Saturday, September 1, 2012

Abortion in the United States - The Reality

Abortion is a tough issue for many people in the United States.  The right to one's own life is paramount to the success of a free society.  However, the outright outlawing of abortion presents practical dilemmas that cannot be ignored.

In Ron Paul's Liberty Defined, the elder statesman addresses the issue of abortion in the first chapter.  The following is the first paragraph from the text:


"On one occasion in the 1960s when abortion was still illegal, I witnessed, while visiting a surgical suite as an OB/GYN resident, the abortion of a fetus that weighed approximately two pounds. It was placed in a bucket, crying and struggling to breathe, and the medical personnel pretended not to notice. Soon the crying stopped. This harrowing event forced me to think more seriously about this important issue."

The key point to realize from that terrible experience is that it occurred at a time when abortion was still illegal.  Regardless of laws, abortions will still be performed.  Morality cannot be legislated into existence.  

In the event that abortion was completely outlawed in the United States, affected women would flock across the borders to get the procedure done anyway.  Many that could not afford to make the journey to another country would likely attempt to self-abort at home.  There would be unqualified individuals - analogous to drug dealers - performing abortions.  Prohibition has been proven to be a failing tactic repeatedly.     

While I disagree with abortion and would advise women against it given the opportunity, I realize that logic and reality predict that the use of government force is not the answer.  It rarely - if ever - is the answer.


Please, ask yourself this question - If you walked in on a woman performing a coat hanger abortion, would you call the police on her, if a ban existed?  Or, would you try to counsel her?  With that in mind, is government force really the answer?

If an individual wishes to end abortion, education and activism are the most reasonable solutions.

6 comments:

  1. With all due respect, this argument fails to present a logical perspective on the complications of abortion. You are correct about one thing: "Regardless of laws, abortions will still be performed." This much is true, but you immediately make a false claim: "Morality cannot be legislated into existence." All law is legislated morality. When you outlaw any action, you are saying that the action "should not" be performed (a moral pronouncement). The law subsequently inflicts justice upon those who are convicted of performing that action, because it is a wrong action to perform. So, yes, you can legislate morality, that's what law is all about. It's inescapable. The question is if you legislate God's morality or man's, which I suspect is our fundamental difference.

    You start out affirming the right to life, implying that you do believe the unborn fetus to be a human person. But then you make an excuse for legal abortion because it's gonna happen anyway and you'd rather have women get abortions in a safe and controlled environment. If the unborn is a person with a right to life, as you indicate, then abortion is by definition murder. There's no other way to slice it. What you are saying is that you think it should be legal to murder human persons for the convenience and safety of the aggressor (the mother). This is very flawed logic if you wish to be consistent with your own premise. Once you make this mistake you automatically remove the basis for outlawing any murder whatsoever. Someone could easily make the same argument regarding persons of any age, gender or nationality: "Look, people get murdered every day, even though it is illegal. People just won't stop murdering. Prohibition hasn't worked. So, we should make murder legal so that the murderer isn't inconvenienced. If people wish to stop murders, education and activism are most reasonable." By your logic, murderers of both the born and unborn are justified. You've turned murder into an acceptable practice that need not be punished - while the dead victim never receives restitution. Hopefully you see how self-refuting and illogical this position is.

    Government force is the answer to making restitution for crimes. This is the Biblical view of government and it's the same view that our Founders, Ron Paul and most other leaders of the liberty movement believe. We are not anarchists. Abortion should be outlawed absolutely, and those responsible should be punished.

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  2. You've fallen into the fallacy that morality can be legislated. Certainly, a law is a pronouncement of a portion of a society's morality, but the act of passing the law doesn't necessarily change the morality of the people that disagreed in the first place. It only makes them criminals in the affected society.

    Even if murder was not policed by the government, natural order would arise, and unjustifiable murder would be punished regardless. Until people realize this reality, we will continue to be subjects rather than individuals - in the fullest sense of the word.

    If you walked in on a woman with a coat hanger stuck inside of her, would call the police? Or would you try to counsel her?

    Is government force really the answer?

    We should aspire to anarchism.

