To put us all on the same page, social and corporate media exploded today over the leak of a draft brief by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito from Politico (Politico Article) that appears to indicate the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade and let the States decide the fate of abortion. For the record, I do not care one ounce about the draft being leaked. Nor should anyone else. Yes, it was done for political purposes, but I still want to know about it so I don’t care.
For the TL:DR crowd:
· This is not a violation of the NAP. A heartbeat does not signify that the fetus is capable of life outside the body of the mother. There is no conscious thought, there is no understanding of anything; there is literally just a slight biological impulse.
· Pro-Choice…ITS IN THE NAME.
· How can Libertarians celebrate the removal of something as an interpreted right (in the Supreme Court) and given over instead to a group of scum-sucking politicians?
· Free Markets: doctors who disagree don’t have to perform them, and doctors who are fine with it can.
· Democracy: Why turn this over to mob rule? How is the mob any more capable, qualified or just in general any of their business to be making medical or personal decisions for you than you are?
· How exactly does this affect you personally?
· This creates Black Markets and room for YouTube tutorials on “Homemade Remedies” that are going to be far worse than just allowing for a healthy, hygienic, known and rated location.
· Women’s Rights = Human Rights. This needs to be normalized that it’s not just about women, it’s about politicians using demographics to socially divide us so that we’re easier to manipulate.
Right out the gate, this seems like a good thing: less federal government and more control at the local level; more of a reconstitution of the 10th Amendment rather than judicial edict. But I fundamentally disagree due to the incontrovertible misrepresentations and it’s been disheartening to see many good Libertarians failing to grasp the intricacies of this decision.
To tackle the first issue that is pointed out: The NAP. For the uninitiated, the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) is fairly straightforward, according to the Great Murray Rothbard, “no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else.” Most arguments I see deal with abortion being a violation of the NAP as the belief is the mother is ending the life of a child, the child being defined as a person as soon as a heartbeat is detected. Now, it’s either a child to you or it isn’t and so if a woman is raped, or her life is threatened by the pregnancy or whatever…if you consider that to be a child then your idea is that she should be forced to carry it no matter what because the alternative is baby murder. This, I think is crucial: REALLY think that through because it is absolute. It’s either a child, or it’s not. It’s binary. If you are willing to make concessions based on rape or health of the mother, then we’ve established that limits exist and now it’s just a game of negotiation. If you’re not willing to budge on that, then effectively you would force a victim to carry a 9-month reminder to term and to know that offspring is in the world, or that you would sacrifice her in favor of this potential child. Neither scenario plays well, but one is obviously more about personal freedom, while the other is more about coercion and force.
A bill doesn’t become a law just because it made it to committee; just because you have a beautiful pork belly doesn’t mean you can claim to have the best BBQ burnt ends; a group of apple seeds is not an orchard. These aren’t exactly perfect comparisons (nothing could be), but the premise is there. A heartbeat is no more the establishment of a person than a seed is to being an apple. The fetus is not viable nor is it able to sustain itself until significantly further along in the pregnancy. Plenty of issues can arise between the heartbeat and the delivery that could impact that baby and we don’t consider them the death of a person. To the parents, it’s obviously a horrific and traumatizing occurrence but it hits differently to everyone else because it is different. Everyone knows how vulnerable and tenuous the childbearing stage is and so we categorize that process differently.
Now, the main points I want to address are the inconsistencies within Libertarian philosophy and the applause to the abolition of Roe. To identify the nuance here (and I’m going to speak in the past tense because it seems like a done deal, but understand it is not yet solidified), Roe was codified as an interpretation of our Constitution; it was not a form of law, legislative decree or executive fiat. The Supreme Court holds this as a fundamental right of all citizens. In the Supreme Court, it means it cannot be taken away except by the Supreme Court. Inalienable. The abolition of Roe means that it is a right no longer; it is up for debate and it is subject to the whims of man (and woman). Even the very wording of being “Pro-Choice”, how to Libertarians miss this?? To be a Proponent of CHOICE. Is this not our bread and butter??
Ludwig von Mises holds that, “the virtues of democracy and public deliberation are not for him.” As Dave Smith (Part of the Problem) has pointed out: “my rights are not up for your debate”. These are philosophical and colloquial descriptions of the Libertarian “all your freedoms, all the time” moniker and the very notion we would overturn something held as a fundamental right to the legislative body, or that so many would cheer on the transfer of “not-your-business” from a right, to a privilege is unconscionable.
Now, personally, as a father myself, I think the father should be able to have some sort of say in this. Not to keep the child, but if he doesn’t want it, he shouldn’t be forced into keeping it either. If he wishes to absolve himself of the responsibility (and joy of being a parent), that should be intertwined with the “Pro-Choice” label. For this argument though, I’m leaving Dad-to-be out of the picture because, frankly, he doesn’t really matter. He can’t force the woman to keep it just as the government shouldn’t be able to force the woman to keep it for any reason. So it comes down to choice between the mother and the doctor. It does not affect you. At all. Not one bit.
