A Critical Examination of Gestational Autonomy and Democratic Equality: A Response to Pallikkathayil

This article critically examines Japa Pallikkathayil's claim that pre-viability abortion prohibitions violate democratic and legal equality. Pallikkathayil grounds this view in analogies to compelled bodily donation, arguing that inalienable bodily rights, understood chiefly as bodily integrity, protect gestational autonomy. The article challenges that analogy through four arguments. First, human procreation has a morally distinctive character, generating duties from unchosen but special parental relationships, as family law recognizes, which qualifies appeals to bodily inalienability. Second, typical abortion methods are not accurately described as passive bodily withdrawal, since they involve interventions directed at ending fetal life. Third, bodily donation cases fail to capture the distinctive moral and legal stakes of pregnancy. Fourth, alternative feminist critiques suggest that bodily autonomy may not exhaust democratic equality for women, especially where institutional accommodation of pregnancy is concerned. The article therefore reframes the debate around parental responsibility, action, analogy, and equality.