Abortion, rights and libertarianism. How to 'solve' this understandably divisive issue?

[69360]

Totally prohibit with a legitimate medical, not psychological life of the mother exception with a strong standard of proof, multiple medical opinions.

You didn't have that option.

I'm not in the mood to argue for pages why.

 

[torchbearer]

Totally prohibit with a legitimate medical, not psychological life of the mother exception with a strong standard of proof, multiple medical opinions.

You didn't have that option.

I'm not in the mood to argue for pages why.

r you willing to use a gun to force that opinion?
i know some one who will have a counter argument.

 

[Christian Liberty]

And I'm guessing then that you're perfectly fine with these abortions taking place regardless but simply being driven into a black market, or there being widespread coat-hanger abortions, increased power to criminals, a significant rise in crime, along with any and all other symptoms that come from prohibition a la alcohol, prostitution, drug, gambling, and immigration prohibition?

Simple economics. You can only wipe out the supply, not the demand. The demand remains, you just drive it underground, make it less controlled, mroe dangerous, and empower criminals.

Oh, people will still do it. I get that. When you literally believe abortion is murder, the danger argument doesn't appeal nearly as much. But yeah, in a free society, people will get away with horrible crimes sometimes. Doesn't mean we legalize murder.

Oh shame on me for getting into this, but here goes.

Abortion is a non-issue for me. I do not like it, but I understand the desire to terminate certain pregnancies.

Were I female and you were trying to dictate what I can or cannot do in that regard, I would tell you to go screw yourselves and I would do as I wished. Illegalize it and women still have a very simple remedy: an iodine soaked rag inserted into the vagina will cause miscarriage. I know women who have done it and it works like a charm.

We are either free or we are not. Some of you guys need to make up you damned minds. You may not like abortion - I don't - but it is NOT my place to stick my nose up Jane's twat uninvited. She doesn't want me there and I have no authority to go there unless she asks me to.

This is a slippery slope issue and do not fool yourselves into believing it isn't. Criminalize it and then what? The next steps could include investigating every miscarriage for criminal behavior. Shall we make iodine illegal for pregnant women to possess? How about nutrition? Is mama eating correctly? Why can't we force her to eat a standard diet maximized for the fetus' health? Remember the Olympic skiier Michaela Figini? She was racing downhill and methinks slalom or FS while something like 6 or 7 months pregnant. Does this not endanger the fetus? How about we arrest all women engaging in any activity that endangers the baby? Put them in a jail cell at least until the child is born, but if she is egregious enough perhaps we just leave her there because she is so obviously unfit to be a parent.

That shit stands to get out of control.

Being free means tolerating things others do that you absolutely HATE. If you are not willing to so tolerate, then you are not a free man but a pretty slaver and there is no credible way to deny this. So, once again I admonish you to make up your mind: freedom or something else. If freedom, then you really need to STFU about criminalizing abortion and cowboy up to the tolerance that liberty demands of the free man toward his fellows. This is the "down side" of freedom: people get to do shit that make you want to kill them. Grow up, grow a pair, get over yourself, and get to the business of living AS a free man and not just talking about it out one side of your mouth while going all pretty-slaver out the other. It's not pretty, it's not gracious, it's not credible, it's not intelligent, and it's not right.

You will NEVER stop women from terminating pregnancies. All they have to do is stop eating for several days and that's that. What do you propose, force feeding them? If what they do is indeed "sin", leave it to "God" to make his judgment and keep your tongue and hands to your damned self.

Over and out.

First of all, why were you a Ron Paul supporter again? With your rhetoric you'd think Ron Paul was some kind of "Hater of liberty" or something.

Second of all, no, I don't support prohibiting dangerous activities while pregnant. It actually is her body and she can do what she wants. She doesn't have a right to deliberately murder the unborn. And yeah, the fact that she might get away with it doesn't change the fact that if she commits murder, she should be executed for murder.

 

[BuddyRey]

Hey, SV! I haven't seen you in ages!

I haven't read your article yet, but I just had to comment because I was so glad to see you back. How've you been?

 

[Sentient Void]

Hey, SV! I haven't seen you in ages!

