LP Platform – Abortion Plank

By Tom Rhodes, 2/25/2014

The veritable “Third Rail” is Abortion. The LP’s position on abortion is illogical, contradictory, unlibertarian, and divides and hurts the LP. The fact is the fastest way to start a argument and keep libertarians from working together on productive issues is to bring up abortion. Not even the Republicans and Democrats fight over abortion more than libertarians. The abortion plank of our platform should not be changed, it should be eliminated. The fact is good libertarians disagree on the issue of abortion, regardless of a person’s position on abortion they should be welcome in the Libertarian Party.

Libertarians as a whole are extremists, if they weren’t they’d be in the Republocrat or Demican party. Because we are extremists some fail to see what they think of as moderate position as being extreme. Consider the wording of the abortion plank in the LP Platform, which reads: “Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.” Many libertarians consider this to be a moderate non-confrontational position. Others see it as an extreme position that makes murder legal in some situations.

As libertarians we all believe that every human has the same rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The LP has adopted and accepted liberal anti-liberty vocabulary to justify its position. Because of this honest open debate on abortion does not happen. Adopting such language tat calls the termination of a fetus as “health care” targets those who don’t agree as being against “health care.”

Half the people, or more, rightly believe that pregnancy is not a disease but is the outcome of behavior initiated by people other than the unborn baby. Half the people, or more, believe life begins at conception. Half the people, or more, believe that the unborn are people. That means that half, or more, of the people believe the LP position is that there should be no laws restricting a woman from murdering her child prior to it reaching some arbitrary stage of its life.

The science is settled, at conception a unique person genetically distinct from its mother is created as a result of specific behavioral choices of the sire. It’s really simple, regardless of the stage of development, from one cell to birth, the cell(s) aren’t dead they are alive. All the arguing isn’t going to change the reality, and no-abortions are initiated on babies before their heart is beating. So talking about blastocysts and very early stages of development are meaningless, a diversion, and a lie meant to cover up the fact that abortion is the killing of a unique humans who are developmentally far too young to protect themselves. Just because politics resulted in changing definition of what is a life to justify abortions doesn’t make the unborn less than human. The definition of cellular life used to be pretty simple. If the cell(s) respirate, take in food, expel waste, divide, and respond to stimuli, it’s alive. If the DNA is human and the cells are alive it is a living human being – PERIOD!

What justifies the initiation of force against that human who has not and cannot initiate force against another? The abortion plank tells every Libertarian who for scientific or religious reasons believes life begins at conception to fuck off. We won’t suffer the consequences of our life choices, and libertarian principles be damned.

Saying that a woman’s body is her own is fine. She should be free to defend herself from others who have initiated aggression against her. If she is pregnant because of her voluntary actions, it is clear her baby did not initiate any aggression against her, but is there because of the woman’s choice. She does not have the right to kill the baby and cannot claim self-defense. If she is pregnant involuntarily because of aggression against her she has good cause to seek reparations and even punishment against the aggressor, not the innocent third party. The baby did not initiate any aggression against her. Murdering the baby because the mother was raped is killing an innocent bystander who initiated force against nobody, and is not justice.

Interesting how liberals, statists, and feminists, in just about everything from income to education, will use dissimilar outcomes based on race and other demographics to prove racism, sexism, etc. You are not allowed to use those same methods to look at abortions. Income inequality between white and black people is because of systemic racism, but overwhelming inequality between blacks and white babies being aborted is somehow not. Liberals and statists and feminists won’t say it out loud, but the history and actual application is clear. The reality is abortion is a eugenics program marketed to the dumb and minorities to convince them to voluntarily reduce their reproduction. Look at the raw numbers, compare them to education level, race and other demographics. Abortion is kept legal and marketed in a fashion designed to minimize populations of ”undesirables.” It's a sick fact, prove it to yourself. Look at where planned parenthood puts its clinics and compare that to the demographics.

Obviously I’m anti-abortion for a lot of reasons. In fact I’m not alone, a lot of Libertarians are anti-abortion. A lot of Republicans, who would be Libertarian if not for the abortion plank remain stuck in the statists Republican Party. The LP claims to believe “that people can hold good-faith views on all sides” of the abortion issue, yet boldly proclaims that view of one side should not be accepted. Obviously the LP doesn’t respect or tolerate the views of those who believe that the government was instituted to protect everybody’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, if that person believes life begins at birth.

If the LP truly makes its platform plank “Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides” then it should have no position on abortion and welcome pro-life and pro-choice libertarians equally. Currently pro-life libertarians who believe that the government should protect the life of all people from aggression by others, even their mothers, are not welcome in the LP. The polls show that more than half the country is pro-life. Why do we have a plank that is so divisive, so easily demonstrated to violate the non-aggression principle, and clearly makes us unpalatable to more than half the country. Considering that the pro-choice crowd generally hates our fiscal planks, our platform pretty much excludes everybody.

Plank 1.4 of the LP Platform on abortion should be eliminated. If we must have an abortion plank why not a truly libertarian plank that reads: : “Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, the LP will not drive a wedge between Its members and encourages each member to freely vote their conscience and actively work to achieve the political goal they think best protects liberty without condemnation.”