Posts in "Abortion"

By Kendall Sontag at 10:30AM

Feb 16, 2012

A Propertarian Pro-Life Argument

On this issue I'm not a propertarian. I simply view it as a right to life argument and that all killing is wrong, and that's usually where I end. However, I recently got into a debate with a pro-choice propertarian over the issue of abortion. It was civil, although fierce, but I came to a new property rights pro-life view.

First, we must define a few terms and throw out some arguments that have no basis or simply make no sense.

What is life? This should be a fairly obvious answer: any organic organism which is not dead (a definition can be found here or here). However, there is obviously something that separates us from plants and that is sentience, awareness, or conciousness. This is what makes life all worthwhile and what makes it so scary to lose. Now, animals are also sentient, but our amount of awareness is much greater, which is what separates us from them. But why am I talking about this? Because there are a few arguments that can be dispelled by this definition on both sides, mainly, "when does life begin?"

Many Christian pro-lifers want to assert that life begins at conception because that's when a soul enters the body. This, however, is for me an inadequate argument as there is no scientific or conclusive proof, only the dualist argument, that there even is a soul. And even if there is, there is no way to prove when it "enters" the body, if it "enters" at all.

Read more here

Posted in:

By Zach Foster at 12:14PM

Feb 9, 2012

What It Means to Be Pro-Life (Part 3 of 3)

Continued from Part II: How the Right Justifies Killing

Part III: How the Liberty Movement Resolves the Deadly Contradiction

Enter the liberty movement—the libertarian school of thought which resolves the great and deadly contradiction between the left and the right. Libertarianism is classically liberal and traditionally conservative, upholding alike the rights of unborn babies whose existence is viewed as inconvenient and foreigners with a language and a faith unpopular in the West. Unlike most of the leftists and rightists in America, libertarians hold the view that all human life is sacred, regardless of whether the party in question is a fetus, a prisoner of war, an unrepentant White Russian counter-revolutionary, or a Muslim who holds Israel in low esteem.

While they do oppose abortion on most counts, they will typically concede the choice to a woman if the pregnancy threatens her life and there is little chance of her surviving childbirth.** There is no sense in both baby and mother dying. This, however, is far from a common circumstance. Most abortions performed in the United States are done so on young women who, either by their own choice or under coercion of their male partners or other influential figures, are refusing to take responsibility for their actions, that being sexual activity that resulted in the creation of a new human life.

Read more here

Posted in:

By Zach Foster at 10:17AM

Jan 30, 2012

What It Means to Be Pro-Life (Part 1)

Many Americans with some political consciousness tend to group themselves in one or two political categories: the left and the right, the former are usually associated with the Democrat Party and the latter with the Republican Party. Whenever people assign themselves to one of these two positions, they usually subscribe to the majority of that position’s pre-set policies and beliefs.

Both the left and the right have their own views on the sanctity of life, yet their contradictory views -- the left being against war and the death penalty but all for the choice of abortion and the right being against abortion but for the death penalty and war -- become a paradox. Wherever they stand on the issue of life, both the left and the right are in full favor of death to some extent, and any stance they take on preserving life -- whether in the fetal stage or in the electric chair -- is based on fallacious logic and dishonest euphemisms. Both sides are willing to kill in order to bring about their ideal conditions in society.

Part I: How the Left Justifies Killing

Leftists love to attack war but most of them are hypocrites for doing so, since they also often favor war but simply for different reasons than the right. Socialists favor labor violence and outright civil wars which they refer to as “wars of liberation.” If they subscribe to Lenin’s teachings, violence and outright terror in the name of proletarian revolution are justified (see The Black Book of Communism, Chapter 4: The Red Terror). More moderate leftists, from Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama, campaign on peace but instead lead the country into wars for various political and economic purposes. With Wilson it was the First World War and with Obama it was continuation of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as well as intervention in the Libyan Civil War as well as those in Somalia, South Sudan, and Central Africa. Both social democrats enjoyed wide support from their allegedly pacific Democrat Party.

Read more here

Posted in:

By Jarrod Hill at 3:32PM

Nov 8, 2011

Personhood, Voter I.D., and Eminent Domain: A Big Day for Mississippi

Today, Mississippi voters will enter the ballot box and decide on three huge initiatives: personhood, voter identification, and eminent domain.

Many voters will cast their vote considering only the popular opinions of that group of people whom they most respect or think are most sophisticated or even "cool." This type of voting has been made much easier with the growth of social networking websites such as Facebook. Others will vote based on the emotional sympathies which they themselves hold.

For the libertarian, however, the issue is much simpler in a sense but still more difficult: The only consideration seems to be whether the legislation would do more to protect or more to obstruct the liberties of individuals. In deciding, the libertarian must recognize the distinciton between what the initiative purports to do, and what it would actually do in reality. But even then, the libertarian must decide whether to vote based on what he or she believes to be the likeliest outcome or what he or she believes to be the worst possible outcome. Particularly in the case of Initiative 26, which defines personhood, this process is terribly difficult and ends with libertarians coming down on both sides of the issue.

