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Never give children option of mothering, adoption, scholars wrote
Scholars argued for forced abortions on minors even if it requires “sedation or physical restraint” in a journal recently published by the University of Chicago Press.
The adults responsible for an underage girl’s care “should never pressure or compel her to continue a pregnancy. Nor should they confront her with the three ‘options’ of abortion, adoption, or mothering, as medical professionals are currently advised to do,” Alyssa Izatt and Kimberley Brownlee wrote.
“Instead, her adult caregivers should view her impregnation as a malady and take steps to terminate it,” they wrote in the paper titled “Justice for Girls: On the Provision of Abortion as Adequate Care.”
They advocated for sedation or restraint if necessary, as these tactics are justifiably used “on children to provide lifesaving or life-altering treatment … in other areas of medicine, including in procedures such as surgeries and cancer treatment.”
The scholars also drew an analogy between the impregnation of a child and the donation of living organs by a child.
If the analogy holds, they wrote, abortion care should be a standard part of medical care for a pregnant child. Her best interests come first, and she should not have to endure the “burdens” of pregnancy, according to Izatt and Brownlee (pictured).
“In most cases, medical professionals would be failing a child if they withheld abortion care, even if they did so because the child was averse to it,” they wrote.
Typical “pro-choice” and “pro-life” arguments overlook that “in relation to children, we should be ‘pro-abortion,’” the scholars wrote.
Further, they coined the term “antigirlism” to describe the “mistreatment that girls endure in reproductive care.”
However, they noted that “the term ‘antigirlism’ is arguably imperfect even as a signifier of injustice because it is not gender neutral.”
“Ideally, we would coin a term that picks out injustices endured at the intersection of gender and youth without announcing which gender is at issue,” the scholars wrote.
Kimberley Brownlee is the Canada Research Chair in Ethics and Political & Social Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, according to The University of Chicago Press.
Her co-author, Alyssa Izatt, is a PhD student studying moral philosophy at UBC.
Charles Camosy, a bioethics professor at The Catholic University of America, criticized the journal in a post on X.
“In order for an argument like this to pass muster, abortion has to thoroughly break the people involved in the process,” he wrote.
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