“You do realize that Ron Paul is not pro choice. He is not the freedom loving candidate you portray him as. He doesn’t give a shit about individual freedom because if he did he would not have voted against pro choice. It is there in his voting record if you ever bothered to look.”
Comment:
I’ve actually read Ron Paul’s voting record quite thoroughly. It’s exactly what I’d expect from a principled libertarian from his background.
Libertarians believe in state’s rights and decentralization. So I expect Paul, while pro-life, would be quite comfortable with states choosing for themselves what they wanted on that. If you were pro-choice, you’d just move to a state which supported your position.
Pro-lifers believe that life and liberty are non-negotiable, something all libertarians believe. It’s just that libertarian pro-choicers (like me) think where you draw the line that begins life is indistinct, but we respect pro-life as a serious ethical position.
Pro-life isn’t anti-feminist or anti-female, as you suggest. It’s simply a different way of looking at the issue of reproductive rights. In any case, reproductive rights are not the only thing, are they? A uterus does not make a very compelling political philosophy on its own…
Lila,
I guess you are saying that it is easy for people to pick up their life and move to another state so that they can have an abortion, if necessary?! Right…
I believe your pro-life libertarian “life and liberty are non-negotiable, something all libertarians believe” is a crock. Where have you all been voicing your chiding opinions as the Bush clan has taken those rights and liberties away. And, if your life and liberty are “non-negotiable”, but you may have to go to another state for it…makes no sense to me!
The statement to allow the states to handle this issue is a cop out and a way for the government to begin to allow precident and back door Roe v Wade.
Where have I been voicing my opinions?
I left my job in 2003 to write against the Iraq war.
I was the first person to point out the essential nature of espionage and torture to this administration way back in 2004 summer – including torture against women and rendition; I wrote a book on that (Language of Empire) and some 150 articles on related issues (on left and right libertarian sites) and then another book (dealing with the financialization of the economy – Mobs). My first book has an extensive section on the Bush administration ‘s power grab. And Mobs – albeit – in a humorous way – is definitely anti-imperial and critical of Bush’s war state.
I really don’t know what you are talking about with that.
Re – Roe v. Wade.
That was a bad decision considered as law, even though it’s now the law of the land.
As social policy, that is a different question. We mustn’t confuse what gets us the social ends we want with with what’s constitutional. IMHO that’s been the mistake of the activism of the post war years.
Constitutionality requires a number of things to be left to the states. If you don’t like it, then amend the constitution and pass a federal law upholding abortion. But under the current constitution, states should be the laboratory for social issues.
That’s Rep. Paul’s position, as far as I can see.
It’s a very pure libertarian position.
And yes – it is difficult for people to move to another state which agrees with their beliefs. But they wouldn’t have to relocate – just take a train. And they could borrow the money. It would be difficult. Presumably, friends and family would help…or a church might adopt the baby or a doctor might do it pro bono. But I don’t believe there is anything in the constitution that requires the state to incentivize abortion…or child bearing, either, for that matter.
Human beings can help each other without nanny state, although our kleptocrats would have you think otherwise.
But my thinking is this is less about helping poor girls who get pregnant than it is to attack religious belief on the subject.
And I say that as a person who is staunchly pro-choice.
This takes me back to how things can be so misconstrued online with our previous conversation re: the Obama camp (perhaps) responsible for the email infiltration…
I didn’t mean, where were “you”, as I know and read what you are doing and appreciate all of it, but where is the voice of the (libertarian) people…?
When our country was deeply divided in the 60’s, the students revolted in the streets to make their issues known. They created a movement that changed the world. Those same people now are substantially more quiet with what is happening today, but where is the youth of today? Will their complacency be the demise of this country for no youth voice. They are coming to register to vote, then they must vote!
As far as the argument for women to need to cross state lines is the same freedoms that the slaves had if they got away to the north they became free. This is not the kind of America that I am striving for. Free, should be free, and one’s life and liberty should be in every state.
There are issues that the government should have never get involved with, and this is one. Stay out of one’s uterus…period!! Get out of the living rooms and bedrooms of America and stick to running the damn country.
If Washington can’t even run the country well enough, they certainly have no right in someone’s home to run such personal issues-State or Fed!
I agree with you that people will come to the aid of others. Since the government continuously slows this process down by cutting programs, but it isn’t easy and for some impossible to “borrow” the money, some have no family that will help, and a church is not an adoption agency. None of those choices would be an issue if we educated kids about sex in schools instead of “just say no”! This did well for the Palin household…
The state won’t incentivize abortion and much of that argument lies in tax dollars and how it is spent, but the tax dollars will go to Foster Care organizations, prisons, drug and alcohol programs…Perhaps there will be a day where money is spent on root causes of ills to society rather than band-aids to problems people refuse to face.
I am Pro-Choice!
No disagreement there.
But that is just what I am saying. A woman is free to abort or not abort. But the argument is that states should not be forcing everyone to pay for abortions when they have conscientious objections to it — that’s like others don’t like paying for wars that they think are unjust, right? – and they shouldn’t be taking away the choice of people to voluntarily make abortion illegal in their communities..
A woman certainly owns her body in modern individualist thinking – but many people (Conservative Christians for eg.) wouldn’t agree with that ownership model….for them, the baby is not placed out of reach of community moral feeling just because it’s in a womb. Also, in most moral traditions there is a heavy presumption in favor of innocent life.
You can define life as the first day after birth. But it’s a bit much to say that one day earlier and it’s just a lump of flesh.
Take away the slippery slope argument (and I think the burden is on pro-choicers to prove that) and there is no really strong argument against the Federalist solution.
That said, Roe is the law of the land….and a conservative approach would treat it prudentially, not with strict constitutionality