The Issue of Abortion (part II)

Like I said in my previous post, this issue needs two different conversations about two very different kinds of abortion. One about early abortions, where the baby is completely undeveloped, and another about later term abortions, past about 15 weeks, where the baby has developed into everything that humans are. Today, I will adress the second of these two issues.
Two things must be conceded at the very beginning of the conversation. One is that regulating the procedures and medical care on someone's body is, indeed, invasive. Imagine how rediculous the idea would be if a baby was not involved. Telling someone, for instance, they may or may not be allowed to have a tooth pulled, or have some particular surgury. We would all be agreeing that this was both an invasion of privacy and an overstepping of enumerated power (remember the limited gov't post). The second thing is that the "right to privacy," the 'implicit right' that Roe vs. Wade was based upon, is NOT a bogus idea. The Constitution doesn't even pretend to spell out our rights. It spells out the government's rights. If you regularly say "Hey, the Constitution doesn't even give a right to privacy in the first place!" then you need to go and read the 9th amendment.
The reason having a conversation about lawful invasion of privacy is appropriate is because other rights are involved here. A living human baby is also part of the abortion question and, because of this, other people's rights are also in question. I understand this is where most of seem to disagree. But go and take a look at an ultrasound of a 20 week baby. Ask an OB-GYN whether a 18 week baby is really a baby. I understand you can make an objection about religion, but this is really only true for a brief time in the first term. Beyond this point, as Roe vs. Wade implied in their decision to NOT mandate 2nd and 3rd term abortions, we have a completely different set of arguments and reasoning. Even the law can recognize this when people are charged with double-murder because they kill a pregnant woman.
Many of the objections about making abortions outright illegal are early-term objections also. "What if a woman gets raped and then gets pregnant?" or "What if a parent is the father?" of even "What if we can't take care of a baby?" All of these objections are first term issues. Not a single one of them has a good reason why a second or third term abortion would be necessary.
You see, even if people are completely deviod of any religious understanding of a soul and have a "reasonable cause" to consider an abortion, even then we can see that waiting until a baby has developed into, indistputably, a human baby is both unnecesarry and cruel. Why is it that those who support the idea of an abortion want an abortion anytime? Why not, abortions in the first, say, 10 weeks and then after that, let's have the mother abandon maternal rights, the state remove the baby as soon as the baby could live on its own, and allow a couple who has been working for years to get pregnant have a chance to adopt the baby while it is still an infant? Why would abortion rights advocates not want something like this?
The reason is because they don't want what's best for the baby, like they say. They want it dead. There is a big difference between saying "we want what's best for both the mother and the baby" and saying "we want to be able to kill the baby and pretend it never happened." This is what 2nd and 3rd term abortions are really about. People want to "not be a mother." But they already ARE mothers. People don't want a baby. But the HAVE a baby. They don't want to not have to take care of it - they want it dead.
This is why this conversation needs to be split up. You may be able to reasonably argue that you want what is best for a child who was raped three days ago when you give her a "morning-after" pill, but to say this about a 26-week mother? This is ridiculous. There no other reason for allowing a 2nd and 3rd term abortion than to prefer a dead baby to an adopted baby. While you may not want a human baby inside of you, at 19 weeks, it is an objective, scientific reality.
While we must mingle religion with law, difficult situations, and discernment in first term abortions, this is not true at all for later term abortions. At that point, it has clearly become human. And at that point, -- "created human" -- it has attained certain unalienable rights. Like the Right to Life. And the government, after all, exists to protect exactly these rights.

The Issue of Abortion (part I)

This is a tough issue to talk about. The truth is, very few people actually talk about it. Most people get angry and yell. Understandably, both sides of the abortion issue feel very strongly about their position and have a hard time even considering the arguments of the other side. As a friend of mine said recently, "It has been the most divisive issue since the Civil rights movement." In many ways, he's right.

The problem with this is that people argue at the expense of talking. Very few issues of disagreement get worked out by angry yelling, and we've been yelling for a long time now. It doesn't really seem like we're about to stop, either, regardless of any changes in the law. We are in desperate need of level-headed, honest, humble communication. The laws may change back and forth, but the practical values of America will not become agreed without it.

Now, I am a libertarian and I realize that the official Libertarian Party's position on this issue is pro-choice - but I am not. Frankly, this is not because I feel my religion trumps my political policy. I have addressed this issue in another post, and as difficult as it is to say sometimes, I do not feel any differently on this topic. Legislating religion is dangerous, even if it happens to be my own. People have the right to be free thinkers, and exercise their religion (or lack thereof) as freely as I do. 

The role of government is not to regulate "approved thought" or even behaviour, but to protect and secure the rights of the people. This is just as true when the consequences are devastatingly heart-breaking as it is when they are overwhelmingly joyful. But the issue of aborting children and women's right to private control over her own body, I think, needs to be addressed in two separate conversations. Today, I will address neither directly, but the issue as a whole.

Actually, the ruling of Roe vs. Wade implies that there are 2 different conversations to be had about abortion. Roe vs. Wade did not legalize abortion. I think we should remember this. Abortion was legal before Roe vs. Wade, and if Roe vs. Wade was overturned tomorrow, it would still be legal. Roe vs. Wade mandated that a state may not prevent the option of a first term abortion, which is much different. It was intended to be a compromise between people who felt abortion should be legal right up until birth, and people who felt abortion abortion should be regulated from the moment of conception. The decision was that during the first term, the only argument that a fetus had human rights because it was a human was religious, and therefore, not lawful to regulate. It implied that there was potentially an argument to be made for post-first term babies. An implication largely ignored today, despite science reinforcing this implication. Talking about whether a 3-day concieved baby is a human is a quite different conversation than a 3-month conceived baby. A 20-week baby has, not only arms and legs, but eyelashes, fingernails, and gets hic-ups. Apart from a religious understanding of a soul (and I understand that for a religious person like myself, this is very hard if not impossible to ignore), a 3-day conceived baby is much different. While I am hardly comfortable at admitting this, it is true, I think, that these two situations need to be talked about separately. One involves figuring how to blend religion and law, which is a tricky business. The other involves simple common sense and some honesty.

Really, the issue is not Roe vs. Wade, but abortion itself. And on the topic of abortion, why am I, a libertarian, pro-life and not pro-choice? If I believe that the government exists to protect the rights of the people and not to regulate their behaviour, and religion provides no exception, how can I remain pro-life? Well, the answer is simple. Remember the Declaration of Independence? It laid out that there are self-evident rights that the government is instituted to protect. It gave three examples, which it clarified to not be comprehensive, and they are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Stepping in and protecting the right to life IS EXACTLY the role of government. One individuals rights can never trump another's. How can we say that one individual's implied right to privacy overrules another's explicit right to life? I cannot! That is why I am pro-life, and not pro-choice. Remember that the Declaration of Independence grants that all men are created (not "all men live" or even "all men are born") equal. The instant of individual rights does not begin with born, but with man. Being a human. And, like I said before, when exactly this happens is best addressed in two conversations, both of which I will have later.