Ron Paul had introduced "Sanctity of Life" bills in Congress a couple times I think.
@Sola Fide
The libertarian analysis begins after it's been decided whether the unborn is a person.
If it's a person, then abortion is murder. If not, not.
The libertarian principle which prohibits aggression against persons (on the basis of which Raimondo criticizes US foreign policy) says nothing about whether the unborn is a person.
But you said libertarianism is "outside" of this entire debate. It clearly is not. There is a clear libertarian principle that prohibits the initiation of force against innocent babies.Originally Posted by r3volution 3.0
If you want to engage in the insane debate that says a baby is not a baby until it passes through a birth canal, you can go ahead and have that debate with someone else. I'm not going to do it. But I'd prefer you have that debate with someone like me who has seen ultrasounds of their own children in the womb. That debate might teach you something.
But to say there is no libertarian principle that informs abortion is clearly wrong.
There is also the principle of government involvement and whether the federal government should regulate or pay for anything besides what the Constitution allows.
#NashvilleStrong
“I’m a doctor. That’s a baby.”~~~Dr. Manny Sethi
Can a libertarian take the position that life doesn't begin until the age of 10?
And Raimondo doesn't even argue that the unborn isn't a person. He just argues that the woman should have the right to kill the baby since it's within her own body.
Last edited by Brett85; 07-30-2015 at 08:25 PM.
There is a clear libertarian principle which prohibits aggression against persons.
That principle has no bearing on the abortion question until/unless it is agreed that unborn baby is a person.
And libertarianism does not tell you whether the unborn baby is a person or not.
Hence, and this will be the last time I repeat myself, the abortion debate is fundamentally beyond the scope of libertarianism.
Libertarians can be pro-choice or pro-life; either position is consistent with libertarianism.
This has always been the consensus view, it's why the LP from its very inception took no official position on abortion.
As I said, I don't actually care one way or the other.If you want to engage in the insane debate that says a baby is not a baby until it passes through a birth canal, you can go ahead and have that debate with someone else. I'm not going to do it. But I'd prefer you have that debate with someone like me who has seen ultrasounds of their own children in the womb. That debate might teach you something.
But when you have this debate with someone who does care, you should realize that personhood (like property) is not an observable physical fact, it is an ethical concept.
You cannot "prove" that an unborn baby should be considered a person by reference to its physical characteristics.
How do you prove that a baby before it passes through the birth canal is not a person (your language)?
Even a libertarian under the delusion that there is nothing wrong with industrialized abortion isn't going to be happy about the government paying for it to the tune of a half billion dollars plus per year.
That's a good point. Given that principle, why is it not acceptable that a parent have the right to have their born child murdered?
You can't.
There is never "proof" in ethics.
All ethics begin from premises which one deeply believes to be true, at an intuitive level, but cannot prove.
This is true of both secular and religious ethics. It all begins with faith, as it were.
Is one view of ethics right and another view of ethics wrong?
Yes, mine are right and every other is wrong.
...and everyone firmly believes the same about their own ethics.
What I mean, of course, is that ethics is subjective.
Note that this does not entail relativism.
Last edited by r3volution 3.0; 07-30-2015 at 08:56 PM.
Wouldn't you want to fall back on the side of caution? It's not like there is any type of do overs in the abortion industry. Once they are sentenced to death, they cannot be revived. You do realize that you could be wrong? Then what.........What's the recourse? At least the pro life side takes a no harm approach. The pro choice side is partaking in a particularly risky endeavor rife with serious consequences.Yes, mine are right and every other is wrong.
...and everyone firmly believes the same about their own ethics.
What I mean, of course, is that ethics is subjective.
Note that this does not entail relativism.
Last edited by AuH20; 07-30-2015 at 09:05 PM.
Oh I see. The neocons' view of ethics is right for them, therefore why are we arguing against them?Yes, mine are right and every other is wrong.
...and everyone firmly believes the same about their own ethics.
What I mean, of course, is that ethics is subjective.
Note that this does not entail relativism.
No, I said it doesn't entail relativism (what you're describing would be relativism).
Relativism is the idea that, since ethics are subjective, one should equally tolerate all ethical views.
This is a big non sequitur.
To illustrate why, by way of analogy: Taste in food is subjective. Does it therefore follow that one should like all foods equally? No, of course not; non sequitur.
There is nothing inconsistent in recognizing that my preference for pork over chicken is subjective, while continuing to prefer pork over chicken, and acting accordingly.
