Not really what your criteria is being that I’m a pro life libertarian as far as ideals I align with most on what you’re looking for.
Even though I am religious, my argument against abortion is firstly a scientific one then on moral principal second. On the science side it’s a human from the moment of conception. On the moral side it’s that I believe all humans deserve human rights no matter at what stage of development there are. Just as soon as you make exceptions to kill for one type or subset of humankind you open the door to others. Usually this is done by labeling a certain group as not human to justify oppression of said group. Terms usually used to justify acts of violence against other humans are property, subhuman, animals, savages, clump of cells, parasite, etc. Usually for libertarians it boils down to having a code called the non-aggression principal which is essentially don’t fuck with other people. This is also why I’m anti capital punishment.
I hope that helps. Also, good luck at your family get togethers, lol. It feels like you’re looking for ammunition for debates.
Personally I think the whole ‘life/humanity begins at conception’ thing is a smoke screen. Life began a long, long time ago, and the cell line you belong to became human deep in prehistory.
The actual question is “does the state have the right to use one person’s living body to support the life of another?” It applies to organ transplants as much as it applies to the unborn.
I’m not seeing how this in anyway even really touches on this issue at hand. A paper on human development to show that “science says” we have a “human” at the moment of conception?
At the end of the day this is going to just be about what your definition of a “human” is rather than anything “science” has to say.
But at far as from conception goes, it has DNA distinct from both parents and starts developing until stopped. Even if not developed to whatever your standard is, it’s like a picture developed from film. The picture (or in this case, the human) is still there, it just needs to be developed.
I see justifying violence on certain humans as opening the door for society to justify violence on other humans. We look back on times when slavery or genocide was condoned and abhor that time and the humans that gave their approval to it. I truly believe that will be the way humanity will see society as it is now when medical technology advances enough to not need a human womb to develop a human to birth. That in and of itself begs the question, when a human is viable outside of the womb from no matter what stage of development, does that change how you view its rights from the earliest stages of its life?
It wouldn’t because I have criteria, most specifically the ability to suffer, that underpins how I feel about abortion. This is independent of wombs or even DNA potentially.
I mean, I understand not wanting to allow violence on humans. But this still tied back to the definition of human. And, for me, if we take it back to ability to suffer, it makes a direct case for the way I feel about any entity’s (human or non human) rights
As far as I can tell you see abortion as an “exception” that allows killing of a specific type of human.
While I am not really concerned with humanness. But of the underlying phenomenon that make protecting humans something we should want to do.
If you think about why we want to protect humans and tie to to consciousness and ability to suffer. There’s no exception and we can use our knowledge of human fetus development to inform abortion policy to prevent abortions that would infringe on those conditions.
Not that you’re asking for an argument, but I do want you to know why I, and many like me, find this whole life-from-conception argument totally ethically unpersuasive. And it’s not the usual nonsense of “it’s just cells” because, as you well know, that’s an unimpressive and pointless debate. Whether a fetus is a human or not is fundamentally subjective. And so I’ll grant that it is, because I have total confidence in my pro-choice position even then.
The issue with the pro-life position is not that it asserts that abortion is bad. Frankly, I don’t give a crap if you or anyone else thinks it is bad. Again, that is subjective. A personal preference. The issue with the pro-life position is that it always seems to assert that abortion must be banned and even criminalized. That’s what pro-life is. It doesn’t mean “I think abortion is bad”, it means “I think abortion should not be allowed.”
My position isn’t that abortion is good. Mine is that the pregnant person has a right to choose. I think the moral calculus on when and whether it is good or bad is FAR too complicated to form a rule, and so we must leave it up to the biggest stakeholders to figure that out privately.
I think a lot of things are bad, but having a preference against something is different than justifying use of the state’s violence to prohibit it.
A Defense of Abortion by Judith Jarvis Thomson, PDF - 1971. Hardly new, and I doubt you’ve never seen it, but ultimately it is still the line of argument that I do not think has been convincingly rebutted. This essay is still probably the most sound and straightforward work of philosophy that shows that banning abortion is impermissible in an ethical society, and it presumes life from the moment of conception just as you do.
My extreme summary of the point it is making: at the end of the day, you have two competing human rights. You have the right to autonomy of your own body against another’s right to life. Both are undeniably rights a person has – and highly related ones, at that. When these rights are in tension, we need to make a choice as to which is supreme. And the consequences of giving life supremacy over autonomy are disastrous compared to the consequences of giving autonomy supremacy over life.
