But this proposed government intervention was not to prevent people from killing their unborn children, an intervention that is considered bad, evil, anti-choice, and intrusive. Rather, it was to take our money we earn to support our own children and use it to subsidize the killing of other people’s unborn children. The libertarians of November became the social engineers of March.
3. Thomson’s argument implies a macho view of bodily control, a view inconsistent with true feminism. Some have pointed out that Thomson’s argument and/or the reasoning behind it is actually quite antifeminist.30 In response to a similar argument from a woman’s right to control her own body, one feminist publication asks, “What kind of control are we talking about? A control that allows for violence against another human being is a macho oppressive kind of control. Women rightly object when others try to have that kind of control over them, and the movement for women’s rights asserts the moral right of women to be free from the control of others.” After all, “abortion involves violence against a small, weak and dependent child. It is macho control, the very kind the feminist movement most eloquently opposes in other contexts.”31
Celia Wolf-Devine observes that “abortion has something . . . in common with the behavior ecofeminists and pacifist feminists take to be characteristically masculine; it shows a willingness to use violence in order to take control. The fetus is destroyed by being pulled apart by suction, cut in pieces, or poisoned.” Wolf-Devine goes on to point out that “in terms of social thought . . . it is the masculine models which are most frequently employed in thinking about abortion. If masculine thought is naturally hierarchical and oriented toward power and control, then the interests of the fetus (who has no power) would naturally be suppressed in favor of the interests of the mother. But to the extent that feminist social thought is egalitarian, the question must be raised of why the mother’s interests should prevail over the child’s . . . . Feminist thought about abortion has . . . been deeply pervaded by the individualism which they so ardently criticize.”32