OpEdNews - Page 6 of Article: Why Funding for Abortions is Essential to the Nation's Health

"Some of those who have posted on this issue need to give the matter more thought, because Ron Paul is off-base on this question, where his stand contradicts his most basic avowed principles."

And you need to give the matter your first thought, because up to now you've been limping along on emotional puke.

"If the right to privacy is rooted in the Constitution, as the Supreme Court has maintained, then it applies across the nation and should not be left to the states do decide--any more than freedom of speech or freedom of religion should vary from state to state."

The Constitution says nothing about privacy. The Supreme Court did some creative interpretation to conclude that the right to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure (Section 8) is equivalent to a Charter right to privacy. Their famous canard "reasonable expectation to privacy" is particularly laughable.

"I therefore conclude that libertarians are no more consistent in their politics than conventional politicians and deserve no more respect."

Like I said--all your arguments in favor of abortion are emotional, and therefore are no argument at all. Feelings are not on a level with facts, no matter how much you wish they were.

Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2009-07-28 11:55:35 PM

An ignorant response: "I'm not a libertarian. I'm a classical liberal. I don't like government interference either, but a law against the unjustifiable killing of an innocent I'm willing to support." This reply, of course, completely disregards the arguments that I've presented above. It's as though Shane Matthews was so eager to add his two-cents worth that he cannot even take the time to study the arguments I have presented. If we take viability as the point at which a "right to life" first applies, then abortions prior to that stage are not murder because they do not involve the killing of a person. And during the third trimester, they only qualify as murder if they are done for reasons other than to preserve the life or the health of the pregnant woman.

I can't abide these knee-jerk replies from those who have not thought this question through. There is no good reason to treat zygotes, embryos, or early term fetuses as though they were persons. Neither ordinary language nor the stages of development nor the Supreme Court supports it. This is called "begging the question" by taking for granted as a premise a point that requires independent justification, which, in this case, turns out to be unavailable. An entity that cannot survive independent of its presence within the body of another does not properly qualify as a "person". Instead, it possesses the status of a special kind of property until viability occurs, at which point the first in a series of rights--a "right to life"--occurs, which is only the earliest to which persons are entitled and even then does not prevail in conflicts with the rights of the woman nurturing it.

The perversion of rights that the court has found to be implicit in the Constitution by those who avow they support it is hypocritical in the extreme. I can't image a better example of shallow thinking on a crucial subject that this latest post. And the suggestion that arguments based upon ordinary language, fetal development, and Supreme Court decisions are "emotional" reveals the intellectual poverty of the author. If this is the kind of thinking that impresses any on this site, then Ron Paul is in more desperate shape than I have supposed, since his position not only violates his avowed commitment to the Constitution but appears to appeal to those who are incapable of thinking through controversial issues like this one.

Most of the posts here fail to come to grips with the points I have raised, which reflects the nature of many social conflicts: those who are most strident in their opposition to a woman's right to chose how her body should be used have given the matter the least thought. No "liberal" should support the tyranny of giving the state control over a woman's use of her body. And if she has the right to control the use of her body--within the strictures I have identified above--then the state has an obligation to give her the resources to support the exercise of that right.

Too many "libertarians" appear all too enthusiastic about denying the poor and the homeless, especially when they are women, rights that others in society are capable of exercising by the expedient of denying them the capacity to exercise them themselves. That is completely wrong and morally corrupt. No one committed to the Constitution and to human rights should take a stand that deprives women of their right to control the use of their bodies for reproductive or other purposes. It is akin to sexual slavery and to prostitution, even if presented in the guise of a libertarian principle. Ron Paul should come to his senses and reverse himself on this matter.

Posted by: James Fetzer | 2009-07-29 9:39:08 AM

"An ignorant response...[that] completely disregards the arguments that I've presented above. It's as though Shane Matthews was so eager to add his two-cents worth that he cannot even take the time to study the arguments I have presented."

Well, golly gee, James, I really should have realized from the outset that this was all about you. Remember what I said about pro-abortionists being selfish?

"If we take viability as the point at which a "right to life" first applies, then abortions prior to that stage are not murder because they do not involve the killing of a person."

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