What is your position on abortion?

[The Free Hornet]

I support all laws that restrict abortion, whether they're done on the federal, state, or local level.

And there are oodles of neocons, nanny statists, and illiberal progressives that have the exact same position on drugs/tobacco/guns. Even if it is a bad law, they don't care, they support it. Whether you're trolling or truly have this MADDness, I don't know.

BTW, did all of your sock puppets vote yet? We need an honest representation of the forum here!

 

[Fredom101]

I support all laws that restrict abortion, whether they're done on the federal, state, or local level.

Laws don't stop people from doing things. If that were true, drugs would have already been eradicated. Think about it. Making abortion illegal gives power to the government and means women will simply go underground to get the procedure done. Your politicians won't stop anything, they are not magic. These are the same folks who start wars in the middle east and steal money from you and me here. Why would you trust them to do anything right?

 

[Neil Desmond]

robert68's post was about abortion. Your reply to his post was not.

Now here's a perfect example of nonsense. They were both about the libertarian stance on abortion. Both robert68's post and mine were equally about abortion; so either both were about abortion or neither was about abortion, not one was and the other wasn't.

Your post was about what you think "anarchists" and "libertarians" are (or are not) "opposed to." You claimed that "anarchists are opposed to laws." This is demonstrably false. I am an anarchist. I am not opposed to laws. Therefore, not all anarchists are opposed to laws. QED. (This is why robert68 called your claims "nonsense.")

No, not QED: You claim to be an anarchist. You claim that you are not opposed to laws. Therefore, not all who claim to be anarchists claim to be opposed to laws.

In making your point, you offered a polemical assertion (not a definition).

See, this is where you are mistaken. I wasn't making an argument or assertion. I was merely using a word, and I provided an explanation & provided an existing definition for it (I didn't make it up, it was already there).

robert68 disputed that assertion.

Or, robert68 disputed what might have been perceived as an assertion, as you are doing now. I responded by pointing out which definition I'm using, and as far as I'm aware, robert68 is content with my response. If robert68 isn't satified, then robert68 can speak for himself.

You then replied by citing a cherry-picked dictionary definition while ignoring the obvious fact that other defintions exist which simply do not support your assertion. (Some of these other definitions exist precisely because of the QED supplied above.) Thus, your selective invocation of semantics is just an exercise in question-begging (as such invocations almost always are).

No, this is not a case of "cherry picking." Cherry picking is what people do to support their argument by only using examples that support their argument and omitting examples that contradict their argument. Citing a definition is not cherry-picking. If it were, then communication wouldn't be feasible; it would be practically impossible.

Yes - you get to define your terms. (And you can define "cat" as "an elephant" for all I care.) But you do NOT get to pretend that your definitions somehow obviate or negate the objections others have to any erroneous conceptual denotations inherent in your definitions. (The previously stated QED is one such objection.)

All I'm trying to do is communicate. All I'm trying to do is use an existing word with an existing definition for it. I'm not trying to do something obnoxious like define cat as an elephant. All you seem to be interested in is getting on my case for not using a word in a way that you approve. You are relentlessly trying to be an authority over me.

And YOU are the one who has tried to "claim authority" over what a word means. (In fact ... what was the exact phrase you used? Ah, yes - "ultimate authority" - that's it!) You made an assertion about something. You didn't offer a definition for anything until after your assertion was challenged - at which point you cited a (conveniently redacted) dictionary entry as if doing so was somehow sufficient to settle the matter.

Yes, you're right; I did say "ultimate authority." If you take the entire response into account, wherein I was expressing my intent to yield to or concede the point, then perhaps you would've noticed (if you had the wherewithal) that it was rather tongue-in-cheek or facetious. Regardless, citing an outside source for definitions, specifically a dictionary, is the exact opposite of claiming authority. I don't need to offer a definition for a word I use, when context should suffice. I'm happy to cite a definition later on to clarify for whatever reason. I don't see you defining every single word in every single sentence you write, and you are not obligated to do so, either.

