An excellent piece by Professor Gottfried, and right on the money. Those who wish to have a lasting victory against abortion must base their arguments on correct and consistent principles, not vague leftist bromides.

I would, however, disagree with his assessment of Rothbard being correct on abortion, even from the perspective of Rothbard’s own first principles. He does, after all, concede that infants and small children must have their lives and other rights protected because of their potential for becoming rational adults who take can take responsibility for themselves. Once one recognizes that they are living humans from conception, drawing the line, as he does, at the birth canal becomes entirely arbitrary. Furthermore, a woman’s right to control her body can no more justify abortion by Rothbardian principles than her right to physical property can justify her refusing to pay damages to a person she has injured through her own fault. In my view, Rothbard’s position on abortion was one of his weakest and most poorly considered.

Here is a quote from one of the most prolific abortionists around, Edward Allred:

“I’d set up a clinic in Mexico for free if I could. Maybe one in Calexico would help. The survival of our society could be at stake. . . . The Aid to Families With Dependent Children program is the worst boondoggle ever created. When a sullen black woman can decide to have a baby and get welfare and food stamps and become a burden to all of us it’s time to stop. In parts of South Los Angeles having babies for welfare is the only industry the people have.”

Margaret Sanger was invited to speak at least twelve Ku Klux Klan Rallies.  She accepted at least one invitation and spoke at a KKK rally in Silver Lake, New Jersey.  This she admits in her own autobiography.

http://margaretsanger.blogspot.com/

There are many evil parts to the multi-million dollar abortion industry.  Racism is part of it and there is no reason it should be ignored.

An excellent article.  It is never good to argue your case against cultural Marxists in their stilted and devoid of meaning pc language.  Real human deaths become collateral damage and a living, breathing child becomes a choice, or a fetus or something less human.  In this debate we as pro-lifers have everything on our side.  No serious scientist can argue that a fetus is not a living breathing creature as would no sane person make such and argument.

“The late Murray Rothbard was correct when he derived an individual right to abortion from the mother’s right to the property of her womb.”

With all due respect, Prof. Gottfried, Rothbard was wrong. Children are not property, and Rothbard’s entire argument, indeed, all of libertarian thinking, is rooted in the evil idea of “self-ownership,” a metaphysical impossibility.

@ Mr. DiBaggio: In fact, Rothbardian principles do justify abortion, again, by the principle of self-ownership.

I am confused by what Mr. Kirkwood means by saying self-ownership is a metaphysical impossibility. If a man doesn’t own himself - doesn’t possess agency or free will - then who does?

In any case, I must strenuously disagree with the idea that self-ownership could ever justify killing another innocent person, let alone a person whose helpless predicament is the result of one’s risk taking. The victims of abortion don’t commit suicide, after all. The notion of self-ownership stands in opposition to someone else trying to take your life, or you trying to take someone else’s.

The mother’s immune system is suppressed while pregnant. That is because the life in the mother’s womb is of a separate human being. That is a child, as conscious of himself as a child going out the birth canal.

There is no justification for taking an inocent child’s life.

And even if a person/child is property there is no right to take another’s life except in self-defense or in capital punishment. “Thou shall not murder/kill” applies to slave masters as well.

Let me make clear that I do not buy Lockean arguments about the nature and origin of
rights, but if I did,I would have to believe in the woman’s right to dislodge an
unwanted occupant from her womb, particularly if the unwanted guest had no consciousness
of right that he/she/it could claim. Lockean libertarians Walter Block and Roderick Long
are on perfectly sound natural rights grounds when they take this position. The problem
with Murray’s presentation of the pro-abortion, libertarian position was his tendency
to conflate Lockean natural rights with Thomistic and Aristotelian ontology; therefore
he had a way of introducing social responsibilities into his atomistic paradigm that
never made much sense to me. The reason I brought him up is that Murray’s
thinking was relatively uncorrupted by sentimental egalitarianism, although he was
making what for me is a counterfactual and counterhistorical case for individual human
rights. On this point I am closer to Burke, Maistre, and Tom Fleming than I am to
Locke and his Straussian epigones. The pro-life movement seems to combine two
bad habits, trying to beat the Left as antiracist and egalitarian while bootlegging
into its frenzied moral appeal heavy gobs of undigested Locke.

@ Dr Gottfried,

That last comment is such a refreshing analysis of men like Rothbard and their first principles.  Let it be known that there is no concept of individual human rights, much less natural rights, in Catholicism.  It was with Jacques Maritain that such personalism came about, but it is certainly a novelty that would have been foreign to the mind of St Thomas.

