SAP Annual Lecture 2024: Abortion and Democratic Equality, Professor Japa Pallikkathayil (University of Pittsburgh)

About the Speaker:

Japa Pallikkathayil associate professor in the philosophy department at the University of Pittsburgh working on issues at the intersection of moral and political philosophy. Her recent work focuses on bodily rights.

Synopsis:

A central tenet of the liberal tradition in political philosophy is that citizens must be able to relate to one another as equals. I argue that this commitment to what has been called democratic equality is in tension with legal prohibitions on abortion prior to fetal viability. The most minimal commitment of democratic equality is equality before the law, which requires that the state treat like cases alike. My primary argument focuses on showing how this requirement cannot be reconciled with restrictive abortion laws given the other laws and practices common in liberal democracies. This is so even if we conceive of fetuses as citizens, as I suggest we should. Moreover, the changes states would need to make to their other laws and practices to bring them into line with restrictive abortion laws are intuitively deeply disturbing, involving giving the state vastly more control over citizens’ bodies. I give a secondary argument that focuses on showing how these intuitive reactions may be vindicated by more substantive reflection on the nature of democratic equality and its presuppositions. But the primary argument has force for anyone who rejects the extensive state control over citizens’ bodies that would be needed to reconcile restrictive abortion laws with equality before the law, even if they do so on other grounds.