The conservative philosophy of government presents a conundrum. On one hand, conservatives dislike big government. On the other, conservatives believe that the No. 1 priority of our government is to protect its citizens, because without citizens there is no country. Abortion thus presents a problem: should we stay away from people’s bodies, or protect the fetuses? The case of Melissa Rowland can be instructive here.

Paired with abortion is the matter of personal responsibility. If people make a decision to have sex, they know that they could conceive a baby, and thus they have a responsibility to carry out the pregnancy. Responsibility is the reason lawmakers want to protect fast food joints from lawsuits filed by fat people. With abortion and children, conservatives believe that the government should step in because making people take responsibility is a lesser evil than government encroachment. It is far better for the government to step in to protect a human life, even though the poor mother has been “denied the rights to her own body and mind,” as Mia Eisner-Grynberg wrote concerning Rowland.

Eisner-Grynberg did not report that Rowland was charged with felony child endangerment after her surviving baby tested positive for alcohol and cocaine in her urine. Would she still say Rowland’s rights have been violated if the government had forced her to take care of the twins she was carrying by staying clean? Do the crazy religious conservatives have no right to force this woman to have a caesarean section in order to provide a better chance of both babies coming out alive? Rowland “took drugs during her pregnancy and was smoking cigarettes minutes before giving birth,” according to The Smoking Gun. Endangering the life of a child is just an extreme form of a person not taking responsibility for their action of conceiving children and also for not taking care of those children still in utero. Does a woman have a right to abandon the responsibility of being at least a decent mother?

I have not addressed the main point of Eisner-Grynberg’s article, which is probably this: the fact that “a fetus is not a citizen with rights under the law.” I will accept this statement as true. But a fetus is still something that is alive; it depends on the life of a person that is an American citizen. If this American citizen neglects something that is alive, then the government should be able to do something. Do you think that anybody should be able to do whatever they want to a pet because it is not a citizen of America? The answer is no; there are laws in many states that prohibit cruelty to animals. I think that a person who cannot recognize the importance of even the very beginning stages of human life is as heartless as Ann Coulter.

Finally, there is one problem with the great example of Do-Not-Resuscitate orders used to illustrate the rights a citizen enjoys in regards to their own body. Most people assume that there is just one person involved, whereas if the person is a pregnant woman, matters change substantially. What I think liberals tend to forget is that there is a small living being involved in pregnancies and abortions, not just the rights of the woman to protect her body. Eisner-Grynberg says that American women “retain the right to…terminate unwanted pregnancies.” But why, aside from rape or danger to the life of the mother, would a pregnancy be unwanted? In the sense that people should want to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions, they should want the pregnancy that results from sex.

In the case of Rowland, who is being charged with murder because of rejecting a caesarian section, there is more than meets the eye. There is an utter disregard for human life as evidenced by her use of drugs during the pregnancy. Responsibility is a crucial matter for conservatives, and if people are not willing to take it upon themselves, especially in the realm of human life, then the government should take a role in dictating the lives of people.

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