Posts in "Abortion"

The Rights of Fetuses as Citizens

Jan 28, 2013 at 4:12 PM

The question that has been stewing in my mind for close to a year now is this: If a fetus is a life and has a right to be protected starting at conception,does that mean that any baby conceived on American soil is a natural born citizen? And why or why not?

I will hopefully not leave out any options here, but it seems like one has four choices as a conclusion:

1. The fetus is life and is a citizen of the nation where it is conceived.

2. The fetus is not a life but is a citizen of the nation where it is conceived (this seems the least likely).

3. The fetus is a life and is not a citizen of the nation where it is conceived.

4. The fetus is not a life and is not a citizen of where it is conceived.

Now, in my opinion, conclusion #1 and #4 are the most internally consistent—and yet many would selection option #3. I find this puzzling at best. What leads one to deny a right of citizenship of the fetus, but not to deny its right to life, liberty, etc.? That sounds like ageism to me, which isn't a good reason to deny rights.

Planned Parenthood: Plan without my money

Feb 27, 2012 at 4:15 PM

By Benjamin Levine

There has been quite a lot of controversy surrounding Planned Parenthood (PP) lately. The debate has been whether or not taxpayer dollars should be given to PP in light of the truly abhorrent amount of abortions they perform. Americans are starting to ask, "Is it right to ask individuals to give their own hard earned money to fund something they find morally reprehensible?"

Allow me to be really frank on this issue: There is no reason, no rationale, no argument that anyone can make to convince me that taxpayers should provide funds to PP. I've seen all the bleeding hearts post on Facebook and complain in the media about how many good things PP does and how it deserves my support. "Thank you for cutting off funding to cancer screening programs in order to prove you are pro-life," read one of those trendy memes floating around online. Essentially, I'm being told not to mind the hundreds of thousands (324,008 in 2008) of abortions they perform each year because they provide cancer screenings. Call me crazy, but I think the fact that Planned Parenthood performed 26% of America's abortions in 2008 is solid grounds for a pro-life individual to consider not giving money to them.

A Propertarian Pro-Life Argument

Feb 16, 2012 at 11:30 AM

By Kendall Sontag

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.

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

Feb 9, 2012 at 1:14 PM

By Zach Foster

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.

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

Jan 30, 2012 at 11:17 AM

By Zach Foster

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.

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

Nov 8, 2011 at 4:32 PM

By Jarrod Hill

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.

A Pro-Liberty Case for the Pro-Life Cause

Aug 3, 2011 at 11:07 AM

By Eric Brakey

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…

Planned Parenthood and Grown-up Budgeting

Apr 11, 2011 at 12:24 PM

By Adam Fowler

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.

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

Oct 18, 2010 at 10:48 AM

By Wesley Messamore

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.