So what are the effects of this? Oddly enough, it’s the exact argument that Libertarians use for the legalization of marijuana or anything else prohibited: having it illegal just creates a black market for it. Best case is that women are going to be moderately inconvenienced and have to travel to another state (assuming their home state doesn’t make THAT illegal also), or worst case scenario is that they make do with what they have available locally and privately. This usually means something extraordinarily unhygienic and dangerous that I’m just not even going to go into because I don’t believe in scare tactics like showing pictures of your brain, and then your brain on drugs. Is this really what we want for our friends, family, and children?
The argument people make of “Well, just raise your kid’s right and this won’t be an issue.” Okay. So then if YOU raise your kids right, what do you care if this is legal or not? The inverse is true also, except in that case, someone is being forced into your belief system rather than their own. But it brings us back to the two basic questions of is this really what we want for our children and friends/family? We’d prefer to subject them to back alley butchers, YouTube tutorials on “homemade remedies” or force them to take their chances with the law enforcement (when did we get on their side again?)…all so they can avoid having a child when they are clearly not ready to have one or force them to subject their bodies to something they choose not to go through? More than that, is this really any of Tom-down-the-streets business? This is not a community decision, it is a personal decision and it’s already hard enough to make at that level. Maybe the community shouldn’t label this person a pariah for making a choice that is probably harder than any of the ones they’ve ever made in their comfortable lives.
So what are the consequences of forcing a woman to NOT have an abortion? First off, the obvious: you’re forcing someone to do something they don’t want just for your belief on what constitutes a human. Next, you’re relegating this child into the foster care system or at least a position of neglect from a parent who isn’t even ready to have the child. It’s a virtual guarantee they will end up on welfare and become burdens on the state. Foster children are 2.5 times more likely than non-foster children to go straight into the “justice” system within 2 years of leaving foster care. One study showed that more than 90% of youth in foster care with five or more moves will become involved in the juvenile justice system. Another study found that by age 17, over half of youth in foster care experienced an arrest, conviction, or overnight stay in a correctional facility. This is especially acute for LGBTQ youth who, once in foster care, are more likely to be placed in group care and have frequent placement moves and female youth are targeted by sex traffickers (JLC.org). So it begs the question, are you pro-life, or just pro-birth? As libertarians, the notion of having children born just to become wards of the state seems…ridiculous. Sure, we can talk about privatizing the system and all that, but that’s not going to happen just by overturning Roe. Assuming the child leaves foster care without any significant issues, they’re going to leave with no financial support network (other than the state), no money and no adult support. They are also unlikely to have job skills outside of what they might get in foster care. Effectively, you’re forcing a woman to have a child they don’t want just to send this child off to either an unloving parent (we’ve seen how that usually turns out), or out into the world with nothing and no one. What could go wrong?
Last point I want to make is the whole notion of “Women’s Rights” because I do take some issue with that label. It’s Human Rights. We should all be concerned with this because today it’s about the right of women to have control over their own bodies. Last year it was everyone needing control over their bodies, tomorrow it could be men have to remove all facial hair because beards come off as “toxic masculinity”. Stop giving them power to think it’s okay to divide us. We should not be okay with thinking “oh it’s just for women…” No. This is the proverbial, “first they came for the socialists and I did not speak out for I was not a socialist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out for I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me” (Martin Niemöller poem). Stand. Up. Governments and Law Enforcement don’t care about any of you individually or collectively. What they care about is resistance. It’s why the woman in Texas was just charged with murder. The district attorney’s office dropped the case because of the technicality that she gave herself an abortion rather than the new Texas law (SB 8) that prohibits a doctor from performing them after the heartbeat is detected. She still spent time in jail, garnered national attention and was a victim of the typical police mantra of “jail first, ask questions later”. Because you know, that’s not really an impediment to people’s lives; to be arbitrarily locked away until the system can determine what to do with you…
Remember who and why we fight.
If you feel as though a 1mo old is the exact same as a fetus, we differ greatly on our interpretation of human. I will say, the fetus has no rights. It's not even born yet. The fact that childbearing is so tenuous that any little thing could wind up in miscarrying the child. If a mother-to-be ingests something she's allergic to on accident and it results in a miscarriage, is that negligence, manslaughter? If she ate it on purpose, is that murder? No is the only acceptable answer there.
Here's the thing: you can be a pro-life libertarian. Thats fine because at the end of the day, you leave other people alone and dont force your belief system on…
A heartbeat does not signify that the fetus is capable of life outside the body of the mother."
Your argument is based on the premise that a child in the mother's womb has no rights. The other side thinks that it is a human life and abortion is murder.
How do you feel about a mother murdering her child when they are 1 month old? If you follow all the arguments you laid out about abortion they still hold true for a 1 month old child.
"is this really any of Tom-down-the-streets business? This is not a community decision, it is a personal decision and it’s already hard enough to make at that level. Maybe the community shouldn’t label this…