I haven't read your article yet, but I just had to comment because I was so glad to see you back. How've you been?

haha, I've been very good, sir! I haven't been as active on RPF anymore since RP isn't running for office anymore, and I've gotten involved in so many other media (especially facebook and Google groups) for debating, discussing, philosophizing, trolling, etc, that RPF has just fallen out of flavor a little bit. Especially because the crowd here is much more heavily conservative and minarchist leading, and I'm for more egoist anarchist nowadays anyways.

Add me on facebook (or anyone for that matter)... 'Steve Lolyouwish'

 

[Sentient Void]

Oh, people will still do it. I get that. When you literally believe abortion is murder, the danger argument doesn't appeal nearly as much. But yeah, in a free society, people will get away with horrible crimes sometimes. Doesn't mean we legalize murder.

Sure it can. I believe that abortion is murder, but that prohibiting it is a cure worse than the disease itself. Which is part of what I argued in the article.

Getting away with horrible crimes and the fact that the activities in question simply get driven underground and get surrounded with crime, empower and enrich criminals, offer no legal recourse, etc are completely different.

It's too simple to talk about these things being 'legalized'. It's not that simple to call it 'legalized'. But if making something *illegal*, murder, abortion, whatever, etc results in just as much of it being done anyways, but now you've empowered and enriched criminals and reduced control over the situation, then it would be better to ensure it is 'not illegal'.

Under statelessness, the concept of 'legal' vs 'illegal' become far more meaningless. Instead, you have decentralized accountability mechanisms to mitigate the fallout of them and/or reducing the chances of them simply happening in the first place.

 

[Tod]

funny, because i thought the parent's held the liability of the child.
if they hold the liability, the child is their property.
if their car runs through someone's house and smashes it up- they have to pay. why? because it is their property, their liability.
if it was someone else's car, they'd have no liability for it.

same goes for all humans. if you don't have the liability-you don't have the right.

[SUP]1[/SUP]stew·ard

noun \ˈstü-ərd, ˈstyü-; ˈst(y)u̇rd\



Definition of STEWARD

1

: one employed in a large household or estate to manage domestic concerns (as the supervision of servants, collection of rents, and keeping of accounts)

2
: shop steward


3
: a fiscal agent

4
a : an employee on a ship, airplane, bus, or train who manages the provisioning of food and attends passengers
b : one appointed to supervise the provision and distribution of food and drink in an institution

5

: one who actively directs affairs : manager

 

[Matthew5]

My attitude toward abortion threads on RPF is changing.

 

[Murray N Rothbard]

In short, it is impermissible to interpret the term “right to life,” to give one an enforceable claim to the action of someone else to sustain that life. In our terminology, such a claim would be an impermissible viola*tion of the other person’s right of self-ownership. Or, as Professor Thom*son cogently puts it, “having a right to life does not guarantee having either a right to be given the use of or a right to be allowed continued use of another person’s body—even if one needs it for life itself.”[3]

What is so hard about this?

This is the fundamental principle of libertarianism- self-ownership. Violate that and you stand on the side without any true principle or ethical footing.

 

[Origanalist]

My attitude toward abortion threads on RPF is changing.

You can only take so many showers a day.

 

[BuddyRey]

haha, I've been very good, sir! I haven't been as active on RPF anymore since RP isn't running for office anymore, and I've gotten involved in so many other media (especially facebook and Google groups) for debating, discussing, philosophizing, trolling, etc, that RPF has just fallen out of flavor a little bit. Especially because the crowd here is much more heavily conservative and minarchist leading, and I'm for more egoist anarchist nowadays anyways.

Add me on facebook (or anyone for that matter)... 'Steve Lolyouwish'

Well you know, part of the reason that RPF's seems over-represented by Constitution-humpers at the moment is because most of our best anarchist posters dropped out of circulation, including you. If you think it was lonely before you left, just imagine how us holdouts feel.

I got off the Facebook plantation a long time ago (when it started getting creepy), but I do remember being friends with a Steve Lolyouwish, and always laughing when I saw his name on my feed, thinking "damn, I wish I'd thought of that name!" Maybe I'll start another account when I think up a decent alias. In the meantime, the Anarcho-Capitalist subreddit is pretty cool too; you should check it out if you haven't!

But, back on the subject of your article (apologies if I mildly derailed the thread earlier), I thought you absolutely nailed it. It's such a delicate issue with so many shades of complexity that it's incredibly hard to come up with any perspective on it that's both ethical and consistent. Even myself being, by far, the most opinionated guy I know, I chafe at terms like "pro-life" and "pro-choice" because of how inadequate they are, not to mention how they both serve, by their very wording, to demean the opinion of the opposition.