Rather than empower the state to take any and all actions necessary to protect life, we instead must impose a limit on the power of the state – it may not violate someone’s ability to make choices about their own body functions, even if to protect the life of another.
I’d prefer to be in a world that has no abortions at all. Just as I’d prefer to be in a world without contagious disease. One way to get rid of all contagious disease is to systematically euthanize every sick person at their first sniffle. Problem solved! Such is an abortion ban.
We get rid of disease by investing in research and healthcare and doing our best to use it maximize efficacy with fair triage, vaccination programs, etc… We get rid of abortion by preventing unwanted pregnancies from the get and by creating a world so supportive and safe for pregnant people that they do not want to terminate it.
I like how you call out some terms used to dehumanization. Fetus, baby, and child also fit into that bucket imo.
So ,to clarify, you want the government to restrict and punish abortion? I thought libertarians were for less government.
Why should the government have a monopoly on violence and force in this case? Instead shouldn’t the enforcement of moral law like the NAP be up to their peers or free market hired private contractors?
Some libertarians are minarchist meaning as little government as possible, some are anarcho-capitalists. Pro-life minarchists would be fine having punishment of abortion be treated like any other killing of a human. Anarcho-capitalists would rather not have government have a monopoly on violence.
If the NAP could be easily dismissed by just reclassifying who is and isn’t a human, then yes some form of law setting clarifying what a human is would be necessary. You bring up THE most interesting debate though in libertarian circles IMHO. Tom Woods did an interview with Gerard Casey about this topic. I highly recommend listening to the interview and giving Casey’s book a read.
Even though I am religious, my argument against abortion is firstly a scientific one then on moral principal second. On the science side it’s a human from the moment of conception.
This is true…literally everyone knows the instant a piece of pollen lands in the flower of an oak tree, a fully formed oak tree is created in that moment. Literally, no other steps between those things even worth defining with their own special words or meanings like book people use to try to sound special(smart).
That’s why I’m glad we’ve got the REAL science of Jesus and the almighty.
Not really what your criteria is being that I’m a pro life libertarian as far as ideals I align with most on what you’re looking for.
Even though I am religious, my argument against abortion is firstly a scientific one then on moral principal second. On the science side it’s a human from the moment of conception. On the moral side it’s that I believe all humans deserve human rights no matter at what stage of development there are. Just as soon as you make exceptions to kill for one type or subset of humankind you open the door to others. Usually this is done by labeling a certain group as not human to justify oppression of said group. Terms usually used to justify acts of violence against other humans are property, subhuman, animals, savages, clump of cells, parasite, etc. Usually for libertarians it boils down to having a code called the non-aggression principal which is essentially don’t fuck with other people. This is also why I’m anti capital punishment.
I hope that helps. Also, good luck at your family get togethers, lol. It feels like you’re looking for ammunition for debates.
Citation needed
This basically underpins the whole thing and is pretty hand waved away
Personally I think the whole ‘life/humanity begins at conception’ thing is a smoke screen. Life began a long, long time ago, and the cell line you belong to became human deep in prehistory.
The actual question is “does the state have the right to use one person’s living body to support the life of another?” It applies to organ transplants as much as it applies to the unborn.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33620844/
I’m not seeing how this in anyway even really touches on this issue at hand. A paper on human development to show that “science says” we have a “human” at the moment of conception?
At the end of the day this is going to just be about what your definition of a “human” is rather than anything “science” has to say.
This one goes to the embryo
https://www.britannica.com/science/human-body/Basic-form-and-development
But at far as from conception goes, it has DNA distinct from both parents and starts developing until stopped. Even if not developed to whatever your standard is, it’s like a picture developed from film. The picture (or in this case, the human) is still there, it just needs to be developed.
I see justifying violence on certain humans as opening the door for society to justify violence on other humans. We look back on times when slavery or genocide was condoned and abhor that time and the humans that gave their approval to it. I truly believe that will be the way humanity will see society as it is now when medical technology advances enough to not need a human womb to develop a human to birth. That in and of itself begs the question, when a human is viable outside of the womb from no matter what stage of development, does that change how you view its rights from the earliest stages of its life?
It wouldn’t because I have criteria, most specifically the ability to suffer, that underpins how I feel about abortion. This is independent of wombs or even DNA potentially.
