Rule Four
I haven’t waded into the abortion debate in a long time. Regular readers may recall that I’ve opted out of offering my own views here, though I am happy to share them in a face-to-face encounter. In lieu of that, I offered a philosophical assessment a few years back.
I recently encountered this meme, which, like so many publicly offered takes on abortion, purports to be a slam-the-door/slam-dunk/mic-drop assessment that allows for no nuance, no consideration of the opposing side’s take, and no further discussion:
One of my Internet friends (also a subscriber) offered an interesting comment:
What human being with rights has any right to live at the expense of another living person?
Since the pro-choice side of the abortion debate strongly correlates with support for things like public funding of abortions, public funding of health care in general, and assertions that health care, housing, food, and more are all “human rights,” a conundrum arises:
Can someone who argues a fetus has no right to live by “using” the mother’s body still make any claim that people are entitled to the fruit of others’ labor? That a person has a “right” to be treated by medical professionals, or to live in property owned by others, or to eat what others grew? Or to be provided any of these and more by the forcible taking of money from other people?
Again, I reiterate that I am not taking sides in the abortion debate here. Today’s point is about intellectual consistency - whether one can make an argument from principle about one matter only to discard that principle for other matters.
This is the crux of Saul Alinsky’s Fourth Rule For Radicals:
Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.
Intellectual consistency is (un)remarkably absent in most of the political sandbox. Both major parties cobble their platforms together with disparate and often contradictory planks, because that’s the only way to accrue large enough voter blocs to win elections in a population as diverse as America’s. This is not an excuse or an endorsement of the practice. A lack of compass promotes pandering over philosophy, and since pandering inevitably involves promises of Other People’s Money, it led us to where we are today, $37T in debt, a government run amok and unfunded entitlement liabilities that will eventually destroy the nation absent correction.
This is why I’m a libertarian rather than a Republican or Democrat. Libertarianism does have an anchoring philosophy. Libertarians sometimes disagree on how it’s applied, and disagree more on how to get to a greater state of liberty, but the anchor is always there. We are as imperfect as any other humans, but with an anchor we have a roadmap by which to return to principles even after we stray.
As for the “no one has any right to another’s body” argument, there are nuances born of the simple biological fact that it takes nine months to go from fertilization to birth, give or take. I’ll save that discussion for another time, but consider a similar nuance: that, because men and women are biologically different, there are legitimate reasons for societies to establish a few rules that treat them differently. Prisons and locker rooms are two examples.
In any event, being philosophically opposed to the concept of “positive rights,” as in “right to healthcare, right to housing, right to [whatever requires another’s labor],” I’m going to stash the disconnect between being pro-abortion based on body autonomy and being pro-positive-rights for future use. Could make for some fun times in the political sandbox.