What you are all missing is the Libertarian argument that no human has any more rights or less rights than another. That includes a fetus, an invalid, people who are life support: no one. To tell a woman that her rights must be subjugated to the rights of another human being is to give that fetus MORE rights than the woman. No matter what the woman wants, the fetus' needs trump and the woman's rights are lost.
No one can force you to take care of an invalid, a dying old man, or a person on life support.
You lead right back into the nanny state with your arguments. If we have to protect fetuses then why not children who are not fed well, or adults who are not fed well, or people who don't have Prada handbags (they really are lovely). You are back to the welfare state in toto. (It's Latin, I am not talking about Dorothy's dog).
If you do not take care of a person on life support it is murder, so don't give me that we are all free to murder each other crap. The question is one of liberty and who has what.
What gives the person inside the right to subjugate the person outside? We do not allow any other kind of subjugation.
If we do not spread Libertarian principles and learn to understand them, then it will not matter if RP becomes President because the country will not be ready for him.
He is wrong on this issue, plain and simple. But I find it astounding how willing all the pro-life people are to quash all the life out of anyone with a different opinion than them. I have never felt so much venom and hatred toward anyone with a different viewpoint.
Just wait all you women out there. You aint gonna likes a world where mens is your master and all they gots to do to you is gets you in the family way so yous can lose your job and be forced back into the kitchen.
What's next? Gonna ban birth control too? Why not.
This guy aptly stated it: All that said, again, I do not advocate making abortion illegal -- even on the state level -- because it will not work. If it would, that is if women were willing to handle their freedom -- their power (the greatest power in this world) to make new life -- responsibly, then it would not be necessary to make it illegal, because it wouldn't be happening anyway.
Women do not deserve freedom because they cannot handle it.
How many does it take to make a baby? I must have misheard in biology class.
This is the kind of subjugation that is evil. This is the moral righteousness that I object to. This is the kind of talk that makes me vomit.
And yes, moron above, some 9 year olds are able to make babies. Do you need a lesson in biology too?
What a bunch of hateful people you all are. Horrid.
Jennifer,
I have appreciated much of your contribution to this board. I am pro-life and would like to address your arguments. At the end of the day, I hope because we disagree does not make me hateful in your eyes, the fact that you support taking an innocent life so that a woman can "have control of her body" I do not think makes you hateful - just misled. My off the cuff response would be that if the woman controlled her body in the first place, then there wouldn't be another life to be arguing over whether she has the right to kill it.
I am glad that you refer to "the person inside" as opposed to the person outside, as that means that you regard the unborn as a person, which is more than our legal system can say. If you did not acknowledge the unborn as a person, my argument on that point (for the sake of those who don't) is that we havea complete set of human DNA, it is living, and in most cases, with 9 months time, is going to develop into a fully functional, healthy baby.
For the sake of argument, I will leave discussion of rape, severely deformed fetuses with little chance of survival, and other outlier cases to another discussion. Let's keep this discussion focussed on 1) Women who became pregnant thru consential sex (with or without birth control) 2) No abnormally lifethreatening complications, and 3) a fetus without severe deformity, i.e. to a degree that makes viability of the fetus unlikely.
First your libertarian argument that no person has more rights than any other person: agreed. However, certainly rights have a priority. i.e. a right to live certainly trumps a person's right to free speech. So a person does not have a right to use his free speech to encourage the killing of another person.
While people may differ on exactly what rights have what amount of importance, it should be clear to any reasonable person that a right to life is paramount. It is very hard to exercise your right to bear arms if you are not breathing. All other rights are dependent and therefore inferior to the right to life.
Another example is that individual's have a right to property, and violating another person's right to their property is theft. However, no one would condemn a person for theft if the thief's life depended on it (although a just society might still demand compensation...)
So when you refer to a fetus trumping a woman's rights, one reason that must be so is not because the unborn's rights have more importance than the woman's, but WHICH rights are being weighed against each other. The woman's right to control her own body vs the unborn person's right to exist.
Moving on to your analogy of a fetus to a person on life support or an invalid. The primary difference is that I as a person have no responsibility toward the person on life support. Suppose the person had a rare blood type and the only person who could donate that blood type is me. I am assuming according to libertarian principles that we agree that I should not be forced to open a vein to save the person's life.
However, if the person is on life support because I hit them while driving drunk, then it is certainly in my best interest to do so. Otherwise, I am going to be held resposible for manslaughter. In a similar way, the unborn is not responsible for the dependent situation it finds itself in. At least partially, within our agreed upon parameters, the mother has placed the person in a completely helpless and dependent position. As a co creator of this human life, does this deliver to her the right to destroy that life? No, because as you yourself stated, no person has more rights than another. If we accepted the argument that life creation grants a right to destroying said life, it would mean a parent could justifiably kill their child at any time.
The libertarian not only wants liberty, but accepts consequences for their actions. Abortion of a child that was conceived within the parameters of this argument is not accepting that responsibility at the cost of a human life. I am not a hateful person, I don't hate people that are pro-choice, although I feel regret that they have blood on their hands that I believe deep down they acknowledge. I feel abortion is a tragic mistake. Certainly if we step out of the framework I have been discussing and bring rape, severe deformation and pregnancy where the life of the mother is severely threatened are areas that merit further consideration than the brief outline of my pro-life position which I have outlined.
I am sure you have heard all this before, but you must understand that being pro-life is not that I want to dictate my will on women. That is not the case at all. It is the requirement I feel to defend those who cannot defend themselves.
