(re: paywall, I was able to see it by googling the title and clicking through from the search results. You might need to delete the cookies for NYT for it to work).
As a preliminary issue, I think we need to be more precise in the language we’re using. When I use the word ‘abortion’, I mean something like “the termination of a pregnancy prior to full development”. I’m not talking about any particular mechanism or any particular outcome for the fetus. While what follows after that is important and should be part of the analysis, I think it’s important to make the distinction between
- removing the fetus from a woman,
- intentionally killing a fetus, and
- the use of fetal tissue for medical research.
And, as you say:
If we do develop the technology to continue to incubate fetuses when their mothers no longer want to do it, then (1) should always be permissible, even if (2) and (3) are strictly prohibited.
I agree the draft impacts the same right, but (for questions around (1) rather than (3)) it is the woman who is in the parallel position to the soldier: her body is being used to the states ends. As with the soldier whose body is used as an instrument of war, the woman’s body is a used as an instrument of reproduction.
The balance of rights in (1) is between a woman’s right to use her body as she see fit, and the right to life of a distinct individual who happens to need that woman’s body in order to continue living. Douthat acts as though the disagreement between pro-choice and pro-life is entirely about how much weight they give to the fetus’ right to life. But it’s also about how much weight they give to the woman’s right to her body.
Given that he doesn’t even seem to notice that there’s a different right implicated in the question, he probably doesn’t think women have a very strong right to bodily autonomy. And that’s how a lot of the pro-life movement looks from the outside.