Xref: utzoo talk.abortion:10655 talk.philosophy.misc:3451 alt.individualism:2207
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From: rwilliam@grebyn.com (Roger Williams)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion,talk.philosophy.misc,alt.individualism
Subject: Re: Libertarians(?) For Life at Jan 22 March On Washington
Message-ID: <14146@grebyn.com>
Date: 17 Jan 90 11:48:30 GMT
References: <YZgdyfC00WB9EWhJJ4@andrew.cmu.edu> <1623@meccsd.MECC.MN.ORG>
Reply-To: rwilliam@grebyn.UUCP (Roger Williams)
Followup-To: talk.abortion
Organization: N/A
Lines: 37

In article <1623@meccsd.MECC.MN.ORG> scj@meccsd.mecc.mn.org (Scotian) writes:
>Making laws which are not
>justified or supported by cold hard facts is a travesty; they are
>illegitimate laws.  Since Libertarians by definition are against laws
>which infringe on a person's ability to do that which does not affect
>other people (at least to any great extent, ie. driving pollutes, but
>is allowed), and it cannot in any way be proven that a fetus has 
>attained 'personhood', to restrict a woman's access to abortions is to 
>act in an unlibertarian manner.
>-- 
OK, consider the following scenario -- which judging from recent events
in Mexico isn't as far fetched as one  would hope.  A couple conceivves
and brings to term a child.  After it is born, the couple decides to
offer it up as a human sacrifice.  Faced with protests, they respond
that they do not consider it to be a "person" since it is not
self-aware, cannot feed itself and can't do differential equations.
"It's  just a child", they say.  "Not a person, and if you don't
believe in human sacrifice, I respect your right not to practice it,
but don't you go infringing on MY right to practice my religion and
MY freedom of choice".

At this point, society is faced with two choices.  It can  either do
nothing or it can impose its view that children _are_ persons under the
protection of the law.  As we all know, society has opted for the
latter choice.  Individuals in this country do _not_ have the freedom
to unilaterally choose who is and who is not a person.  Moreover, the
definition of a person has been expanded several times to include
children, blacks, and women, so another expansion of the social
definition of "person" would hardly be unprecedented.  Of course, you
_could_ argue that including women, children and racial minorities in
the "person" category is a bad idea infringing on libertarian ideals,
and, indeed, you could argue that _any_ social definition of what
constitutes a "person" is impermissible.  Such a position would, I
suspect, not be held by very many  people, however. 

Roger Williams
rwilliam@grebyn.com