Likewise, there is nothing inconsistent in recognizing that my libertarian ethics are subjective, while continuing to hold to them exclusively, and acting accordingly.
The big fallacy in popular thinking on ethics is that we must choose between relativism and belief in objective ethics. Generally, religious people argue for the latter (and are mistaken), and secular people argue for the former (and are mistaken).
N.B. In addition to not following logically from the fact that ethics are subjective, relativism is self-contradictory. It is itself an ethical view. Yet it commands tolerance of all ethical views. So, for instance, it would have to tolerate its own negation ("one should not tolerate anyone else's ethical view"). Another way of saying this is that the modern leftist idea of "tolerance" (the same thing as relativism) is actually intolerant of intolerance, and thus self-contradictory.
N.B. #2 I'd argue that the false dichotomy presented us between relativism and objective ethics (which are really just the left's ethics posing dishonestly as some kind of impartiality) is just a leftist strategy, exploiting the collapse of traditional religious belief to promote their own ethics (as if there were no other alternative to religious ethics).
Last edited by r3volution 3.0; 07-30-2015 at 09:27 PM.
I'd argue that the "pro-choice" viewpoint is not consistent with libertarianism, but a third option - personal sovereignty - is.
The difference being that a miscarriage induced artificially is in many cases effectively impossible to distinguish from a natural one. However, there is no natural equivalent of the late-term abortion, just premature birth, so the personal sovereignty position would be permissive of early abortions that resemble miscarriage but not of late-term ones which resemble the murder of a prematurely-born child.
I'm not sure that I follow your reasoning, but the underlined is one of the reasons that I'm indifferent to the whole question: i.e. abortion prohibitions are largely unenforceable anyway.
It would be pretty easy to enforce a law that would close down all public abortion clinics and prosecute doctors who perform abortions. The law probably wouldn't be able to go any further than that, but just doing that would go a long way.
Sure, but it's not clear that that would reduce the number of abortions all that much (if at all).
Do we know how many "miscarriages" occurred prior to the legalization of abortion?
So the neocons view of ethics is analogous to them liking pork instead of chicien? Why are they wrong?
I don't think it's the case that just as many abortions would occur if it were against the law. But even if that were the case, that doesn't justify legal abortion. If abortion violates the rights of innocent human beings, then there has to be a law against it regardless of whether the law is effective or not. A free society can't tolerate the infringement of people's rights. 97% of all rapes don't end up with the rapist being convicted, but obviously that's not a legitimate reason to legalize rape. Rape has to be against the law since it violates people's rights. The same is true of abortion.
because abortion is a unique issue. you have to balance the right of the unborn baby vs. the right of the mother. its not like assisted suicide or birth control, where no third party is involved. I am pro-life (with exceptions for life/heath of the mother, known deformities etc), but support assisted suicide.
and no libertarian should support government paid birth control or any other money to planned Parenthood. Rand is not calling for Planned Parenthood to be closed, just lose their federal funding. let Soros or Hillary or Zuckerberg fund it.
Last edited by cindy25; 07-30-2015 at 09:48 PM.
If it's dead, and its organs are being sold for the explicit purpose of testing on human tissue, then it was human.
There are no crimes against people.
There are only crimes against the state.
And the state will never, ever choose to hold accountable its agents, because a thing can not commit a crime against itself.
All ethics are rooted in subjective desires.
The consequentialist answer: because their policies will yield results which I don't desire (like reduced material living standards).Why are they wrong?
The deontological answer: because their policies are themselves undesirable.
No they are not. Yours are. Not all are.
But their policies are desirable to them and yield the results they want. So...why are they wrong?The consequentialist answer: because their policies will yield results which I don't desire (like reduced material living standards).
The deontological answer: because their policies are themselves undesirable.
Sure, I agree.
I'm just saying that the lack of (much) practical significance is one of the reasons that I'm indifferent.
If I had a very strong moral intuition about it, one way or the other, I'd want the law to reflect that, despite the near-irrelevance of it in practice.
But I don't. I can sympathize with both sides of the argument.
So, if ethical propositions do not represent subjective desires, what do they represent?
Objective facts?
CorrectBut their policies are desirable to them and yield the results they want.
I don't understand the question. I just told you why I would oppose their policies.So...why are they wrong?
You told me why you would oppose their practices, but you didn't (and can't) tell me why they are wrong.
That's some convincing worldview you have.
My whole point about ethics being grounded in subjective desires is that that's the same question.
"X is wrong" = "I dislike X"
"Why is X wrong?" = "Why don't you like X?"
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