A “pro-life caucus” filed a project in Colombia seeking to amend Article 11 of the Constitution to explicitly establish that human life exists, and therefore must be protected, from the moment of fertilization. The debate on voluntary interruption of pregnancy (IVE) risks stagnating in a confrontation between two absolute moral visions that, by definition, are irreconcilable. Moral absolutism holds that there are actions intrinsically right or wrong, regardless of their consequences, context, or the intentions of the actor. By assuming that certain norms are universal, immutable, or objective, the absolutist categorically rejects balancing them with other ends or values.
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Lawrence Tribe, a law professor at Harvard, identifies a “clash of absolutes” in the IVE debate: between the life of the fetus, considered a human being from conception, and the reproductive autonomy of the woman, understood as a fundamental right that outweighs other principles. If the absolute right to the life of the fetus is accepted, all IVE could be classified as homicide, even aggravated by the mother-child relationship (as in Bukele’s El Salvador, with sentences of 30 to 50 years in prison). There would be no room for exceptions, not even in cases of sexual violence or risk to the mother’s life, since IVE would imply the elimination of an innocent life. In contrast, if the absolute freedom of the woman is accepted, any restriction on IVE, regardless of the stage of pregnancy or any other circumstance, would constitute a violation of her fundamental rights. There would be no room for deadlines or regulations because the decision would correspond exclusively and unconditionally to the woman.
For Tribe, society must “move beyond” this clash to build reasonable, justified, and stable responses over time. Evaluating IVE from the perspective of gender equality, he argues that its prohibition imposes burdens on women that are not demanded of men, undermining their status of equality in society. Even if it were hypothetically accepted that the fetus is a person, the Constitution prohibits the State from forcing a woman to sacrifice her body and life for nine months to sustain another living being. Tribe relates the obligation to carry a pregnancy to term to “involuntary servitude.” There is a real connection, not a play on words, between “forced labor” and the State’s seizure of a woman’s body to carry out a gestation.
It is illustrative to recall the famous thought experiment posed by MIT philosopher Judith J. Thomson in her article “A Defense of Abortion” (1971). Imagine waking up surgically connected to a famous violinist suffering from a fatal kidney disease. Since only you have the compatible blood type to save him, your kidneys must filter toxins for both. A doctor tells you: “I’m very sorry, we do not approve of what was done, but the fact is you are now connected to him. Disconnecting would kill him. However, don’t worry: it will only be nine months. By then he will have fully recovered and can be disconnected.” Do you have a moral obligation to submit to that situation?
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Thomson’s goal was to reframe the usual terms of the debate: instead of discussing whether the fetus is or is not a person with the right to life, she grants that premise as true and demonstrates that, even so, that right does not automatically imply the right to use another person’s body to sustain that life. The right to life does not imply the right to use another person’s bodily resources, that is, the instrumentalization of their autonomy, to preserve it. Remaining connected to the violinist would be an altruistic or extremely generous act, but there is no moral duty that obliges you to lend your body to sustain another person’s life without your consent. Just as a law requiring organ donation to save a life is inadmissible, forcing gestation demands a level of sacrifice that the legal system does not impose on anyone else under any other circumstance.
The discourse seeking to criminalize IVE is often structured around a false dilemma: the idea that there is an irreconcilable conflict in which only absolute protection of the unborn or total lack of protection for the woman is possible. This formulation is unfeasible. The Constitution does not operate according to an “all or nothing” logic. It recognizes that the value of life in gestation is constitutionally relevant, but no value or right is absolute when its protection requires the total annulment of the dignity, free development of personality, and comprehensive health (physical and mental) of women. IVE poses a genuine conflict between two sets of equally important principles and rights.
Constitutional democracy rejects that the values of one group—no matter how respectable in the private sphere—are imposed as a universal legal duty on the entire society. The only reasonable moral imperative in a pluralistic society is to find a common framework that guarantees, as much as possible, the constitutional interest of protecting potential life and women’s rights. The 1991 Constitution was designed to prevent temporary majorities from instrumentalizing the State’s punitive power to the detriment of minority rights. In a secular State, criminal sanctions cannot operate as the executive arm of a specific moral or religious doctrine, such as the one that forces a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. Attempting to resolve a clash between moral perspectives by punitive annulment of the rights of half the population also ignores the prohibition of regressivity in human rights matters. The ongoing constitutional reform project to protect life from fertilization must be strongly rejected.
