Discussion point: Abortion

abortion-protest — Abortion protest photographed by Elvert Barnes

Last week while at the IEA I somehow wandering into a conversation on abortion and ended up chatting to a a pro-life Christian Libertarian. He asserted confidently that his position (that abortion should be illegal) was the only one consistent with the key ‘do no harm to others’ principle, and that if we are to have a state whose sole purpose is to prevent this it cannot allow abortions to take place.

I disagreed with him, pointing out the issue of backstreet abortions, to which he came up with the bizarre straw-man that ‘If you claim that the only reason it should be legal is to prevent backstreet abortions, why not legalise rape to minimise the harm caused?’

We then got into a debate on when you define a foetus as alive, with him coming down strongly on at the point of conception (my view, which I did not express well at the time, is in line with current medical guidance that it should be the development of the nervous system)

Given that he then went on to claim that is not possible to have a basis of morality without a transcendent source (i.e. God), and therefore it was not possible for an atheist to have a moral code I dismissed him as a crank.

What do you think though? Should a libertarian society allow abortions?

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June 28, 2011

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5 responses to “Discussion point: Abortion”

Simon Gibbs

June 28, 2011 at 12:13 pm

The argument was not a straw man. It’s clearer if you blank out the specifics. If you do, then you argued “We should legalise [IMMORAL THING] because it makes it less harmful”. You could quite easily argue that if there were a regulated safe procedure for a man to penetrate any female he chose, that this is safer than letting him go and abduct, rape, and murder school children, to pick a topical example. This is not a strawman, it is correct in it’s own terms and directly addresses your argument, and clearly we would not endorse the creation of an institution to carry out safe rapes, in breach of NAP.

Unfortunately for the chap involved, he seems to have forgotten all about the rights of the mother, very un-Christian. Also, this is rather a horrid line of reasoning, who were you talking to?

Leonard Peikoff has the most persuasive argument here, approximately: If you say that the mother has no right to stop gestating a baby is to say that the mother has no right over her life and body after the moment of conception. Those rights are apparently annulled in favour of a potential life. This is clearly objectionable under the principle of self-ownership and enforcement is objectionable under the non-aggression principle. It’s also an argument that I would not want to apply anywhere else in politics, reduced to the absurd you could argue “it’s your duty to give up your home, we’re trying to create a perfect society in which everyone will be prosperous and there will be many babies, keeping your home is murder!!!” etc etc.

I would be concerned that someone who had an abortion was not acting responsibly (a redeemable sin) and would conclude that something of significant value had been destroyed, but since it was not a life as such I don’t condemn it as murder. I don’t think it is a political or criminal issue at all; it’s just a sad thing to happen.

An interesting observation here is that the question of when life begins is secondary, the issue is the rights of actual living beings is primary, however the moment of birth is still of paramount importance, because at that point you have exactly the thing whose rights trumped the other before birth: an independently breathing life which is in need of sustenance and which you voluntarily created. I believe that at that point, that failing to support the baby is criminally objectionable, but I’ve unpacked enough reasoning for one lunch hour.

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Michael Rudd

June 28, 2011 at 6:29 pm

Should a libertarian society “allow” abortions?

Well you’re kind of supposing we have a Libertarian Govenment with the power to impose Libertarian principles on society, many of whose members would not share such principles. I admit that in such a situation the issue would be problamatic.

However, in a truely free society, it would not be for the rulers to impose their values on others, the law itself would be provided on the free market, the preferances of consumers would determine the issue!

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Malcolm Saunders

June 28, 2011 at 7:55 pm

I start from the position of the sovereign individual. To have achieved that status they must have been born. A woman who is, or believes she may be, pregnant is entitled to determine her present and future commitments and well being to the same extent as a woman who has not conceived.

If a woman has intercourse and then takes medication in the days following to prevent the further development of a possibly fertilised egg, has she carried out an abortion? In the eyes of a person who asserts full rights at conception she has, but that is not an argument to which I would give any merit. In my view, her method of contraception is just later than other options she could have taken.

At all points from conception to viability there are different degrees of difficulty for the pregnant woman in deciding if it could be right for her to abort the pregnancy. A libertarian who believes that the foetus is a person can argue that the state has a responsibility to protect that life, but for this to have any merit I believe that such a case would have to be substantiated by a rational assessment of what constitutes person hood. It is not good enough to simply say that the soul, or the holy spirit, enters the ovum at the moment of conception. The mere assertion of an unprovable concept is not a valid basis for legislation.

When it comes to abortion at a point at which a viable birth could take place, the issue necessarily becomes more difficult. If it were to be as straightforward as for the woman to be able to give birth or be aborted and there was no difference in the risks to her, I would say that there was a moral obligation for her to allow the birth to take place. In reality it is never so simple.

Given the impossibility of establishing rules which satisfactorily cover all possible situations, I would come down in favour of those who have an independent existence having full decision making for themselves even though this will be regarded as sometimes detrimental to potential lives.

Whether I, as an atheist, can have meaningful moral values is another issue. Unsurprisingly, I do not think that this view is worth much.

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Andy Janes

June 28, 2011 at 9:38 pm

Can’t remember the guy’s name,hadn’t met before and hopefully won’t again (was pretty arrogant IMO).

Simon and Malcom pretty much summed up what I wanted to say, but too much free wine prevented me from articulating!

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James Rigby

June 29, 2011 at 4:04 pm

The current legal situation is roughly based on when a foetus becomes viable (c22-24 weeks). Intuitively, this makes sense to me. At that stage, if it’s born, it will probably survive – and as such deserves protection from harm. It’s not a case of a Libertarian society “banning” or allowing abortions – it’s merely about defining a human as a viable homo sapiens entity. “Getting rid” of anything that is a viable human entity is covered by the common-law offence of murder. The same applies at the other end of life – if someone is no longer viable (and can not be made so), their life support machinery can be turned off. For the intermediate stage (conscious adult life) consenting adults must be allowed to choose to have themselves terminated.

Abortion before 22 weeks; voluntary euthenasia; and turning off life support when there’s no more hope. That’s three things that might upset Andy’s new Christian Libertarian friend.

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