James Mumford hopes that the phenomenological approach he takes in his book Ethics at the Beginning of Life will help the Church think through the issue of abortion by exposing the philosophical incoherence of standard pro-choice arguments, which are founded on problematic conceptions of autonomy. Phenomenology does well to challenge the liberal myth of the autonomous subject (insofar as it does), the fiction that I am primarily an independent thinking being responsible for my own self and capable of forming my own opinions in a vacuum of singular objectivity. This fiction has pervaded much of Western philosophy and has strongly influenced the ideals of citizenship that are the basis of the American legal and political systems. As James points out with some help from Heidegger, the fiction of independent subjecthood is just that—a fiction that ignores large parts of the human experience and that distorts other parts.
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