Libertarians for Life

Libertarians For Life is a non-sectarian pro-life group expressing an opposition to abortion within the context of libertarianism. It expresses a non-religious and non-sectarian perspective that abortion is a violation of liberty.

Polemics

The website of the Libertarians for Life offers a wide variety of materials on most of the mainstream arguments of abortion, and many of the obscure arguments. All of the arguments are either neutral to the ideology of libertarianism or supportive of it. Indeed, many of the articles explain why being pro-life is not only compatible with being a libertarian, but actually flows from that perspective.

The Libertarian Case Against Abortion

To explain and defend its case, LFL argues that: 1. Human offspring are human beings, persons from fertilization. 2. Abortion is homicide — the killing of one person by another. 3. There is never a right to kill an innocent person. Prenatally, we are all innocent persons. 4. A prenatal child has the right to be in the mother's body. Parents have no right to evict their children from the crib or from the womb and let them die. Instead both parents, the father as well as the mother, owe them support and protection from harm. 5. No government, nor any individual, has a just power to legally depersonify any one of us, born or preborn. 6. The proper purpose of the law is to side with the innocent, not against them.

Libertarianism has a long and deeply academic history, stretching back to the foundation of logical syllogisms. The basic viewpoints of the libertarians For life are expressed in a syllogistic form because that is the most common language of philosophical and ideological libertarians. They pursue a similarly simple, direct, syllogistic style in explaining children's rights, exemptions for rape and incest, and other aspects of the abortion debate.

All of the arguments assume the reader has no specific religious beliefs, and are aimed to appeal equally to atheists and theists. This is a point of pride for the group, relying on science and reason while both pro-life allies and pro-choice opponents use what they view as non-scientific or unreasoned arguments.

Activities

The Libertarians For Life caucus was founded in 1976 by Doris Gordon "because some libertarian had to blow the whistle." The primary purpose of the Libertarians For Life is to push the Libertarian party toward a more neutral or more pro-life view on abortion, and to improve the section on the rights of children. They seek to do the same to state affiliates of the LP.

While they have achieved limited successes, including converting several state LP platforms to neutral or pro-life positions and adopting a more pro-life friendly plank on childrens' rights, the Libertarians For Life have not been able to move the party to oppose abortion. It is still associated with support for abortion rights.

The Libertarian Party On Abortion

The current U.S. national party platform reads:

"Recognizing that abortion is a very sensitive issue and that people, including libertarians, can hold good-faith views on both sides, we believe the government should be kept out of the question. We condemn state-funded and state-mandated abortions. It is particularly harsh to force someone who believes that abortion is murder to pay for another's abortion."

Although many people view this as a neutral position on the issue, the Libertarians For Life argue that it uses the power of the state through courts and police to protect those committing abortion and therefore cannot be a neutral position. The only 'neutral' position, they argue, would involve an unlikely and unattractive scenario of "free-fire zones" where the police would not enforce the law. As this is obviously not a situation even most libertarians would endorse, the result is an attempted refutation of the pro-choice libertarian refrain "let's get the government out of our lives."

Of course, the views of Libertarians on the subject of abortion is widely misconstrued, especially by those outside the movement. While there are some Libertarians with fervently pro-choice views, these are a relatively small minority. The largest group is pro-choice in an almost apathetic manner, opposing the pro-choice extremism they view as coming from the left and opposing the unworkable or moralistic pro-life extremism they view as coming from the right.

The result is that Libertarians, a group of people with heated opinions on obscure subjects such as the Davis-Bacon Act, the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission, are relatively muted and uninterested when the subject turns to abortion. There is a broad (numerous) but shallow (weakly held) consensus to maintain abortion rights and oppose state abortion-funding. There is a strong current of pro-choice libertarians who oppose Roe v. Wade on constitutionalist grounds.

The result is that, though non-libertarians like to classify libertarians as an entirely dogmatic and enthusiastically pro-choice group, the truth is far more muted and much less internally controversial. It is unclear just what a Libertarian President might do on the subject, especially since even a supporter of abortion rights might oppose Roe v. Wade as an unconstitutional intrusion on the states. The result is that a Libertarian policy toward abortion might entail a consensus to repeal Roe v. Wade and throw abortion to the states, it might include maintaining the abortion rights structure as it is but removing all funding of abortion, or it might sidestep the issue almost entirely. Most Libertarians, pro-choice and pro-life, supported the move by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush to withdraw funding of international abortion counseling groups on libertarian grounds, even though that issue is used by journalists and politicians as a litmus test for support of abortion rights.

Harry Browne, the LP candidate for President in 1996 and 2000 said he was personally very strongly opposed to abortion but politically did not feel he could or should be able to prohibit it. Michael Badnarik, the LP candidate for President in 2004, was somewhat undecided on abortion – at first siding with the child's right to life over the mother's right to privacy (in his words, roughly) and subsequently endorsing a much more mainstream libertarian opinion securing the right to choose abortion, but not to acquire one through state funding or assistance. Gary Nolan, the presumptive LP candidate in 2004 early in the primaries is also pro-life, though it's unclear to what extent he would've sought to press his views if elected.

Ron Paul, by far the most prominent elected Libertarian, representing Texas in the House of Representatives as a Republican, and the party's 1988 candidate for President is and was pro-life. He was a practicing OB/GYN for many years and delivered many babies, which he cites as contributing to his opposition to abortion.

Related Links

• Libertarians For Life