ONE OF THE oldest and most heated intra-libertarian disputes is
over the ability to electively end a pregnancy. Historically, the
pro–abortion rights position has had more sway. The first Lib-
ertarian Party platform in 1972 called for “the repeal of all laws
restricting voluntary birth control or voluntary termination of
pregnancies during their first hundred days,” and it’s not hard
to see why a movement that holds such values as choice and
autonomy sacred would come down on that side of the debate.
Yet disagreement has proved stubbornly persistent: Ron Paul,
the L.P.’s 1988 presidential nominee and a former obstetrician,
identifies as “an unshakable foe of abortion.” A Cato Institute
study using 2008 American National Election Study data found
that more than a third of the country’s libertarians are pro-life.
At Reason, the presumption in favor of abortion rights has
never been so rigid as to stop us from giving space in our pages
to arguments both for and against. The affirmative and negative
cases on this page are excerpted from a forum that appeared in
the magazine’s April 1978 issue.
AFFIRMATIVE:
Don’t Sacrifice People
for the Sake of Potential
People
“HUMAN BEINGS HAVE [life, liberty, and property] rights because
they should live so as to further their own happiness, and it is
the proper function of a legal system to protect and preserve
these rights. When the exercise of these rights would conflict
with some other value, the legal system of a good human com-
munity must give precedence to the exercise of those rights.
In our case, a person’s right to pursue his or her own life some-
times conflicts with the value of a potential human being devel-
oping into a young human being. Then, it is the rights of the
actual person that must be protected, not the conditions of
such development.”
—TIBOR MACHAN
“The Morality of Non-Interference”NEGATIVE:
It’s Almost Always
Wrong To End the
Lives of Innocents
“THERE ARE THOSE who have tried to justify abortion by claim-
ing that it does not constitute an attack upon the unborn, that
it is merely a morally neutral withholding of aid to a helpless
stranger....Nothing could be farther from the truth. Abortion is
the purposeful use of force to deny a human being who is inno-
cent of aggressive behavior the natural conditions required
for continued life....Except in a ‘lifeboat’ situation, [unborn
persons] must be accorded the protection of the nonaggres-
sion principle. And, therefore, under normal (nonemergency)
circumstances, abortion is a violation of the cardinal principle
of libertarianism.”
—KARL T. PFLOCK
“It’s a Matter of Life and Death”Photo: dip2000/iStock REASON 47PROPOSITION:
Libertarians
Should Support
Abortion Rights