Inception of Life on the Pendulum of Death: Common Paradigms and Uncommon Narratives on the Polemics between Birthers and Abortionists

Abstract

Obvious crevices of digression are discernible in the ongoing discourses on conception, women and reproductive rights, and abortion. Against this backdrop, this paper sets out to explore existing thoughts on the bio-physiological processes of conception and pregnancy, epigenetics, and the impact of trauma on the continuum of human psychological development with a view to accentuating the critical intersection of the emerging discourses. By dissecting the conflated and intricate leanings on the opposite sides of the treatise, the paper goes beyond the current paradigm that merely proffers a time frame at which it might be appropriate to legitimize termination of pregnancy (in other words, abort a baby without attracting punitive attention of the state) and advance more creative theorizing, which raises the question of power balance and discipline. Ours is a discussion paper, covering a methodical synopsis of discourses, definitions, aims, philosophical leanings and content analysis of major postulations, and highlights of their operational intricacies. The paper hypothesized that a single-cell blastocyst is a developing human being and engaging discourses on power and discipline, it further explored the influences of epigenetics on lifespan development, and how this impinges on women’s right over their reproductive bodies. The paper adopts the Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), and black feminist thought to deconstruct and trouble the essentialized notion of women’s reproductive rights, which are fundamentally colonial, and western in nature. Using qualitative content analysis of existing secondary materials, we foreground the paradigm shifts on the contended topic. By so doing, the paper mapped out a more flexible direction for understanding the disequilibrium of power on the core premises of the argument divides. Our paper provides uncluttered lenses for scrutinizing the socio-medical procedures involving women’s right to their procreative bodies on one hand, and the unborn babies’ choice of life on the other, thus creating a broader and more objective rostrum for further discussion and scholarly contribution on the concepts.