The distinction between rights and privileges does not easily apply to the society of Thedas, since there doesn't seem to be a ubiquitous code or common law to provide the necessary context. Thedas isn't governed, by and large--it is ruled. Authority and power are one and the same, so the individual (like Flemeth) who has the power to defy the the zealots of the Chantry has the right to live free of their oppression.
The threat of demonic possession is obviously real, but I think it is dramatically exaggerated by the Chantry in order to spread the belief that they, and the Circle system they impose, are necessary and indispensable. If you look at societies outside of the Chantry's grasp, the abomination-fueled chaos you might expect to find simply doesn't exist. The Chasind's shamans, the Dalish keepers, the seers of Rivain, and hedge mages everywhere do not seem to pose the threat that the Chantry insists that apostates represent, despite the fact that these mages live more-or-less as free as any other member of their society.
Even in Tevinter, where mages not only can basically do as they please but in fact rule the non-mage society, the threat of demonic possession doesn't seem to be any greater than in the lands that fall under the influence of the "white chantry."
Clearly, the assertion that it is necessary to lock mages away in towers to prevent them from becoming possessed is a load of crap.
Actually, the distinction between rights and privileges in Thedas is easy: there are no inherent rights as western liberalism understands them. Thedas is a pre-liberalism society, and inalienable human rights do not exist and probably never will because key underpinning foundations and assumptions of our reality do not apply.
If you were to go to Thedas, and say to a mage 'I side with you because all people are created fundamentally equal,' they would probably look at you funny. In Thedas, this is manifestly not true- some people are born with superpowers, some people are born without superpowers, some people are born with a resistance to superpowers but are unable to reach the top shelf. The closest philosophical underpinning of universal commonality* is religious in nature: that we are all equal in the sight of the infinitely superior divine. This is also, it's worth noting, the only major religious interpretation to put mages and non-mages on the same level: the other major religions interpret magic as a gift from the divine, separates mages apart and above the non-mages by receiving such a gift.
*Well, besides the Qun's 'we are all parts of the body', but that's even more alien to western liberalism.
There is an extreme lack of data about abomination occurrences, and claims that they are either greater or fewer in Tevinter (or the Rivian, or the Dalish) are all equally baseless and serve only to reflect the bias and desire of the claimer. The only thing we can say about abominations in Tevinter is that there aren't enough that they are perceived to threaten the social order- which means jack squat about the occurance, because the social order of Tevinter is an oligarchy entrenched with fear and blood magic. If abominations were more common to harm the commoners... how would you know? The mages, who are the political powers that matter, are the best protected and prepared to defend themselves, and the least affected. If it happens amongst commoners, they're commoners. And if it happens to a rival, it's a rival. Higher abomination costs, so long as they don't reach catastrophic levels, would matter less to Tevinter society than low abomination costs to a more empathetic society.
A greater acceptance of costs (such as Rivian witches and Seers being compared by a Dev to natural disasters) is not the same as a lack of costs. The Dalish accept their style of society despite knowing that clans go missing, and that the occassional Seeker-turned-abomination can be responsible for it. Their acceptance of it is completely separate from whether they would have more or fewer casualties by adopting an Andrastian system.
Part of what the Circle system is designed to do is shift and contain the costs of mages, politically (to prevent mage domination) and practically (abomination). In a mage-integrated system, the costs of the abomination are born by everyone around them, and that means mundanes. It might be everyone in the clan being expected to pick a bow, hunt the abomination, and hope they overcome it. It might be a Rivian witch earning that analogy of natural disaster. And it might just be Tevinter plebes hoping that to be alive when Tevinter Templars and Mages contain and kill the abomination after it's rampage has gone for some time. In the Circle system, even when a tower full of mages goes abomination, it's distant news and rumor that barely affects the mundanes because the problem is quickly contained and isolated from them. The actual deathcount could be the same, but the distribution would differ. The Circle system doesn't promise to prevent abominations and hostile mages from occurring, but rather limit their impacts on the public by containment.
But the other part of what the Circle system is designed to do is prevent mage costs against the public from becoming an accepted and uncontroversial part of their societies in the first part. The idea that accepting the costs of mages, both as abominations and as natural leaders of society (as they rise in all the non-Andrastian societies), is unnecessary and need not be accepted at all.
In this respect, Andrastians are far closer to the views that, say, some Europeans (or anti-gun advocates in general) have on gun violence in the US. Their fears may seem comically exagerated at times (I knew someone who refused to visit New York for fear of getting caught in a gang shoot out), even though they can also point to statistics that would support their claims that the gun violence is unnecessary in the first place. Plenty of societies get along without gun rights, and with crime and murders/deaths per capita than in America. The simple acceptance that most Americans have for gun crimes and gun rights strikes them as morally abhorrent, as if you say nothing wrong with beating a wife or child while drunk. They don't have the gun rights, and they see no reason to have them even if, in the fullness of time, they would survive adopting them, and might eventually come to share the acceptance.
This is not to say mages are directly analogous to guns- that's a different issue, and try not to get distracted. This is to say that Andrastian society is a culture that has escaped a certain level of cost tolerance others have accepted, and that they do not see a compelling reason why they should accept such changes to benefit a small minority that will gain at their expense, and quite likely rise over them as such acceptance is required.
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