So your idea of resolving an issue is to (1) make assertions tangential to what someone else said, (2) selectively invoke dictionary-based semantics as an "ultimate authority" when someone disagrees with you about it, and then (3) dismiss everything by claiming that none of it really matters anyway, since the part of what you said that is being disagreed with isn't really your point after all (even though you were the one who brought it up for some reason).

Okay. Got it.

No, that's your projection and portrayal of what you want people to think that this is what I'm doing.

YOU are the one who broached this instance of the subject of anarchy and "what it is" - so "... attend the beam in thine own."

No, I'm not the one who started the claim about libertarians' positions on abortion; I was merely responding to it.

"Your" discussion? Well, excusez-moi! I was not aware that YOU are allowed to say off-topic things but that others are not allowed to respond to them.

I was not off topic, I did allow others to respond to them, and I even let them have their way.

This very issue (whether "anarchy = no laws") has already been addressed in numerous posts in this very thread - before YOU brought it up yet again. So perhaps you should go wag your finger in others' faces - starting with your own ...

However, you, on the other hand, are pouncing on me, trashing this thread, and trying to make it appear as though it's my fault.

 

[robert68]

It's pretty clear that I have. I've said that it shouldn't be a crime for people to engage in an activity like using drugs, since people who engage in that activity are only hurting themselves and aren't aggressing against anyone else. On the other hand, abortion should be illegal since someone who gets an abortion is infringing on the rights of another human being to live. That's a pretty clear illustration of how I believe that aggression against others should be punished while victimless crimes shouldn't be punished.

First of all, you want the federal government defining “human being” from conception on, and involved in outlawing abortions as much as “is necessary”. This isn’t libertarian.

Secondly, you have no regard for the rights of the pregnant girl/woman in your stance. Libertarian principle doesn’t hold that the protection of one person’s "rights" can come at the expense of another person rights, to the contrary. The implications of which go beyond the abortion issue, and justify any kind of aggression against one person, on behalf of the rights or “right to live” of another person. Your stance on drugs legalization doesn’t negate that, it contradicts it.

Also these items come to mind, 1) you believe the initial US invasion of Afghanistan was justified, 2) you want the troops brought home from abroad, and not deactivated, but lined up on the Canadian and Mexican borders, 3) you think every member of our military is a hero, 4) you’re very defensive about a particular creation and dependent of (especially US) western state intervention, that’s 7,000 miles away from the US, and predicated on denying individual rights to the natives of it’s land.

There’s a difference between the way you see individual rights, the nature of the US federal government and its role in peoples lives, home and abroad, and the way a “hardcore libertarian” does.

 

[Brett85]

First of all, you want the federal government defining “human being”, from conception on, and involved in outlawing abortions as much as “is necessary”. This isn’t libertarian.

Secondly, you have no regard for the rights of the mother in your stance. Libertarian principle doesn’t hold that the protection of one person’s "rights" can come at the expense of another person rights, to the contrary. The implications of which go beyond the abortion issue, and justify any kind of aggression against one person, on behalf of the rights or “right to live” of another person. Your stance on drugs legalization doesn’t negate that, it contradicts it.

Also these items come to mind, 1) you believe the initial US invasion of Afghanistan was justified, 2) you want the troops brought home from abroad, and not deactivated, but lined up on the Canadian and Mexican borders, 3) you think every member of our military is a hero, 4) you’re very defensive about a particular creation and dependent of (especially US) western state intervention, that’s 7,000 miles away from the US, and predicated on denying individual rights to the natives of it’s land.

There’s a difference between the way you see individual rights, the nature of the US federal government and its role in peoples lives, home and abroad, and the way a “hardcore libertarian” does.