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  3. Of course not everyone agrees with every law. I'm not disputing that. I'm saying that ALL law is an attempt to legislate morality. So, the question isn't whether or not you'll have legislated morality - the question is whose morality will be legislated? Again, our only options are God's morality or man's subjective morality. You are being half-way consistent as an anarchist, but even anarchy is self-refuting. As you admit, an anarchist society would not be void of law. The problem is that you wouldn't have one law. You'd have multiple laws to fit each person's subjective view of morality/crime. Privatized justice means relative justice. Relative justice means no real justice at all. Besides, the anarchist premise (per Rothbard) is that even suspected criminals could not be compelled to appear in court since it would infringe upon their liberty. To avoid violating the non-aggression principle, you could only punish criminals who volunteer to be punished. You could only hold a person accountable if they volunteer to be accountable to your preferred justice agency! What an absurd concept. Your scenario of murder vs. "natural order" is purely imaginative. Instead, you'd have murder vs. disorder. What if the murderer belongs to a justice agency that doesn't believe in the non-aggression principle?! This fantasy makes all crime/immorality merely a subjective preference, including murder. And subjective preference has now power to obligate certain behavior. You'd simply have an evolutionary survival of the fittest world. Perhaps the most fundamental flaw in market-based justice is that the one agency that becomes the most profitable, will become a huge corporation that rises above the rest. And thus you're right back where we started: a corporation with a monopoly of force. It's inescapable. And that's why anarchy cannot work.

    Science is clear that the fetus is a human person. Not a disease that a woman can be "affected" with. Thus all abortions are immoral killings (murder) that should be outlawed and prevented. If I walked in on a woman with a coat hanger inside of her, I would try to stop her before she further endangers herself or her baby. I would attempt to counsel her, found out her situation, explain to her why what she is doing is wrong, and provide alternate solutions. If she has a change of heart, I would try to connect her with a church or pro-life agency that could keep watch and help her along the way. If she didn't have a change of heart or had already killed the baby once I found her, yes I would call the cops and seek for her to be convicted of murder. Murder is possibly the only black and white issue. There aren't any exceptions.

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  4. "To avoid violating the non-aggression principle, you could only punish criminals who volunteer to be punished."

    You have a misunderstanding of the NAP. It states that no person has the right to use force against another except in cases where natural rights are violated. If your natural rights are violated, you then have the right to punish the offender.

    If you steal from me, I can legitimately inflict punishment upon you according to the NAP.

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  5. Mr. Walters,
    I know what the NAP states. I'm trying to point out how inconsistent anarchy is by using the NAP as an example. Here it is in a long-form syllogism:
    1) The NAP states that no person has the right to use force against another except in cases where natural rights are violated.
    2) John Smith is murdered, an investigation is opened.
    3) Authorities suspect that Jane Smith was involved in the murder based on eyewitness testimony and probable cause.
    4) However, Jane Smith cannot be summoned for questioning OR compelled to appear in court because there is no certainty that she committed the murder. Otherwise the authorities would be using force against her, violating the NAP.
    5) Therefore, John Smith's murder cannot be solved nor will justice be served unless Jane Smith or the murder(s) voluntarily submit themselves to the authorities and confess. At no time may the authorities force Jane Smith to do anything unless they are willing to violate their first principle (the NAP).

    Hopefully that is easier to see the point I'm trying to make. You could never wire-tap or spy (violations of privacy) nor could you file a search warrant (aggression against a presumably innocent person). The logical position is that the NAP only goes so far. Of course, there are other problems with the anarchist syllogism above: 1) No authority would open an investigation unless John Smith belonged to it as a paying customer. If he had no coverage, no agency would care. 2) If he did belong to an agency, and the killer belonged to a different agency with opposing views of crime/punishment (what if they don't believe in the NAP?), neither party could come to an agreement without a compromise, therefore lessening the punishment and Smith is never truly given restitution. 3) If he did not belong to an agency, the only way the murder could be punished is if a friend or family member took matters into their own hands and inflicted punishment upon whoever they thought did it - in most cases not having absolute certainty (such as your scenario of me stealing from you). BTW, the NAP doesn't explain how to determine which crimes deserve what punishment. Every individual becomes his own judge and jury in this scenario. Again, you are left with a survival-of-the-fittest world that is not governed by law or principle. This is why people say anarchy inevitably leads to chaos.

    The irony here is that your most recent comment contradicts your original post and the NAP! You start out saying that a human fetus can be murdered without fear of punishment. Now you say that aggression is legitimate against those who commit crime, including murder. Your exception to abortion is arbitrary and not logical in the slightest.

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    Replies
    1. There would be some amount of murders that went unpunished in a free society just as there are in the leviathan police state we live in today. No method of retaliation to defend against crime will be perfect. For instance, here's an article from 2010 stating that 6,000 murders a year go unsolved - http://www.timesrecordnews.com/news/2010/may/24/unsolved-homicides/

      In 2010, when that was published, there were only ~15,000 total murders in the U.S. That is, 40% of murderers get away with it now. Crime rates 1960-2010 - http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

      As well, as a direct result of government actions regarding the unnecessary wars in the Middle East, well over 1 million people have died in the last decade. Don't forget about the thousands of soldiers that have committed suicide - a number that eclipses US combat deaths.

      Without Big Brother, there would be less murder in the world. The concept of anarchism just seems so foreign that people find reasons to rationalize its existence, but in reality, the government is doing most of the killing that is occurring in the world.

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