Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Abortion
Following the debate on http://voxday.blogspot.com, I reposted this on his site.
As a nearly life-long libertarian, I came to the conclusion many years before I became a Christian that abortion was wrong for the same reason that slavery is. The libertarian argument for life is the same as the argument for freedom.
To my mind it is the one great flaw of libertarianism sans morality.
It is no great trick to legally define a "born" person of another race, ethnicity or sex as less than human and so unworthy of protection under the law as an "unborn" person. Legally, I suppose you could use any single characteristic of a human as defining a person under the law (Aryan, anyone?) and, supposing the power to enforce it, relegate all who do not have that feature to the status of subhuman.
Tolerance of the devaluation of human life led to the Holocaust, and will lead to another.
To deny the humanity of the human person at any stage of its development from conception to death is reprehensible and - now that I have become a Christian - I see it as a morally untenable position. We are indeed our brothers' keeper.
To me, the uniqueness of the DNA is the key to the abortion debate. Frankly, if you can arbitrarily and legally murder an unborn baby, there's no reason you can't arbitrarily and legally murder anyone who hasn't the power to resist.
To speak of "rights" when making an argument for abortion is simply silly, since rights are endowed by God. To believe otherwise is to admit that in reality you have no rights, as rights "granted" by humans are at best arbitrary.
As a nearly life-long libertarian, I came to the conclusion many years before I became a Christian that abortion was wrong for the same reason that slavery is. The libertarian argument for life is the same as the argument for freedom.
To my mind it is the one great flaw of libertarianism sans morality.
It is no great trick to legally define a "born" person of another race, ethnicity or sex as less than human and so unworthy of protection under the law as an "unborn" person. Legally, I suppose you could use any single characteristic of a human as defining a person under the law (Aryan, anyone?) and, supposing the power to enforce it, relegate all who do not have that feature to the status of subhuman.
Tolerance of the devaluation of human life led to the Holocaust, and will lead to another.
To deny the humanity of the human person at any stage of its development from conception to death is reprehensible and - now that I have become a Christian - I see it as a morally untenable position. We are indeed our brothers' keeper.
To me, the uniqueness of the DNA is the key to the abortion debate. Frankly, if you can arbitrarily and legally murder an unborn baby, there's no reason you can't arbitrarily and legally murder anyone who hasn't the power to resist.
To speak of "rights" when making an argument for abortion is simply silly, since rights are endowed by God. To believe otherwise is to admit that in reality you have no rights, as rights "granted" by humans are at best arbitrary.
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