The Register, Sunday, June 14, 1981, Covenant Media Foundation, 800/553-3938
by Greg L.
Bahnsen
A
libertarian commitment to personal freedom, claims Robert LeFevre (May 31),
works against laws prohibiting abortion.
Since “an abortion falls into the category of amputation,” it should be
nobody’s business outside of those who must deal with the problem. Who would dream of legislating against
amputations? Surely, “each individual
should be free to decide without legal interference.” Case closed.
LeFevre
wants to make things so easy – simply a matter of categorizing (or
re-categorizing) things properly. One
can imagine a rapist mastering the logic of this argumentation in one
lesson. Surely libertarians would
resist any prohibition of rape, for rape “falls into the category of sexual
preference.” It should be nobody else’s
business, never a matter for legal interference!
Of course
the difficulty with the “pro-choice” arguments for abortion (or rape) is that
their categorizations are preposterous.
Rape is much more than someone’s preferred path to sexual thrills. Killing and removing an unborn child is much
more than amputating an arm. In both
cases violence is perpetrated against another person.
Professor
Hospers explains that “the sole province of law is to prevent people from
harming one another” (Libertarianism, p. 21).
At just this point LeFevre becomes unorthodox or short-sighted. Libertarians ought to support the prohibition
of abortion unless either (1) they have good grounds for holding that a
developing child is not genuinely a member of the class of “people” as long as “it”
is hidden from view behind an undilated cervix, or (2) they have ways of
securing the child’s free and informed consent to induced death.
Abortion is
not merely amputation. It is reasonable
to say that it is perpetrating harm against another person (albeit young and
helpless). Thus even libertarians must
grant that it is an appropriate matter for legislative concern.
LeFevre’s
suggestion that others should decide for (against) the unborn child whether its
life is either “wanted” or “useful” is the acme of anti-libertarian
presumption. Some (very few) Southern
slave-holders categorized blacks as subhuman animals in published defenses of
slavery. Some Nazis decided for many
Jews that their lives were genuinely “worthless.’ Such imposed categorizations and evaluations should make those
who are committed to liberty and human dignity shudder in disgust.
“If each
human being is to have liberty, he cannot also have the liberty to deprive
others of their liberty” (Hospers, p. 13).
It is untrue to libertarianism to deprive the unborn child of his/her
liberty on the basis of somebody else’s choice, somebody else’s wanting of
him/her, somebody else’s view of his/her utility. LeFevre’s only retreat would be to claim that libertarianism
cannot (ought not?) rule on such “metaphysical” questions as whether X is or is
not a “person.” Maybe so, but then that
only points to the fact that libertarian principles are only useful and
applicable within a broader world-and-life-view.
As a
Christian, I would not disagree with that judgment.