Groups on the political left are just as guilty of fundamentalism as groups on the right, such as members of the Tea Party. Both sides race away from real policy discussions toward the first principles of rights; for Republicans and conservatives, that often takes the shape of invoking appeals to religious freedom and economic liberty. For Democrats and liberals, that often takes the shape of invoking women’s rights or fairness.

Given the speed with which they do so, you would think that the Republicans and Democrats fancy themselves soldiers of World War I when, once the French and British stopped the German advance through northern France, the Germans on one side and the French and British on the other tried to flank the other’s line. Instead of striking out, they would strike around. To do that, they raced away from Paris toward the English Channel.

Most recently, public appeals to rights come from some commentators who describe a war on women’s rights from the likes of Rick Santorum and other Republicans who want to limit the distribution of public money to organizations that also provide abortions, the use of public money to pay for women’s health care, or who want to require women seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound beforehand.

Rights are by definition inviolable, and involving them in policy discussions means the most we can say when they are in danger is, “Go to hell” or “Fuck you.” Since they are rights, there is no debating them: There is only force. If your actions can be abridged for good reason — even in cases of national emergency — they are not rights. 

In some cases, such as women’s rights, the issue is not even one of rights. That term, “women’s rights,” is a misnomer. It is inaccurate. It is wrong. The term is inaccurate because women are a faction. They belong to a specific, defined, particular group of people. A faction cannot have rights. If it did, if its members did, they would be secured by the government and exercised by themselves at the expense of other rights.

Women do not have women’s rights. Men do not have men’s rights. African-Americans do not have African-Americans’ rights. Caucasians do not have Caucasians’ rights. Muslims do not have Muslims’ rights. Christians do not have Christians’ rights. Nobody has rights that stem from his or her status as a member of a demographic smaller than “human.”

Hence, for a woman to have an absolute right to birth control, no one else’s rights, such as freedom of religion or freedom to not aid in the commission of acts that violates one’s religious teachings or conscience, can be infringed. If they are, the woman does not have a right to birth control — at least not to birth control provided by someone other than herself. What we refer to as “women’s rights” are, rather, women’s privileges.

That idea belongs to Enlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant; it is his categorical imperative that we should act only according to standards we think should be universal prescriptions. In other words, only do something if you should do it in every circumstance.

“Women’s rights” is really a policy discussion. We should be talking about whether we want the government to compel people to provide services they do not want to provide — for whatever reason — in terms of how it affects daily life, not in terms of whose rights such compulsion violates or assists.

Or we should talk about whether we want the government to fund organizations whose funding is largely from non-governmental sources in terms of whether additional sources would fill the void or whether the government’s budget can afford to privilege that program over others that actually provide a public good rather than one that benefits only the women it interacts with as customers or patients.

The impossibility of compromise, which is the essence of political interaction, on a yes-or-no issue (there is no third option available in this dichotomy) means that issues of authority such as which rights belong to who are antecedents of politics. They are, in other words, prepolitical. 

Until constitutional provisions clearly add “women’s rights” to the rights outside the reach of our political process, we have no business discussing them in policy settings. While they are certainly a matter for a constitutional convention or the debates that would surround Congress’s consideration of a constitutional amendment, talking about “women’s rights” when we are talking about ordinary bills, amendments or laws does nothing for the vibrancy of public debate.

Rather, talking about rights only embitters people and leads them to entrench their positions and opinions of others. We should talk about rights only when a mortal danger presents itself.