Well, then I guess that Rand, Ron, Amash, and about every other liberty candidate in Congress isn't actually a "libertarian" according to you, since they oppose abortion rights and don't want to abolish the military. And my stance actually does consider the life of the mother, since I support an exception to a ban on abortion when the life of the mother is in danger. You yourself simply don't understand the non aggression principle, since you believe that people should be allowed to use force to take the lives of innocent human beings. Until you better understand the non aggression principle and come to understand that the government exists to stop people from infringing on the rights of others, it really isn't accurate for you to call yourself a "libertarian."

 

[Brett85]

And I'm not in favor of intervention overseas. I argue against basically all U.S interventions overseas. I support using military action after we get attacked, and we were attacked on 9-11, so I believe military action was justified after we were attacked. I'm opposed to intervention in Syria, Libya, Iran, Egypt, etc.

And I don't necessarily think that all of the members of our military are "heroes." I mean Timothy McVeigh was once a member of the military. I just object to people making blanket statements that all of the members of our military are just a bunch of "mass murderers" and "tyrants" and whatever ridiculous term they want to use.

 

[Murray N Rothbard]

I encourage everyone to read the following chapter: http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/fourteen.asp

The proper groundwork for analysis of abortion is in every man’s absolute right of self-ownership. This implies immediately that every woman has the absolute right to her own body, that she has absolute dominion over her body and everything within it. This includes the fetus. Most fetuses are in the mother’s womb because the mother consents to this situation, but the fetus is there by the mother’s freely-granted consent. But should the mother decide that she does not want the fetus there any longer, then the fetus becomes a parasitic “invader” of her person, and the mother has the perfect right to expel this invader from her domain. Abortion should be looked upon, not as “murder” of a living person, but as the expulsion of an unwanted invader from the mother’s body.[2] Any laws restricting or prohibiting abortion are therefore invasions of the rights of mothers.

It has been objected that since the mother originally consented to the conception, the mother has therefore “contracted” its status with the fetus, and may not “violate” that “contract” by having an abortion. There are many problems with this doctrine, however. In the first place, as we shall see further below, a mere promise is not an enforceable contract: contracts are only properly enforceable if their violation involves implicit theft, and clearly no such consideration can apply here. Secondly, there is obviously no “contract” here, since the fetus (fertilized ovum?) can hardly be considered a voluntarily and consciously contracting entity. And thirdly as we have seen above, a crucial point in libertarian theory is the inalienability of the will, and therefore the impermissibility of enforcing voluntary slave contracts. Even if this had been a “contract,” then, it could not be enforced because a mother’s will is inalienable, and she cannot legitimately be enslaved into carrying and having a baby against her will.

Another argument of the anti-abortionists is that the fetus is a living human being, and is therefore entitled to all of the rights of human beings. Very good; let us concede, for purposes of the discussion, that fetuses are human beings—or, more broadly, potential human beings—and are therefore entitled to full human rights. But what humans, we may ask, have the right to be coercive parasites within the body of an unwilling human host? Clearly no born humans have such a right, and therefore, a fortiori, the fetus can have no such right either.

The anti-abortionists generally couch the preceding argument in terms of the fetus’s, as well as the born human’s, “right to life.” We have not used this concept hi this volume because of its ambiguity, and because any proper rights implied by its advocates are included in the concept of the “right to self-ownership”—the right to have one’s person free from aggression. Even Professor Judith Thomson, who, in her discussion of the abortion question, attempts inconsistently to retain the concept of “right to life” along with the right to own one’s own body, lucidly demonstrates the pitfalls and errors of the “right to life” doctrine:

In some views, having a right to life includes having a right to be given at least the bare minimum one needs for contin*ued life. But suppose that what in fact is the bare minimum a man needs for continued life is something he has no right at all to be given? If I am sick unto death, and the only thing that will save my life is the touch of Henry Fonda’s cool hand on my fevered brow, then all the same, I have no right to be given the touch of Henry Fonda’s cool hand on my fevered brow. It would be frightfully nice of him to fly in from the West Coast to provide it. . . . But I have no right at all against anybody that he should do this for me.​

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]

It's also worth pointing out that the "abortion problem" as we know it would not be as much of an issue without government-created and enforced drug patents (birth control devices such as nuvaring which cost up to $100/month) and the many ways government has involved itself in exacerbating social issues that lead to unwanted pregnancies and subsequent abortions. In short, gov't should be out of the realm of abortion regulation, but I do not pretend that the result of that alone would be very pleasant unless it gets out of every other invasive practice as well. Only when gov't is out of public health care, public schools and welfare will fully legalized abortion be able to become less prevalent and less dangerous.

