A Libertarian's argument against abortion

Axismaster · 01-10-06, 10:57 AM

The official position of the Libertarian Party on abortion is neutral, saying that government should stay out of abortion rights while people should not be forced to pay taxes for government-funded abortions if they believe it is murder. For the most part, they will use the classical arguments that the Democrats use of being "personally pro-life." Now, this is not an attack on Democrats, because I also maintain that Republican politicians are only pro-life because it gains them votes and are willing to let abortion go on as long as there are votes to be had for talking about it. I on the other hand think that you truly have to be pro-life, and that means opposition to abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, illegal war, and any form of government sanctioned or administered killing. My libertarian argument for the pro-life position stems from the three highest rights that Thomas Paine enshrined. These are the rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. My belief is that these rights are sacred, far more sacred than a right to terminate a pregnancy. I also hold by destroying life, you are taking away the ability for that person to someday enjoy liberty and pursue their pleasures. The simple facts are that when you compromise one of those rights in the least, the other two are useless. Now, you may say that by taking away abortion rights I am taking away liberty and pursuit of happiness. Now, one of the key arguments of libertarianism is that you should have a right to do whatever you want as long as that does not compromise the rights or freedoms of another individual. I feel that you should be able to do whatever you want. I think you should be able to get married even if you are gay, smoke pot, own an assault weapon responsibly, watch what you want on television, listen to the kind of music you want, look at porn if you feel like it, and read or say whatever is on your mind, why? Because those are all free things, and sure, some people may not like it that somebody would watch something on TV, choose a homosexual relationship, smoke pot, own a gun, or do any of that stuff because it violates their moral standards, but they should never be able to do anything about anyone doing that as long as it is not hurting them, which despite all their arguments about the "breakdown of morality" it is not. Abortion is different on the other hand, it is the supposed rights of one person compromising the rights of another. If "rights" ever compromise anybody else's rights, then they are not rights. Abortion is not a right or a freedom because it trades one person's rights for another, all those other things, regardless of whether you think they are okay, do not compromise your rights so they should be allowed even if you disagree with them. Abortion is different, much different. You can talk about body freedom, but in the end, what about the body of the child?

ngdawg · 01-10-06, 01:46 PM

Points for some...misguided in others.
1) Read the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, then read the hundreds of other posts here. NOWHERE do they 'guarantee' life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to anyone but men as worded.
2) Nowhere in the Constitution are rights given to embryos or fetuses. Laws that include the death of these in assaults or murders make the presumption that the pregnancy was welcomed and that the fetus would have been viable had it not been harmed. Even then, state laws vary; where someone may be charged in an unlawful death of a fetus in one state, may not be included in charges in another.
3) Rights are not compromised or dismissed as they are not there to begin with.
4)'Child' is a stage, such as you are in now. You are not an adult yet. You were once a baby. Had your mother not been able to carry you for whatever reason and chose abortion as her option, she would not have aborted neither a child nor an adult-it would have been, in all likelihood, in the embryonic stage. Does this make it not a death? No, but it makes it within her rights to do so.
"Pro-life Libertarian" is a misnomer on your part. You are either for free will and the right to choose how one conducts one's life or you aren't.
Put another way: Do you live on your own? Make your own way? Make your own rules? Someone speaks for you, supports you, pays for your schooling, clothes, food, etc. You have limited rights as a child. You had no rights as an embryo. You will have more rights as an adult. Your parents, on the other hand, have all the rights accorded them as per the country's laws. Once they made the decision to have you, they took the responsibility as parents to exercise their parental rights. But first, they had to make that decision and they exercised their rights to do so.

Axismaster · 01-10-06, 01:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ngdawg

