*opens up a can of worms*

[Jared]

so...abortion. i've been assured a couple of times that i am not the only libertarian who feels that abortion is the murder of a human life and therefore should be illegal. does anyone on this forum agree with me? we don't need a huge debate or anything, i'm just sort of curious what you all think.

[BillyC]

so...abortion. i've been assured a couple of times that i am not the only libertarian who feels that abortion is the murder of a human life and therefore should be illegal. does anyone on this forum agree with me? we don't need a huge debate or anything, i'm just sort of curious what you all think.

I am pro choice and I choose Life.
I think its murder as well.

Should it be illegal???......now that is a debate, and like you said a can of worms.

My wife and I were lucky to have our son I could not imagine my life with out him.

[intergraph19]

500 posts for me!!

Yes, I am FIRMLY in the abortion=murder camp.  Very VERY firmly I might add.  Do I thik it should be illegal?  I think that's a state issue, not federal, as I feel most issues are.  Something to be decided through the proper legistative channels, NOT through the wretched, over reaching court system.  ($0.02)

[Gabo]

Personally, I would say you are killing someone when you have an abortion.
But that doesn't mean you aren't allowed to.

Just as you can kick anyone you want out of your house, you can kick anything you want out of your body.
Especially if that thing is a parasite that leeches off of you.

[Fluff and Stuff]

Yes, I am..in the abortion=murder camp...Do I think it should be illegal? 

I agree that it is killing and I don't think it should be against the law.  But then again, I am not completely against killing, I own a gun and am in the Army.

[Braddogg]

so...abortion. i've been assured a couple of times that i am not the only libertarian who feels that abortion is the murder of a human life and therefore should be illegal. does anyone on this forum agree with me? we don't need a huge debate or anything, i'm just sort of curious what you all think.

As long as murder is illegal, so too should abortion be illegal.  The issue should be a state issue except in cases where state boundaries are crossed or when the abortion occurs on federal-controlled property.

[KBCraig]

+1 for abortion=killing

If you're not aware of them, there's a group called Libertarians For Life. The group was founded by an atheist who arrived at her position via rational thought, not religion or moral dogma, just in case anyone questions their legitimacy.

Although I'm strongly pro-Life, I join those who say that this is a state, not federal, issue. Some states would choose to legalize abortions, and others would outlaw them. Roe v. Wade was a horrible decision, and even those who loudly support it will quietly acknowledge that it was a flawed decision.

I believe those states that would legalize abortion might as well legalize rape; after all, it's the man's body, to do with as he chooses, right? (What? You say there's another person's body involved? Well, welcome to the abortion debate!)

Kevin

[Marcy]

I am raising a child the State of NH tried to convince her mother to abort.
Abortion is killing.  That said, the law should be silent on the subject.  If we have a law that says it is legal (under x set of circumstances), then the law can also say it is illegal under another set of circumstances.  The law says abortion is legal in the US now, under most circumstances: it could equally declare abortion mandatory for all one-child families, as they do in China.  We've allowed the issue to pass from private conscience to public law and that was the big mistake.

[tracysaboe]

so...abortion. i've been assured a couple of times that i am not the only libertarian who feels that abortion is the murder of a human life and therefore should be illegal. does anyone on this forum agree with me? we don't need a huge debate or anything, i'm just sort of curious what you all think.

I firmly believe abortion is Murder. I'm an active member of the Libertarians for life group (http://ww.l4l.org.)

government should protect life if government's suppost to exist. So while we still government, abortion should be illegal -- or it's completely ilegitimate.

But frankly government it does a bad job of protecting people from normal murder to.

So for myself I say abolish the government and let people take responsibility for defending themselves.

Tracy

Edit. I just say KBs post. Can I have a KArma point too Craig?

Tracy

[tracysaboe]

Personally, I would say you are killing someone when you have an abortion.
But that doesn't mean you aren't allowed to.

Just as you can kick anyone you want out of your house, you can kick anything you want out of your body.
Especially if that thing is a parasite that leeches off of you.

Gabo, the problem is that baby was FORCED into being in that position where it needed to stay in the womb for survival. If the Mother and FAther forced the baby into that position it has a responsibility to care for it.

Just like it has a responibility to care for it after it's born.