I especially love that you included the option of Evictionism, which I think doesn't get nearly the amount of attention it needs, even in the libertarian discussion, let alone the discussion of the wider public. In fact, I'll bet that if you could pool all the money that's ever been spent by lobbying groups, non-profits, activist organizations, etc. in the effort to have their opinion backed by the force of law, that money could have easily started to develop the kind of technology that we're taking about. But like you said, people have this knee-jerk idea that if you want something, you need only ask the state. They never consider that by letting human creativity work, they could have so much more than their desires could even conceive.

 

[BuddyRey]

//

 

[Sentient Void]

What is so hard about this?

This is the fundamental principle of libertarianism- self-ownership. Violate that and you stand on the side without any true principle or ethical footing.

Murray Rothbard contradicts himself here, based on his own theory of 'proportionality'.

But I addressed this all in the article. Did you actually read it, or just knee-jerk react to the subject heading?

 

[torchbearer]

[SUP]1[/SUP]stew·ard

noun \ˈstü-ərd, ˈstyü-; ˈst(y)u̇rd\



Definition of STEWARD

1

: one employed in a large household or estate to manage domestic concerns (as the supervision of servants, collection of rents, and keeping of accounts)

2
: shop steward


3
: a fiscal agent

4
a : an employee on a ship, airplane, bus, or train who manages the provisioning of food and attends passengers
b : one appointed to supervise the provision and distribution of food and drink in an institution

5

: one who actively directs affairs : manager

under steward, i didn't see anywhere defining that the steward was liable for the actions of the person they were managing.
doesn't really fit the bill.
but if my slave(which i'd own hypothetically) caused your property harm, i'd be liable for it.
if i was just a steward over some people in a house, i wouldn't be liable for anything they did with their bodies- and in most cases, the people would be liable for the steward if he/she was hired.

 

[Sentient Void]

Well you know, part of the reason that RPF's seems over-represented by Constitution-humpers at the moment is because most of our best anarchist posters dropped out of circulation, including you. If you think it was lonely before you left, just imagine how us holdouts feel.

hahaha, I can only imagine. I *do* remember a thread with a poll that I actually started some years ago, that carried on for quite a while, that showed that for at least those who voted in the poll, the anarcho-capitalist segment of RPF was actually very strongly represented and compromised something like at least 25% to up to 40% of those who voted in the poll. I was surprised, and impressed. Some of the responses also seemed to show / imply that many started out as constitutionalists and minarchists, and because of conversations here, turned to ancap or something along the lines of it.

Another thread I started that included a poll to state the score on some libertarian test also showed that a significant segment of those who took the test from here were very heavily radically libertarian - close to or actually ancap as well.

A lot of people must have left.

I got off the Facebook plantation a long time ago (when it started getting creepy), but I do remember being friends with a Steve Lolyouwish, and always laughing when I saw his name on my feed, thinking "damn, I wish I'd thought of that name!" Maybe I'll start another account when I think up a decent alias. In the meantime, the Anarcho-Capitalist subreddit is pretty cool too; you should check it out if you haven't!

Heh, it's funny... I'm getting married next month, and my fiance is going to change her name (on facebook, of course, not IRL) to 'Lolyouwish'... LOL

But yeah, I'll have to check out the subreddit ancap page. I've heard a lot of good stuff goes on there and even saw some links of some pretty epic debates.

But, back on the subject of your article (apologies if I mildly derailed the thread earlier), I thought you absolutely nailed it. It's such a delicate issue with so many shades of complexity that it's incredibly hard to come up with any perspective on it that's both ethical and consistent. Even myself being, by far, the most opinionated guy I know, I chafe at terms like "pro-life" and "pro-choice" because of how inadequate they are, not to mention how they both serve, by their very wording, to demean the opinion of the opposition.

Thanks. I had to clean it up a bit, because a debate on facebook I saw inspired this piece. It actually started out as a response to that facebook thread, then I noticed that my messy, wordy rant turned into an exceedingly long individual comment which would have had to have been split up into multiple comments. I decided instead to forego the comments which would have probably been tl;dr for facebook and the people in that thread, and opted to clean it up and put it up as an article here on RPF, anyways. It's been a while since I did one, too.