 

[Contumacious]

First of all, you want the federal government defining “human being”, from conception on, and involved in outlawing abortions as much as “is necessary”. This isn’t libertarian.

Secondly, you have no regard for the rights of the mother in your stance. Libertarian principle doesn’t hold that the protection of one person’s "rights" can come at the expense of another person rights, to the contrary. The implications of which go beyond the abortion issue, and justify any kind of aggression against one person, on behalf of the rights or “right to live” of another person. Your stance on drugs legalization doesn’t negate that, it contradicts it.

Also these items come to mind, 1) you believe the initial US invasion of Afghanistan was justified, 2) you want the troops brought home from abroad, and not deactivated, but lined up on the Canadian and Mexican borders, 3) you think every member of our military is a hero, 4) you’re very defensive about a particular creation and dependent of (especially US) western state intervention, that’s 7,000 miles away from the US, and predicated on denying individual rights to the natives of it’s land.

There’s a difference between the way you see individual rights, the nature of the US federal government and its role in peoples lives, home and abroad, and the way a “hardcore libertarian” does.

Exactly.

Reason he calls himself a "traditional conservative" whatever the fucketh that means. Whatever its meaning, their dogma considers women 2nd class citizens and support a theocracy.

But he has good intentions, in the name of the "babies" , but of course.

.

.

 

[Brett85]

Exactly.

Reason he calls himself a "traditional conservative" whatever the fucketh that means. Whatever its meaning, their dogma considers women 2nd class citizens and support a theocracy.

But he has good intentions, in the name of the "babies" , but of course.

.

.

So I guess you consider Ron Paul to be a conservative rather than a libertarian?

 

[erowe1]

Do that means that you agree with Mussolini - abortion is a "harmful freedom"?

No. It's positively a harmful act in and of itself. The only freedom you have ever had only extends out from you up until it violates the rights of someone else, which abortion does.

 

[robert68]

...

And I don't necessarily think that all of the members of our military are "heroes." I mean Timothy McVeigh was once a member of the military. I just object to people making blanket statements that all of the members of our military are just a bunch of "mass murderers" and "tyrants" and whatever ridiculous term they want to use.

Maybe so, but in your words:

you can still be a libertarian even if you say that every member of the military is a hero. That has nothing to do with libertarianism or non interventionism.

 

[erowe1]

I encourage everyone to read the following chapter: http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/fourteen.asp

Good idea. When they read it they'll see that Rothbard recognized that his position entailed mothers having the right to abandon to the elements their already born babies if they didn't want to take care of them.

Conversely, those of us who recognize that the latter is a clear violation of natural law must also reject his argument for being pro-abortion.

 

[Murray N Rothbard]

Good idea. When they read it they'll see that Rothbard recognized that his position entailed mothers having the right to abandon to the elements their already born babies if they didn't want to take care of them.

Conversely, those of us who recognize that the latter is a clear violation of natural law must also reject his argument for being pro-abortion.

Your first statement is pretty garbled grammatically, but I think I understand it. Yes, the right to abandon a pregnancy also rests upon the same basis as the right to abandon motherhood/fatherhood after a child is born. No one is saying that will be frequent or the norm, just that you have no right to interfere. You or someone else obviously may accept the responsibility these parents are giving up by adopting or even paying to adopt from them.

