Abortion conflict turns on whether women are instrumentalized, not on foetal status alone

Evidence

It is important to note that there is no necessary conflict in the abortion case between the view that living beings should be respected and the admission of women’s right to choose abortion. The real issue is not whether the foetus is conceived as a living other to be respected, but whether the woman will continue to be conceived in instrumental terms; that is, conceived as one for whom no choice is necessary, as one who provides without cease; whose own needs, if they exist at all, always come second; whose value is determined by the child she produces; whose work is both expected, devalued and invisible, its real skill, importance and difficulty disappeared and defined into nature. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 757

Categorization

• XREF: This instrumentalization of women as backgrounded providers directly recapitulates the backgrounding/dependency features of the master-slave dualism laid out across the book’s chapters on denied dependency (ch8) and natures as background. — connects to: Instrumentalism treats the other as mere means without any limiting agency — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 522; Male moral hypocrisy over abortion is borne physically by women — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1432; Biology alone cannot explain why woman is the Other — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 109
• ADDENDUM: Speaks to the reader’s ecofeminist thread: ‘work expected, devalued and invisible… defined into nature’ ties to the unpublished ‘On Sacrifice’ themes of whose labour is rendered unseeable.

Broader Connections

• Male moral hypocrisy over abortion is borne physically by women #expands (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1432
• Biology alone cannot explain why woman is the Other #expands (0.72) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 109