...and of course by "defend it" I mean "defend making abortion illegal."
Blurg.
Jen:
For my part, I am not interested in debating abortion so much as wondering how libertarians can defend it on the grounds I mentioned.
But you are right, and I apologize for contributing to derailment. Back to Ron Paul.
albatross,
I won't get into the abortion debate with you per se, but what I'd like to say is that I really can not see how anti-choice policies can square with any libertarian platform worthy of the name.
The U. S. does not have laws compelling one person to provide bodily support to another. We don't require people to donate organs, for example. We don't require a parent to give bone marrow to hir child, or even blood. We certainly don't graft one person to another so that person B's heart can beat for the both of them. From what I understand of libertarians' perspective, they would say that that is as it should be.
So even if you give fetuses equal moral status with women, that still would not give the state reason to compel women to give their own bodily support to keep the fetuses alive. Unless you want to argue that either:
a) the precedent of compulsory bodily sacrifice is good (ie citizens are compelled to give blood or organs if someone else is in need... which sounds a whole lot like "from each according to ability to each according to need"(!)), or
b) fetuses have more rights than born children or adults.
I guess I just have a hard time seeing libertarians being comfortable arguing a), which means that the gist of it usually comes down to b).
And if either a) or b) is the basis for their abortion policy, then I respect libertarians enough to have them defend it on those grounds. So far I haven't heard that.
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| 2007 | 3 |
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