Different, But Still Wrong, Approaches on Abortion

Democrats can learn a lot from libertarians. Democrats only have to look magnanimous by promising everyone, everything. Libertarians have to look moral by promising nobody, nothing. Case in point: abortion.

Right now, the Drudge Report is aglow with a 72-font caption telling me that Hillary Clinton has changed her position on abortion. I am underwhelemed. All she seems to have done is restate her husband’s “safe, legal, and rare” cliché.

His position on abortion, and now her position on abortion, is so untenable and contradictory as to insult the citizen who pays enough attention to hear it. Abortion is bad, and an aborted baby is a tragedy, but a woman has a free-choice to commit said tragedy, thus we should make the commission of this tragedy as painless for the woman as possible, because the commission of this tragedy will better the situation of the woman. Simultaneously, we should discourage woman from committing this tragedy.

Let’s try a variation on this: Rape is bad, it’s a tragedy, but a man is strong and willful enough to commit rape. Thus we should make the commission of rape as easy for the men as possible, because the rough sex will make the man feel good. Yet, we must also discourage men from committing rape. Try making one yourself; it works with every crime and atrocity imaginable.

Purposefully and characteristically, both Clintons dodge the main issues: Is the fetus/embryo a human? If it is human, is it wrong to terminate its “life”? Is it conscious? If not, is it permissible to kill a potential consciousness?

Compare Clinton’s remarks to this libertarian, and you’ll wonder why one is a Senator while the other is an unknown internet commentator, Mr. Thomas Gramstad:

The main issue is the sovereignty of self, the most intimate and fundamental of all individual rights: the right to control one's own body. Noone [sic] has the right to access, use or dispose one's body against one's will. Therefore it makes no difference what a fetus is - body part, potential human, individual person, god or goddess - none of these have any right to invade a human's body against its owner's will, because there is no such right. The nature of the fetus is irrelevant to the woman's right to abortion. She has the right to evict it at any time during pregnancy, for the same reason and in the same way that she has the right to end an intercourse at any point of its execution.

Now we’re getting somewhere! The libertarian argument cuts the Gordian knot: “Even if it is ‘alive,’ it’s a living trespasser siphoning off a host, and by that right, the woman can have an abortion.”

And now that we have a real argument, we can have a real counter-argument. If you’re going to view the fetus as a “trespasser” under the law, then you must also recognize the defenses to trespass: Consent and necessity. (1) You’ve allowed the fetus into your body, and thus cannot equitably demand that it leave, and (2) the harm which would accompany the fetus committing the trespass outweighs the harm of gestation, also making in inequitable to evict it.

Thus the question remains, it is a “citizen” that has these legal/equitable rights. . .

[To Be Continued]