Tracy

[9thmoon]

Another take:  I believe that abortion is a big messy issue, morally speaking, and that lots of people have firmly-held beliefs, often arrived at rationally, that often contradict other people's just as firmly-held beliefs and furthermore, that whether or not I think it's murder doesn't matter one whit as far as the law is concerned. 

I would never have an abortion, but I don't get to tell anyone else what to do with their own bodies.  Even if you consider a pregnancy to be "a life" instead of "a potential life", if that pregnancy is unwanted and unwelcome, you could consider it in violation, however unwittingly, of the ZAP, and the ("potential") mother has the right to do what she needs to do to protect her life/property/etc. 

And THAT said... for gods' sake, people, use a condom.

If that fails, consider adoption.  There are far too many people out there who want to provide a loving home for your child.  I can't imagine putting yourself in the ambiguous position of "am I a murderder or am I not?" if you don't have to. 

[tracysaboe]

Heres an e-mail I wrote so somebody once about the "libertarian view on abortion" Perhaps it would be useful to the discussion.

Libertarian views on Abortion

Their are 4 distinct views on the morality of
abortion.
There's also a lot of opposition in the LP to Roe V
Wade.

The Libertarian Party itself doesn't have a plank on
abortion. "Recognizing that abortion is a very
sensitive issue and that people, including
libertarians, can hold good-faith views on both sides,
we believe the government should be kept out of the
question. We condemn state-funded and state-mandated
abortions. It is particularly harsh to force someone
who believes that abortion is murder to pay for
another's abortion."
http://www.lp.org/issues/platform/womerigh.html
This is basically a reiteration on Thomas JEfferson.
"To compell a man to furnish with funds that for which
he deems morally reprehensible is tyranny itself."

The main thing, for the LP is that they shouldn't be
funded with tax dollars (Which would be a HUGE
improvement over the current situation you understand.
Bush himself has sent foreign aid to Africa with some
of the moneys earmarked for abortion services, and
he's also put us in UNESCO, which helps fund the worl
population fund -- a fund that subsidises forced
abortions in places like China. See Congressman Ron
Paul's speach in the House about these issues.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul94.html and
http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2003/cr010803b.htm

Libertarians are split about 50/50 on the abortion
issue. (The vote at the last national convention came
short about 49/51 to afirm the unborn's right to
life.) I'm actually a member of a large and growing
group known as "libertarians for Life"
http://www.l4l.org . You should go through it. I am of
this camp on the abortion issue. But this is the ONE
area where I disagree with the Libertarian Platform
on, and I feel that if it's your ONLY issue, we have a
chance by getting involved in the LP to change it's
platform on that. It used to affirm a right to
abortion, and now it's changed to not having a
position. So the view is changing. I know when I was
petitioning for the LP here in South Dakota, I have
both pro-lifers and Pro-abortionists telling me no
because each thought the LP was opposed to their point
of view. One lady was screaming at me because we
didn't believe in tax funded abortions.

This isn't to say that the abortion choice
libertarians that do believe abortion is OK are
flamming liberals on the issue though. Libertarians
think very very differently from democrats on this
issue.

Most libertarians that do think abortion is OK, still
believe that the Child is a moral human being with
moral rights. They believe a Child has a right to
life. It's just, they question whether or not that
Child has a right to live that life in the Mother or
not. Abortion choice libertarians believe that the
Mother should have a right to evict the baby. It's
simply a sad (and very tragic) byproduct that the baby
has to die when it's evicted. On the plus side,
Libertarians with this view are opposed to partial
birth abortion, and third trimester abortions, because
it IS possible to evict the child with-out killing it.
Indeed, Babies are viable around 5 months now, so any
abortion after that is morally repungent to these
eviction abortion choicers, because eviction is
possible with-out killing the baby, and should have
every precation taken to save the baby's life whne
it's evicted. They also believe that if Adoption
wasn't so regulated by the state, and more taken care
of by the free market and the church (like it's
supposed to be.) that their would be adoptive parents
who would be willing to pay these types of expenses to
have kids. Indeed, many already pay for the birthing
procedure. Also, if medicine weren't so socialized,
we'd have much faster technological and efficiency
growth, meaning the current technologies would
contunie to be less expensive and new ones would be
developed faster as well. But that government
socialism and intervention stagnates the medical
field. The main reason why medicine inflates at over
12% a year in cost is because of government
intervention. So, these eviction abortion choicers in
the libertarian party, think that improvements in
technology will eventually make the abortion issue go
away. As viability gets earlier and earlier, these
types of libertarians will become more and more
pro-life. The best way to encourage the growth of
medicine and innovation is to get the state out of it
and allow the free market to work. I disagree with
eviction libertarians that a mother has the right to
evict inadvertently killing her child. The Mother is
the one that trapped the baby in that situation to
begin with. But they are right, that technology would
be progressing much faster and that viability would be
comming earlier and earlier much faster if medicine
was more free market. Block elaborates on this

