Catholic) conservative moral theory -- if one operates the appropriate discounts of the claims to self-ownership of (surprise!) women and the same-sex oriented. It them becomes very easy.
But, of course, the point of the notion of self-ownership is precisely not to assume such discounts, but to see moral issues as come from everyone's rights to self-ownership. Which is precisely where the Catholic Church is not coming from, and neither is Ed Feser. His assumptions permit his moral conclusions but his assumptions do not sustain his claim to have shown that conservative (Catholic) moral theory is compatible with self-ownership as a universal principle. Because they're not.
*Except we do: the “war on drugs” attempts to deny us full property rights over our own bodies. Resulting in all the social deformities that disastrously misjudged property rights regimes - indeed, in the case of drugs, completely absent legal property rights - create (such as violence to define and defend what the law does not and corruption from "selling" the official discretions that banning stuff inevitably creates). Just like Prohibition.
It can regulate such rights somewhat, if it does not overdo it. Liquor licensing laws, for example, can be made to work. Stopping folk from drinking alcohol entirely, can't. The US kindly having conducted the definitive social experiment in that so the rest of us don't have to.*
Admittedly, ownership of one’s body is ownership in a very distinct sense, since you cannot live anywhere else. Nor do we allow sale of the body - slavery being an offence against any strong notion of universal ethics. Banning slavery is a form of personal entailment that protects personal autonomy. But that we do not allow anyone else to own your body does not mean you don’t. Nor that your use rights over your own body are less ownership than a slave-owner’s legal rights would be. Such concerns and constraints protect and support personal autonomy, rather than undermine it.
Given my views, I was interested to read this attempt to marry conservative (Catholic) morality to self-ownership. There is something inherently odd about doing this, since Humanae Vitae makes it quite clear the Catholic Church rejects self-ownership, particularly of our sexual organs.
Humanae Vitae is also, of course, the most rejected (by Catholics) of formal Papal pronouncements over the last forty years. (See previous comments about not having the capacity to deny folk effective use rights over their own body, or even, indeed, getting them to seriously believe -- taking their behaviour to be revealed belief -- that they don't.)
From a self-ownership perspective, the debate over abortion can be understood as a debate over at what point - and in what ways - the self-ownership of the unborn child overrides the self-ownership of the mother and what the implications are for women of putting such limits on their self-ownership. It is surely reasonable to hold that a person has to achieve a certain level and stability of cognitive development to count as an adult. It does not seem odd to suggest that a certain level of cognitive function is required to count as a person and that one's level of self-ownership therefore operates in a graduated way depending on cognitive function.
Catholic Natural Law philosopher Edward Feser (author of a good book on the Philosophy of Mind) spends a great deal of time building up the case for the fetus as a self-owning person and no time on what the implications for women are from putting such a completely trumping claim over their rights of self-ownership. Yet that is the other half of the hard bit. The question only become simple if you assume the claims of one side (the fetus or the woman, as the case may be) are completely trumped by the other.
Which is not where most folk are, hence majorities are generally in favour of some abortions being permitted, though the later in the pregnancy (i.e. the more developed the fetus is), the less people accept abortion: which makes sense as seeing it as a balancing of competing claims where the balance shifts from mother to child as the child develops and depending on the risks to the mother.
This discounting of inconvenient self-ownership is even clearer in Feser's argument that it would be perfectly OK to publicly anathematise homosexuality. Surely it is also reasonable to ask what the consequences to them of denying the same-sex oriented self-ownership is. Though some will clearly have problem taking that question at all seriously: those terribly concerned about the effect of accepting homosexuality on children are typically not concerned about the negative effects of such anathematising on same-sex oriented children as they grow up - the question rarely, if ever, strikes them: one can read the experiences of such young people here (pdf). The issue of consequences also applies more widely: once one group has been cut off from “counting”, it is easier to cut off another group.
None of these concerns seem to strike Feser at all. So one can make self-ownership work for (Catholic) conservative moral theory -- if one operates the appropriate discounts of the claims to self-ownership of (surprise!) women and the same-sex oriented. It them becomes very easy.
But, of course, the point of the notion of self-ownership is precisely not to assume such discounts, but to see moral issues as come from everyone's rights to self-ownership. Which is precisely where the Catholic Church is not coming from, and neither is Ed Feser. His assumptions permit his moral conclusions but his assumptions do not sustain his claim to have shown that conservative (Catholic) moral theory is compatible with self-ownership as a universal principle. Because they're not.
*Except we do: the “war on drugs” attempts to deny us full property rights over our own bodies. Resulting in all the social deformities that disastrously misjudged property rights regimes - indeed, in the case of drugs, completely absent legal property rights - create (such as violence to define and defend what the law does not and corruption from "selling" the official discretions that banning stuff inevitably creates). Just like Prohibition.