 

[Brett85]

Maybe so, but in your words:

Sure, you can be a libertarian and believe that every member of the military is a hero. That doesn't mean that I think that every member of the military is a hero.

 

[Sola_Fide]

I haven't seen Ron Paul's view on abortion posted in this thread yet. Everyone here should read and understand this:

Being Pro-Life Is Necessary To Defend Liberty

"Pro-life libertarians have a vital task to perform: to persuade the many abortion-supporting libertarians of the contradiction between abortion and individual liberty; and, to sever the mistaken connection in many minds between individual freedom and the "right" to extinguish individual*life.

Libertarians have a moral vision of a society that is just, because individuals are free. This vision is the only reason for libertarianism to exist. It offers an alternative to the forms of political thought that uphold the power of the State, or of persons within a society, to violate the freedom of others. If it loses that vision, then libertarianism becomes merely another ideology whose policies are oppressive, rather than liberating.

We expect most people to be inconsistent, because their beliefs are founded on false principles or on principles that are not clearly stated and understood. They cannot apply their beliefs consistently without contradictions becoming glaringly apparent. Thus, there are both liberals and conservatives who support conscription of young people, the redistribution of wealth, and the power of the majority to impose its will on the individual.

A libertarian's support for abortion is not merely a minor misapplication of principle, as if one held an incorrect belief about the Austrian theory of the business cycle. The issue of abortion is fundamental, and therefore an incorrect view of the issue strikes at the very foundations of all beliefs.

Libertarians believe, along with the Founding Fathers, that every individual has inalienable rights, among which are the rights to*life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Neither the State, nor any other person, can violate those rights without committing an injustice. But, just as important as the power claimed by the State to decide what rights we have, is the power to decide which of us has rights.

Today, we are seeing a piecemeal destruction of individual freedom. And in abortion, the statists have found a most effective method of obliterating freedom: obliterating the individual. Abortion on demand is the ultimate State tyranny; the State simply declares that certain classes of human beings are not persons, and therefore not entitled to the protection of the law. The State protects the "right" of some people to kill others, just as the courts protected the "property rights" of slave masters in their slaves.

Moreover, by this method the State achieves a goal common to all totalitarian regimes: it sets us against each other, so that our energies are spent in the struggle between State-created classes, rather than in freeing all individuals from the State. Unlike Nazi Germany, which forcibly sent millions to the gas chambers (as well as forcing abortion and sterilization upon many more), the new regime has enlisted the assistance of millions of people to act as its agents in carrying out a program of mass murder.The more one strives for the consistent application of an incorrect principle, the more horrendous the results. Thus, a wrong-headed libertarian is potentially very dangerous. Libertarians who act on a wrong premise seem to be too often willing to accept the inhuman conclusions of an argument, rather than question their premises.

A case in point is a young libertarian leader I have heard about. He supports the "right" of a woman to remove an unwanted child from her body (i.e., her property) by killing and then expelling him or her. Therefore, he has consistently concluded, any property owner has the right to kill anyone on his property, for any reason.Such conclusions should make libertarians question the premises from which they are drawn.We must promote a consistent vision of liberty because freedom is whole and cannot be alienated, although it can be abridged by the unjust action of the State or those who are powerful enough to obtain their own demands. Our lives, also, are a whole from the beginning at fertilization until death. To deny any part of liberty, or to deny liberty to any particular class of individuals, diminishes the freedom of all. For libertarians to support such an abridgement of the right to live free is unconscionable.

I encourage all pro-life libertarians to become involved in debating the issues and educating the public; whether or not freedom is defended across the board, or is allowed to be further eroded without consistent defenders, may depend on them."

 

[Contumacious]

So I guess you consider Ron Paul to be a conservative rather than a libertarian?

At the GOP Values Voter Presidential Debate on Sep 17, 2007, Ron Paul was asked what he will do to restore legal protection to the unborn:

“As an O.B. doctor of thirty years, and having delivered 4,000 babies, I can assure you life begins at conception. I am legally responsible for the unborn, no matter what I do, so there’s a legal life there. The unborn has inheritance rights, and if there’s an injury or a killing, there is a legal entity. There is no doubt about it.”