And yes, definitely... those terms do not cover the range of opinions on the matter, and only serve to dilute the discussion, break it down, and separate people into a false dichotomy that offers, IMO, no real 'solution' on either side because of their polarizing nature - especially if implemented in 'the law'.

I especially love that you included the option of Evictionism, which I think doesn't get nearly the amount of attention it needs, even in the libertarian discussion, let alone the discussion of the wider public. In fact, I'll bet that if you could pool all the money that's ever been spent by lobbying groups, non-profits, activist organizations, etc. in the effort to have their opinion backed by the force of law, that money could have easily started to develop the kind of technology that we're taking about. But like you said, people have this knee-jerk idea that if you want something, you need only ask the state. They never consider that by letting human creativity work, they could have so much more than their desires could even conceive.

Yes, evictionism is really important, and neds more attention. It will definitely become more viable as time goes on, as the free market is allowed to flourish and as technology improves. The problem is almost always rooted in the state and in statist law. Many problems like this can be solved or at least mitigated through getting the state out of the way. The natural market that would evolve out of allowing a market of private adoption services could potentially solve much of the abortion epidemic just through the incentives created for the body-mother and prospective adoptive parents. The culture still needs to change - but it would be a step in the right direction.

In any case, as with anything, the answer to increase liberty is simply that - create more liberty. When asked a question about the law or a policy or how to handle some 'social problem', etc - the answer should always be less law, repeal law, more freedom. *Not* increase the amount of laws, apply it mroe strictly/brutally and increase the power of the state.

It necessarily, tautologically *reduces* freedom and liberty. Any other claim that it increases freedom to reduce freedom is not only necessarily absurd on its face, but a pure fantasy, and one grounded solely in Orwellian doublespeak propaganda rooted in some kind of stockholm syndrome to the State (if claimed by libertarians, especially).

 

[KEEF]

Trying to say this without hitting a nerve because of your past experiences, but how is having brain activity (which is nothing more at that state a bunch of ions being actively transported across membranes to create random electrical firing of neurons in response to environmental signals) any different to a cell (whether it be single or a bolus of cells having maternal blood pumped to them) that has its own specific DNA code unique from the mother and father that is able to respond via expression to environmental/chemical/ enzymatic cues.

That being said, I feel that life has to begin upon the moment the haploid DNA of the one lucky sperm cell joins up with the haploid DNA of the ovum. At that moment, that ONE cell has all the genetic material necessary to make a human being.

The argument that it is really just a clump of cells, no different from scratching your arm... not so. The cells on your arm have the luxury of being replicating themselves on average every 35 days. That one zygote (with the exception of monozygotic twins) has but one shot.

Something must be said about the groups of people who make the definition of life have such plasticity so to justify their decisions on this topic. How would science classify this "group of cells" if it were extraterrestrial? They would classify it as life.

 

[Christian Liberty]

Here's my issue SV. You say "More freedom is always good" but nobody would sign a law that legalized murder up until age 5 because it was "Repealing more laws" and "Creating more liberty." We all know that's absurd.

I simply apply the principles of right to life from conception onward.

 

[robert68]

The argument that it is really just a clump of cells, no different from scratching your arm... not so. The cells on your arm have the luxury of being replicating themselves on average every 35 days. That one zygote (with the exception of monozygotic twins) has but one shot.

Not necessarily. Many zygotes have no chance of surviving pregnancy, and are the cause of many miscarriages. It’s why several embryos are made in vitro by couples who can’t conceive children the natural way. Also, the zygote period is very short, cell division follows immediately.

Something must be said about the groups of people who make the definition of life have such plasticity so to justify their decisions on this topic. How would science classify this "group of cells" if it were extraterrestrial? They would classify it as life.

All born human beings with rights have brains. And brain dead people are disconnected from life support all the time, with little or no complaint.

 

[The Free Hornet]

Here's my issue SV. You say "More freedom is always good" but nobody would sign a law that legalized murder up until age 5 because it was "Repealing more laws" and "Creating more liberty." We all know that's absurd.

I simply apply the principles of right to life from conception onward.

This is not without precedent:

My father established our relationship when I was seven years old. He looked at me and said, "You know, I brought you in this world, and I can take you out. And it don't make no difference to me, I'll make another one look just like you."

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Cosby

 

[pcosmar]

What about the freedom to decide for ones self?

That was the reality before Roe V Wade. And the push for a legalized Abortion Industry.