Whether or not you agree with using the “rights” argument to support anti-abortion measures, I think it is telling of the Left that they make it their business to protect the rights of every person in this world except the unborn children of the American people. What this shows you is that the left is far more concerned about the lives of illegal immigrants, foreigners and even terrorist enemies than they are about the lives of future American generations.

It is news to me that the “Left” made it their business to protect the right of every person in this world. They certainly did not make it their business, when the rights-violator was one of their own, from Stalin to the abortion provider. The left really consists of a few conscience-lacking, manipulative, arrogant “leaders”, and a mass of mindless followers, who find in the flawed reasoning of their leaders an excuse for their own intellectual laziness to take responsibility for their life. I discovered that early in the 60’s communes in Germany and the general and that assessment still fits the present flock.
On that note, even though I have been on the receiving end of “Sid and friends” diatribes more often than not, I would miss their comments and I hope they will not withdraw. Their insistence on PC and reverence to their favorite cause makes me appreciate the sometimes provocative, but nevertheless insightful comments of the other contributors even more.

Sid and his friends are not likely to find other websites as congenial as this one. Perhaps they should try hanging out with the neocon zombies on NROnline in order to appreciate the company of our contentious, or at the very least sentient, group.

I haven’t been able to post here since I wrote that black people were responsible for their own failings (a post which the author, John Zmirak, actually responded to), and before that I had a post removed where I acknowledged that Jews were over represented on the left, but thought I was standing up for them by saying they were also over represented in the paleo-con and white nationalist movements too.  What gives?

Werner said, “It is news to me that the “Left” made it their business to protect the right of every person in this world. They certainly did not make it their business, when the rights-violator was one of their own, from Stalin to the abortion provider.”

Well said. Perhaps I should clarify my statement. The “Left” wants an observing world to believe that it is their mission to protect the rights of every person in this world even if this is not the reality of their behavior. As for looking the other way when rights-violators are one of their own, I agree that this hypocrisy occurs all too often and that this behavior is always excused with the statement:  “Well, his intentions were good.” This is something that the Left and their neocon buddies have never understood. Ideas and intentions mean nothing. Consequentiality is all that matters.

Werner said, “The left really consists of a few conscience-lacking, manipulative, arrogant “leaders”, and a mass of mindless followers, who find in the flawed reasoning of their leaders an excuse for their own intellectual laziness to take responsibility for their life.”

Me thinks you might give the masses too much credit. Intellectual laziness suggests an inherent capacity to perform, something denied to those members of inferior cultures who find refuge under the “Left-Wing” flag.

Never forget that the cry of diversity is nothing more than the rallying call of the meek of the earth to be protected from justifiable forms of discrimination.

“Let me make clear that I do not buy Lockean arguments about the nature and origin of
rights, but if I did,I would have to believe in the woman’s right to dislodge an
unwanted occupant from her womb, particularly if the unwanted guest had no consciousness
of right that he/she/it could claim.”

But the womb is design to hold and protect for 9 months another human being.

As analogy: When renting an apartment you are bound by the terms of the contract. Without a breach of contract there is justification for eviction.

What has the baby done to deserve eviction?

Consciousness or not, it is murder to evict that baby.

Paul Gottfried

Excellent piece on the stupidity of the imposter right’s usage of left-wing canards and ideology to advance the pro-life cause. But my question is, what arguments should we use to advance the pro-life cause?

@Charles

“That last comment is such a refreshing analysis of men like Rothbard and their first principles.  Let it be known that there is no concept of individual human rights, much less natural rights, in Catholicism.  It was with Jacques Maritain that such personalism came about, but it is certainly a novelty that would have been foreign to the mind of St Thomas.”

HAHAHAHAHAHA!! Oh man that was funny!  How ironic since it was Aquinas and the Church which helped define even more so the idea of individual rights?  So you don’t have rights, Charles?  Fine.  So then you don’t mind then if some random people were to then break into your house, burn it down and beat you up right?  I mean after all you don’t have rights, correct?

Epstein’s latest post on MLK is to equate him to Sanger, with the latter apparently the more virtuous of the 2. No comments are allowed and frankly at this rate, who would bother to leave one?

We’re entering self-parody here has this comic quest for ideological purity leads to more tortured logic and painful hair-splitting. Even the pompous nomenclature of paleo, post-paleo, et al., sounds more like faculty-lounge hissing, rather than serious, mature thought. 

What has happened to this site?