" Libertarians do not favor abortion (pro choice). Nor
are they opposed to it either (pro life). Rather, and
I concede there is some debate on this issue within
libertarian circles, they offer a third option,
evictionism. Very briefly, the mother is the owner of
her body. The unwanted fetus is a trespasser. What
obligations does the owner have, when faced with
someone sitting in on one?s property? To remove him,
but in the gentlest manner possible. One hundred years
ago, with technology of that era, the only way to
remove a fetus was to kill it. So, the libertarian
position implies pro choice then. One hundred years
from now, if technology marches on, it will be
possible to evict the fetus from the womb without
harming it in the least. Then, the libertarian will be
a staunch pro lifer. Right now, matters are more
complicated. But the rule is, roughly, if a fetus can
live outside the womb, the mother may not kill it. If
libertarianism were installed tomorrow, there would be
no more partial birth abortions, nor any late in the
last trimester. As technology improves, we would move
earlier and earlier into the second trimester with
this ruling. For an elaboration on this see Block,
Walter and Roy Whitehead. Forthcoming. "Compromising
the Uncompromisable: A Private Property Rights
Approach to Resolving the Abortion Controversy,"
Thomas M. Cooley Law Review and Block, Walter. 1978.
"Abortion, Woman and Fetus: Rights in Conflict?"
Reason, April, pp. 18?25."

Another set of libertarians firmly believes that
abortion is murder, but feels that making it illegal
would drive it underground and ultimately make things
worse. I disagree. These types of libertarians are
kind of like Thomas JEfferson and George Washington
and others who gave lip service to the abolishion of
slavery, but didn't try to make it illegal. To
Jefferson's credit, JEfferson was bankrupt and
wouldn't have been allowed to free his slaves -- which
his wife enherited on his death and she then freed
them. Also, slavery ended in the North on it's own
because it simply wasn't economically viable anymore,
and was ending in the south too. So eventually wrongs
like these do get righted in the world. And economic
prosperity is the main indicator for how much people
want to think about these sorts of moral issues. I
disagree with this camp of abortion choicers who are
"personally opposed." Because, frankly, I'm paying the
taxes for their police protection and legal services
too. This is an issue where the government really
can't be neutral. The LFL site has a decent article
about this.
http://www.l4l.org/library/governmentout.html

The "eviction" and "personally opposed" abortion
choicers in the LP do have one thing right. That
government intervention -- medical socialism,
government schools, government welfare, and many other
government interventions (not even counting direct
government subsidies of the murderous abortion
industry home and abroad) encourage the existence of
abortions. Medical socialism puts the "costs" of
"unwanted" babies and terminally ill and others onto
"society." It's for this reason that the costs get put
on "society" that many think euthanasia and abortion
should be ok. "Society" shouldn't have to pay for
unwanted and unproductive people. Indeed, it was the
medicle socialism in Germany that spawned the killing
of old people. But if we didn't have socialized
medicine and socialized government schooling (amoung
others) to begin with it wouldn't be externalized out
onto "society" it would be invididuals and private
charities, and the church voletnarily helping out
these mothers, and the sick and the elderly. Then you
have government schools teaching "sex education" and
many times giving free advertising to organizations
such as planned parenthood and whatnot by letting them
come into the schools to "teach" it. And many a social
worker has recomendmended to single moms to get
abortions. (Because they're thinking about the extra
welfare dole society won't have to pay.)A book by
Focus on the Familiy entitled "Feminism, mystic or
mistake" documents this. You see, you really can't be
pro-life, and be against the free market. It's the
socialism and other government interferences that
currently give much of the euthanasia, assisted
suicide and abortion choice advocates a level of
legitimacy. 