I mean, I understand not wanting to allow violence on humans. But this still tied back to the definition of human. And, for me, if we take it back to ability to suffer, it makes a direct case for the way I feel about any entity’s (human or non human) rights
As far as I can tell you see abortion as an “exception” that allows killing of a specific type of human.
While I am not really concerned with humanness. But of the underlying phenomenon that make protecting humans something we should want to do.
If you think about why we want to protect humans and tie to to consciousness and ability to suffer. There’s no exception and we can use our knowledge of human fetus development to inform abortion policy to prevent abortions that would infringe on those conditions.
Not that you’re asking for an argument, but I do want you to know why I, and many like me, find this whole life-from-conception argument totally ethically unpersuasive. And it’s not the usual nonsense of “it’s just cells” because, as you well know, that’s an unimpressive and pointless debate. Whether a fetus is a human or not is fundamentally subjective. And so I’ll grant that it is, because I have total confidence in my pro-choice position even then.
The issue with the pro-life position is not that it asserts that abortion is bad. Frankly, I don’t give a crap if you or anyone else thinks it is bad. Again, that is subjective. A personal preference. The issue with the pro-life position is that it always seems to assert that abortion must be banned and even criminalized. That’s what pro-life is. It doesn’t mean “I think abortion is bad”, it means “I think abortion should not be allowed.”
My position isn’t that abortion is good. Mine is that the pregnant person has a right to choose. I think the moral calculus on when and whether it is good or bad is FAR too complicated to form a rule, and so we must leave it up to the biggest stakeholders to figure that out privately.
I think a lot of things are bad, but having a preference against something is different than justifying use of the state’s violence to prohibit it.
A Defense of Abortion by Judith Jarvis Thomson, PDF - 1971. Hardly new, and I doubt you’ve never seen it, but ultimately it is still the line of argument that I do not think has been convincingly rebutted. This essay is still probably the most sound and straightforward work of philosophy that shows that banning abortion is impermissible in an ethical society, and it presumes life from the moment of conception just as you do.
My extreme summary of the point it is making: at the end of the day, you have two competing human rights. You have the right to autonomy of your own body against another’s right to life. Both are undeniably rights a person has – and highly related ones, at that. When these rights are in tension, we need to make a choice as to which is supreme. And the consequences of giving life supremacy over autonomy are disastrous compared to the consequences of giving autonomy supremacy over life.
Rather than empower the state to take any and all actions necessary to protect life, we instead must impose a limit on the power of the state – it may not violate someone’s ability to make choices about their own body functions, even if to protect the life of another.
I’d prefer to be in a world that has no abortions at all. Just as I’d prefer to be in a world without contagious disease. One way to get rid of all contagious disease is to systematically euthanize every sick person at their first sniffle. Problem solved! Such is an abortion ban.
We get rid of disease by investing in research and healthcare and doing our best to use it maximize efficacy with fair triage, vaccination programs, etc… We get rid of abortion by preventing unwanted pregnancies from the get and by creating a world so supportive and safe for pregnant people that they do not want to terminate it.
So don’t fuck with other people, unless they’re fully grown women making decisions about their own bodies, or underage victims of rape.
There no caveat or exception. Don’t fuck with other people.
But my hand is tired.
/jk
I like how you call out some terms used to dehumanization. Fetus, baby, and child also fit into that bucket imo.
So ,to clarify, you want the government to restrict and punish abortion? I thought libertarians were for less government.
Why should the government have a monopoly on violence and force in this case? Instead shouldn’t the enforcement of moral law like the NAP be up to their peers or free market hired private contractors?
Some libertarians are minarchist meaning as little government as possible, some are anarcho-capitalists. Pro-life minarchists would be fine having punishment of abortion be treated like any other killing of a human. Anarcho-capitalists would rather not have government have a monopoly on violence.
If the NAP could be easily dismissed by just reclassifying who is and isn’t a human, then yes some form of law setting clarifying what a human is would be necessary. You bring up THE most interesting debate though in libertarian circles IMHO. Tom Woods did an interview with Gerard Casey about this topic. I highly recommend listening to the interview and giving Casey’s book a read.
https://tomwoods.com/libertarian-anarchy-against-the-state-2/
This is true…literally everyone knows the instant a piece of pollen lands in the flower of an oak tree, a fully formed oak tree is created in that moment. Literally, no other steps between those things even worth defining with their own special words or meanings like book people use to try to sound special(smart).
That’s why I’m glad we’ve got the REAL science of Jesus and the almighty.