Jan 28, 2025
Philsopher Benjamin Bayer on “why the embryo is not an individual with rights”:
If abortion only involved aborting the growth of a tumor, most would be willing to admit that the fight to remove it could be admirable, even heroic, and so surely a choice protected by right. But the embryo is a different kind of growth. It represents a distinctive stage in the human life cycle, and this fact allows the Augustinian opponents of individual rights to sow confusion.
Even though there are differences between the tumor and the embryo, the burden of proof on the opponent of abortion is to show why the embryo is different from a tumor in such a way that gives it rights while the tumor obviously has none. I will argue that there’s no reason to think it is different in the respects that matter to the Enlightenment–American conception of individual rights.
Recalling Rand’s definition, a right “is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context.” This last part of the definition reflects the important fact (as we’ve seen) that the concept of “individual rights” was developed by political philosophers to help structure a society to protect rationality and industry from the threat of violence and thereby enable individuals’ pursuit of happiness.
Read the rest.
Aug 2, 2013
New Bill Could Require Texas Women to Take Adoption Class Before Getting Abortion: Austinist
[…] Democrat and Texas State Senator Eddie Lucio from Brownsville has filed a bill that would require the state’s Health and Human Services Commission to create a three-hour course “regarding a pregnant woman’s option to place her child for adoption.” Women would have to take the class at least 24 hours before getting an abortion […]
“It is my hope that, when presented with more information on adoption resources and services available, more pregnancies can be carried to term,” Lucio said in a statement.
Texas’ restrictive abortion regulations already requires women to receive an ultrasound, have the fetus described, and receive counseling before getting an abortion.
Last month, they added a ban to all abortions in the state after 20 weeks and now require abortion clinics be certified as ambulatory surgical centers (tough specifications that could lead to clinics closing). Lucio was the only Democrat in the Texas Senate to vote in favor of that bill.
[…]
Lucio represents Brownsville, a border town among the poorest metro areas in the entire country whose access to preventative women’s health care has been seriously imperiled by abortion legislation in the state. And the situation in the area is already grim: Many women are turning to buying abortion drugs at sketchy flea markets across the border.
Comments Ed Mazlish:
“The Right seeks to fatigue women out if exercising their right to have abortion in the same way that the Left seeks to fatigue people from exercising their right to self-defense. Both use the phony rationalization of “protecting innocent life” in order to justify big government nanny statism.”
Jul 5, 2013
By Scott Holleran
One lone woman stood for 10 consecutive hours against the entire Senate in the Lone Star state to defend a woman’s right to an abortion.
What Texas Sen. Wendy Davis did is an example of what those of us who cherish individual rights – and our numbers are few – may have to do in our lifetimes. Though exactly under which rule the bill to ban abortion failed amid the confusion in the Texas state Senate is unclear at this point, what is unequivocal is that Sen. Davis, who was not allowed to lean or use the toilet, embodies the American spirit of “Don’t Tread on Me.” While too many who claim to advocate for reason, capitalism and individual rights instead fetishize and fawn over conservatives such as Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and others who would violate individual rights, Wendy Davis, whatever her flaws, stood for reason in thought and action. That she’s a hypocrite as a Democrat for protecting the sanctity of what she calls “personal relationships with [one’s] doctor” while supporting a party that just enacted a national dictatorship in health care is another issue. For now, she is the reason that a woman’s right to abortion is legal in Texas and that must be recognized, especially in a great, American state with a noble history of standing one’s ground for the proper principles of a free republic.
What happened in Texas is more indicative of Big Government than this week’s mixed Supreme Court rulings on irrational laws intended to influence hiring and admissions based on race – a despicable idea in any context – and irrational laws that specify certain types of persons, namely gays, for separate treatment under the law. Sen. Davis may have won the battle for individual rights, though barely to the extent that she did and her defense is mixed, but we are losing the war for reason in the West. As the left and right converge to create an American dictatorship, America is becoming a fascist state. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who like an ayatollah prays and deprives himself of food as a means of government, may get his way on banning abortion in Texas yet and Wendy Davis may have merely bought a short length of time. The anti-abortion movement in Texas demonstrates that the threat of theocracy – whether it’s government by faith in the state or government by faith in God, tradition or religion – is rising.
Wendy Davis rose with great physical courage in action to speak out against theocracy and it’s thanks to her that Texas dodged a ban on a woman’s right to abortion. It’s not easy – it is becoming much more difficult – to rise up and speak out against the tyranny of the state. Standing her ground for individual rights – which are under attack everywhere in the U.S. – is a heroic example for all rational Americans. — Scott Holleran
Nov 4, 2012
Writes Onkar Ghate on the relationship between individual rights as the basis for a woman’s right to abortion:
Religious conservatives like Paul Ryan have to distance themselves from Rand’s philosophy. Theirs is an inconsistent position. Ryan, for instance, wants to be seen as an advocate of individual rights while simultaneously making a mockery of a woman’s right to the pursuit of happiness by proposing to force her to bring a pregnancy to term even in the case of rape.
Rand rejects such medievalism. Precisely because raising a child is a personal and immense undertaking, a woman must have the freedom to judge whether and when to have children. To equate an embryo with a human being, a potential with the actual, and then to declare the willful ending of a pregnancy murder, is to abandon reason and science in favor of mystical Church dogmas. No government, Rand argued, should have the power to dictate to a woman in such matters; it’s her life and her decision. [“A Liberal Ayn Rand?“, 11 November 2012, Onkar Ghate]
Jun 29, 2012
Our site has finally been updated. Check it out and share it with your friends.
https://abortionismoral.com/
Please let us know via the contact form if you have any issues.
More articles and essays are planned.
