Hundreds of students over the past few months have been asking for further resources to help them on this controversial topic. Listed below are a few tips to help you write a class paper, or to help you further understand the nature of the issue.
HOW TO USE THIS SITE
The first thing I recommend you do to study this issue is to carefully listen to Dr. Peikoff’s audio lecture on why abortion is pro-life. I would listen to this about 10 times, or so over several days, as there is so much information condensed into this brief lecture.
The second thing I recommend is that they read the essays on the essay page. These essays will have much of the information you are looking for and they may be used as sited references for papers. The citations may reference either Capitalism Magazine, or the Ayn Rand Institute’s Media Link.
The third thing I recommend is that they read through all of the questions and answers in the question and answer section.
BOOKS AND TAPES
Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff
To help you further explore the philosophical issues concerning abortion, I recommend Leonard Peikoff’s Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. The key sections to study in this book are pages 351-363 on individual rights as absolutes, and pages 357-359 on their application to abortion. Every good library carries this book — especially college libraries, if not be sure to ask your librarian to carry it, or purchase it online.
The Right to Abortion by Andrew Bernstein, Ph.D.
This talk is an unequivocal defense—on philosophic grounds—of the moral right to abortion. He reveals the errors in the scientific arguments of anti-abortionists; the failure to recognize the biological nature of the fetus; the equivocation on key terms; and the obliteration of the distinction between the actual and the potential. More broadly, he upholds the principle of individual rights, and contrasts it with the theory of self-sacrifice espoused by the anti-abortionists. This hard-hitting talk will unsettle both conservatives and liberals.
A Picture is Not an Argument by Leonard Peikoff
More and more in today’s culture, people — on behalf of causes ranging from anti-abortion to anti-war — are trying to defend some viewpoint not by words but by pictures. This lecture indicates why presenting visually shocking pictures is an epistemologically invalid, anti-conceptual method of presenting an issue.
Of Living Death by Ayn Rand
Also worth reading is Ayn Rand’ 1968 Ford Hall Forum lecture on the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae, titled Of Living Death published in The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought by Ayn Rand.
Also see the article Man’s Rights published in Capitalism : The Unknown Ideal.
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