Points for some...misguided in others.
1) Read the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, then read the hundreds of other posts here. NOWHERE do they 'guarantee' life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to anyone but men as worded.
2) Nowhere in the Constitution are rights given to embryos or fetuses. Laws that include the death of these in assaults or murders make the presumption that the pregnancy was welcomed and that the fetus would have been viable had it not been harmed. Even then, state laws vary; where someone may be charged in an unlawful death of a fetus in one state, may not be included in charges in another.
3) Rights are not compromised or dismissed as they are not there to begin with.
4)'Child' is a stage, such as you are in now. You are not an adult yet. You were once a baby. Had your mother not been able to carry you for whatever reason and chose abortion as her option, she would not have aborted neither a child nor an adult-it would have been, in all likelihood, in the embryonic stage. Does this make it not a death? No, but it makes it within her rights to do so.
"Pro-life Libertarian" is a misnomer on your part. You are either for free will and the right to choose how one conducts one's life or you aren't.
Put another way: Do you live on your own? Make your own way? Make your own rules? Someone speaks for you, supports you, pays for your schooling, clothes, food, etc. You have limited rights as a child. You had no rights as an embryo. You will have more rights as an adult. Your parents, on the other hand, have all the rights accorded them as per the country's laws. Once they made the decision to have you, they took the responsibility as parents to exercise their parental rights. But first, they had to make that decision and they exercised their rights to do so.

There are certain authorities nobody should have, and taking life is one of them. I'm telling you, every American has equal rights to those basic things. If you want to see a fetus has no rights, then why not extend that to minorities? I'll tell you why, because the left's favorite sport is to trade in rights they don't like for rights they do like.

ngdawg · 01-10-06, 02:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Axismaster

There are certain authorities nobody should have, and taking life is one of them. I'm telling you, every American has equal rights to those basic things. If you want to see a fetus has no rights, then why not extend that to minorities? I'll tell you why, because the left's favorite sport is to trade in rights they don't like for rights they do like.

Ridiculous statement and comparison.

Minorities= walking, breathing, voting, taxpaying, learning, working, buying people.
Fetuses and embryos: uh...none of the above. They're not even Americans until they come out screaming in America. They can have illegal immigrant parents or American-born, but until they're out, they're not American.

Don't blame things on left or right. Like using Hitler, it's a cop out.

vergiss · 01-11-06, 10:35 PM

So the "liberty" of a bunch of cells is more important than the liberty of the woman carrying it?

FutureIncoming · 01-12-06, 09:43 AM

Axismaster wrote: "Abortion is different on the other hand, it is the supposed rights of one person compromising the rights of another."

ONLY if the unborn human qualifies as a person, does that statement have any chance of being valid. Where is the evidence to support the hidden assumption you are making?

galenrox · 01-12-06, 10:01 AM

I find this an interesting topic for discussion. I tend to agree with the libertarian party as a whole on this one.
The fact is no one is ok with murder, pro-life or pro-choice. And thus if one believes that abortion is murder, than regardless of his/her political ethos, s/he will be opposed to abortion rights.
And I wish more pro-life people were libertarians, because that shows usually that they're smart and open minded enough to have an actual frank discussion about abortion and abortion rights.
Because there's one major issue to the abortion debate which is far more complex (yet far more consensus building) that is pretty widely ignored, which is, if there is a way, and if so, how would we eliminate abortion without making it illegal. There are many causes that lead to increased abortion rates, such as the lack of sexual education and poverty.
People right now just keep thinking unquestionably that if abortion is made illegal than abortions will stop. This is not true, not at all. It will go the same way as the drug trade, and thus you would just be giving up your ability to regulate the market (including keeping it safe for women). Now eliminating the demand for abortions, and treating the problems instead of the symptom, will solve the problem instead of just sweeping the symptom under the rug.

steen · 01-13-06, 09:38 PM

But we know that most prolifers WON'T agree, because they then lose control over women and don't get to impsoe their religious views on others. So you won't get prolifers to sign on to that.

Vandeervecken · 01-16-06, 01:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Axismaster

There are certain authorities nobody should have, and taking life is one of them. I'm telling you, every American has equal rights to those basic things. If you want to see a fetus has no rights, then why not extend that to minorities? I'll tell you why, because the left's favorite sport is to trade in rights they don't like for rights they do like.

Your problem being that minorities rights are spelled out in the Constitution. As is the fact rights accrue at birth. (See amendment 14).

So your point is devoid of fact.

galenrox · 01-22-06, 10:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vandeervecken

Your problem being that minorities rights are spelled out in the Constitution. As is the fact rights accrue at birth. (See amendment 14).

So your point is devoid of fact.

yeah, but then wouldn't then your stance just come down to when you think life begins?

I think another interesting point would be that citizenship begins at birth, and so these rights could be interpreted as not applying until birth, unless we instead percieve them to actually be inalianable rights, thus applying to all living people (and thus if you believe that a fetus is a living person you could reasonably feel that those rights would apply to the fetus)

Just tossing those ideas out there.