Well, I disagree.

If LIFE is the standard then, LIFE begins as a sperm and an Ovum.

Which means that the government could prosecute someone whenever they masturbated or had the menstrual cycle.

Assuming , for argument's sake , that it was determined that a fetus becomes human at conception, then you would have two Human beings competing for the SAME RIGHTS with one claiming that it has a RIGHT to live within another human being. That is preposterous and anti-Libertarian.

.

 

[Sola_Fide]

At the GOP Values Voter Presidential Debate on Sep 17, 2007, Ron Paul was asked what he will do to restore legal protection to the unborn:

“As an O.B. doctor of thirty years, and having delivered 4,000 babies, I can assure you life begins at conception. I am legally responsible for the unborn, no matter what I do, so there’s a legal life there. The unborn has inheritance rights, and if there’s an injury or a killing, there is a legal entity. There is no doubt about it.”

Well, I disagree.

If LIFE is the standard then, LIFE begins as a sperm and an Ovum.

Which means that the government could prosecute someone whenever they masturbated or had the menstrual cycle.

Assuming , for argument's sake , that it was determined that a fetus becomes human at conception, then you would have two Human beings competing for the SAME RIGHTS with one claiming that it has a RIGHT to live within another human being. That is preposterous and anti-Libertarian.

.

You have no idea what you are talking about. Your arguments are ridiculous. You are on the wrong forum.

 

[Christian Liberty]

And I'm not in favor of intervention overseas. I argue against basically all U.S interventions overseas. I support using military action after we get attacked, and we were attacked on 9-11, so I believe military action was justified after we were attacked. I'm opposed to intervention in Syria, Libya, Iran, Egypt, etc.

And I don't necessarily think that all of the members of our military are "heroes." I mean Timothy McVeigh was once a member of the military. I just object to people making blanket statements that all of the members of our military are just a bunch of "mass murderers" and "tyrants" and whatever ridiculous term they want to use.

You know what...

If everybody hated the military, I might not say things like this. As an 18 year old who has lived in an idoltarous society that worships Uncle Sam and his hired killers for his entire life, I am going to say things like this, because nobody else will.

I don't support Nuremberg Trials going down to the average soldier. But according to God's Law, any soldier who has killed an innocent person, whether a civilian or a soldier that was defending his own country, is a murderer. I'm not afraid to say that people like Chris Kyle who are happy about that got what they deserved. I hope he ended up coming to Christ of course, but I don't feel sorry for him other than that.

So I guess I sort of respectfully disagree with you on this.

I'd question the libertarian credentials of anyone who seriously thought everyone in the military was a hero (Note: I'm aware you didn't say this.) That would logically mean they believed that those military members did heroic things. Which is impossible for somebody who believes in the NAP and non-interventionism.

I've seen a lot of cognitive dissonance between people who don't generally support warmongering but still say the military are "Heroes" and that they "Defend our freedoms." There's no way this line of thinking is philosophically libertarian. Being libertarian generally requires more intelligence than that, intelligence which leads to logical consistency.

Of course, for politicians like Rand Paul, all bets are off I guess. Even I wouldn't say what I really think of the military in a political debate. But for the average libertarian on the street, they definitely shouldn't say things like that. At least not here. I generally don't even discuss what I think of "the troops" with people who aren't already in agreement with me, or at least smart enough to understand, my views on foreign policy. I once told a teacher that I support the troops so much that I support bringing them home. There's more nuance to my position than that, but its a good way of selling your views to someone who's still caught in the Matrix.

 

[Christian Liberty]

I haven't seen Ron Paul's view on abortion posted in this thread yet. Everyone here should read and understand this:

Amen brother. +1.

 

[MelissaWV]

With my legs firmly closed.