Read more here

Posted in:

By Eric Brakey at 10:07AM

Aug 3, 2011

A Pro-Liberty Case for the Pro-Life Cause

Recently, a pro-life friend of mine witnessed a car displaying two bumper stickers. The first read “Donate Life, Become a Tissue/Organ Donor,” and the second read “Pro-Choice.” He commented that he was amused with what he saw as an apparent contradiction, leading a pro-choice friend to chime in, saying that there was no contradiction and that:

[It] makes complete sense. It's the difference between asking someone to do what you believe to be the right thing and the government intruding on your life to demand that you do what some people believe to be the right thing… Asking someone to consider donating tissue and organs (but not demanding it by law) is completely congruent with asking someone to consider carrying their fetus to term (but not forcing them to do so by law).

The issue of abortion is one that divides many liberty-minded people. Indeed, icons of the libertarian movement seem to fall as far on opposite sides of this issue as one could imagine. For example, Ron Paul writes in his recent book, Liberty Defined, about his personal experience witnessing an abortion as an OB/GYN resident in the 1960s. He writes:

I witnessed… the abortion of a fetus that weighed approximately two pounds. It was placed in a bucket, crying and struggling to breathe, and the medical personnel pretended not to notice. Soon the crying stopped…

Read more here

Posted in:

By Adam Fowler at 11:24AM

Apr 11, 2011

Planned Parenthood and Grown-up Budgeting

Much debate took place around government funding to Planned Parenthood leading up to the prevented government "shutdown." Many pro-lifers argued funding was going directly to fund abortions. Pro-choicers argued the federal money was separated from the money going to abortions. And budget hawks and libertarians argued government shouldn't be subsidizing any of their services, regardless of the abortion issue.

Here are a few facts on the issue straight from Planned Parenthood itself:

Percent of Planned Parenthood revenue from government funding (FY 2008/2009) = 33% [source]
Abortion as percentage of all Planned Parenthood services (FY 2008/2009) = 3% [source]
Number of abortions performed by Planned Parenthood every hour (2009) = 38 [source]

In short, some of the figures thrown around have been exaggerated while others not raised should be a little disturbing. However, two points should be raised.

Read more here

Posted in:

By Wesley Messamore at 9:48AM

Oct 18, 2010

Evidence: Feminist groups like NOW care more about abortion than women's rights or dignity.

After endorsing California's democratic gubernatorial candidate despite his campaign's use of the word "whore" to describe his female opponent, NOW's California chapter president went on to insist that the description was accurate, and that Meg Whitman is in fact a "political whore." This is a word that NOW's national president describes as "hate speech."

So is NOW willing to tolerate hate speech against women from a candidate so long as he is for legal abortion? That's how it appears.

Get the whole scoop and listen to the FULL AUDIO of the voicemail which inadvertantly recorded gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown approving of his campaign aide's use of the word whore here.

Posted in:

2 comments

By Matt Cockerill at 9:14PM

Nov 6, 2009

The Irony of State Regulations

Whether or not one is opposed to abortion, they at least have to appreciate the blatant contradictions of these sort of government rules:

Posted in:

Add new comment

By Bonnie Kristian at 12:32PM

Jul 28, 2009

Morality dictated by government will change with every election

Ron Paul's speech explaining a new bill he has introduced to remove federal funding for abortion at home and abroad is posted on LewRockwell.com today. Perhaps the best part of it is his discussion of morality dictated by government, which is always a bad idea:

Free people should be left alone to follow their conscience and determine their own lifestyle as long as they do not interfere with other people doing the same. If morality is dictated by government, morality will change with every election. Even if you agree with the morality of the current politicians and think their ideas should be advanced, someday different people will inherit that power and use it for their own agendas. The wisdom of the constitution is that it keeps government out of these issues altogether.

Read the rest of this excellent (and short) speech here.

Read more here

Posted in:

By Peter St.Jean at 4:51PM

Jul 11, 2009

Government-Funded Abortion

The confirmation of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, as is the case with most confirmation hearings, has devolved into a series of useless ad hominem attacks based in partisan politics. In this case, the noise is destroying the signal, and some very important information has simply slipped through the cracks. One of the most important issues with Sotomayor hasn't come up in the confirmation process at all: In a recent interview with the New York Times, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg talks about how Sotomayor's appointment would affect the way the Supreme Court treats abortion.

Although Sotomayor has never directly ruled on whether the Constitution protects abortion, Ginsburg has high hopes that she will be a staunch advocate not only for abortion, but for government-funded abortion. Ginsburg says that the Roe decision created "a policy that affects only poor women" and bemoans "the lack of Medicaid for abortions." Ginsburg's hope is that Sotomayor's nomination will help to "straighten out" abortion policy.

If history is any indication, government-funded abortion is only one small step away from government-controlled abortion. The government already takes a keen interest in controlling our bodies, mandating vaccinations and restricting our intake of certain substances. If some government health czar were to decide that recent advances in genetic testing would enable us to "kill off inherited illnesses" at the price of only a few thousand abortions, we might well find ourselves in a situation where so-called "reproductive rights" become reproductive privileges.

Read more here

Posted in: