The fact that explicit sex education, detached from any larger moral framework, is promoted even in elementary schools is one obvious example, though far from the most influential. In our society, we are catechized in this principle from childhood. This argument indicates a deeper, often unstated assumption: that sexual activity is the normative way in which human beings find fulfillment. Most legal-abortion proponents defend their position in the language of women’s rights, arguing that, without legal abortion, women would be unable to control their bodies. One is the idea that a woman must have control, specifically sexual and reproductive control, over her own body. For abortion to be plausible, let alone acceptable, a society must hold certain ideas intuitively. The morality of a society is part of a shared way of imagining the world, held in common by members of said society.

Is Consequence-Free Sex the Path to Human Fulfillment? If we are to believe those who defend a right to abortion, it is nothing less than the power to end the life of her unborn child that guarantees a woman her humanity-that is, the autonomy befitting her status as man’s equal. The answers rest upon broader assumptions about the purpose, the telos, of human existence in general. How does a society that regards abortion as legitimate understand the humanity of the woman involved? Indeed, how does it understand humanity in general? These questions are pertinent to the moral discussion because the issue of abortion cannot be reduced to the narrow question of the status of the child in the womb. Yet our fundamental disagreements over abortion involve additional questions. This makes intuitive sense, because the answer to these questions determines whether abortion is merely a medical procedure or a form of homicide. Is the embryo a human being? Is there a meaningful distinction between a human being and a person? Parsing such questions is critical to determining abortion’s morality. When discussing abortion, our debate over what it means to be human or to be a person tends to focus on the baby in the womb. Today, such a simple answer would not pass muster, for the question of what it means to be human is itself contested.

Her answer was a resounding yes, because women and men share a common humanity. Sayers posed in the title of a famous and witty essay.

Are women human sayers