So if you're really pro-life we need to be getting rid
of socialized medicine, and government schools
especially. But who has just further entrenched
socialized medicine with the biggest entitlement since
LBJ with the "Prescription drug bill" and further
nationalized the government school systems with "No
Child Left Behind"? Bush has. I feel that while on the
out-side he panders to the pro-life community (and he
did do the partial birth abortion ban which was good.)
All of the other stuff he's doing is just giving
liberals more reasons for why we should allow
abortions. His actions are such that they will cause
more abortions in the future, precisely because of the
socialism.

Then you have a few (a very few) libertarians who
unequivically believe in a right to abortion. I assure
you these are a very very small minority. How small? I
don't know. I have yet to meet one personally (or over
the internet) but I've only been in this movement
myself for a year or two, so that's probably not
saying much.

So as you can see, Abortion is a very hot toppic of
debate amoung libertarians with a very broad set of
very differing views. You have about 40% claiming the
right to life. You have about another 20% who are
these eviction libertarians who are currently opposed
to partial birth and late trimester abortions, and
will opposed it more and more as medical technology
advances. Eventually, it will even be possible to
transplant the unborn into an adoptive mother. These
medical advances will come faster in a free market.
You have about 30% against abortion but fear that if
the government declares war on abortions you'd have
Men having them soon. (Speaking on government failure
in every other program it's started.) And then you
have less then 5% who believe in a right to abortion.
And even these are opposed to public funding.

So you see, even pro-choice libertarians are very
distinct from liberals. Indeed, I would go so far as
to say, most pro-choice libertarians are more pro-life
then then most Republican's even. (The Republicans if
you might remember, almost split back in '96 over the
partial birth abortion issue. Partial Birth abortion
wouldn't split libertarians. We're all pretty much
opposed to partial birth abortion, most are even
opposed to 3rd trimester abortions.


2ndly, the vast majority of abortion choicers in the
LP are constitutionalists or at least firm believers
in decentralized government and believe that Roe vs.
Wade was bad -- not neccessarily because it legalized
abortions -- but because it usurped the 10th
ammendment. Most of the most ardent believers in some
'right' to abortion in the libertarian party thinks
that Constitutionally this issue (And most every
otherissue for that matter.) should be a state issue.
Even abortion choice legal scholars were opposed to
Roe Vs. Wade.

This arangment would also almost certainly be better
then the current situation whereby pro-life states are
FORCED to be pro-choice by an oligarchy of Judges. At
the time Roe vs. Wade was decided, only three states
allowed abortions. (California, New York, and
Colorado.) I would say that probably a good half or
better of the states in the union would make it
illegal again if the feds would let them. Repealing
Roe Vs. Wade would save a lot of inicent unborn
children from being killed. And the vast majority of
abortion choicers (eviction, personally opposed, etc.)
believe it should be a state issue. Some believe in
shold be a state issue, because of the Constitutoin.
Others believe it should be a state issue, because
decentralized government is much less likely to become
tyrannistic. If Congress took away the supreme courts
jurisdiction, or if the president basically said he
would refuse to enforce it. (You know, like back when
their was a seperation of powers.) State would then be
free to make abortion illegal if they wanted to. This
would start to cut the number of abortions in the US
by half probably. It's much better then the current
situation.

. . .(Death penalty stuff) . . .

Tracy Saboe
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I fall into the camp that believes medical socialism is Anti-Life. I believe technology would have -- 20 years ago -- made abortion very very rare even though it is was legal. But the socialism and regulation hamper inovation.  Also it should be a State issue constitutionally speaking. However, morally it shouldbe illegal.

TRacy

[Fluff and Stuff]

Edit. I just say KBs post. Can I have a KArma point too Craig?

Tracy

I don't know about KB but I am giving you -1 because of your long sig file 

[KBCraig]

Edit. I just say KBs post. Can I have a KArma point too Craig?

I applaud thee!

[aries]

I'm not going to touch this thread since I disagree with myself on abortion. The only thing I agree with myself on is no government intervention in it.