Pro-Life and Pro-Choice
Abortion is a “wedge issue” in Utah, and rightly so. We live in the most conservative state in the union and have the highest concentration of LDS members. The LDS Church is very clear on the matter:
Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints must not submit to, perform, encourage, pay for, or arrange for an abortion. Church members who encourage an abortion in any way may be subject to Church discipline.
This is a divisive issue even among libertarians. On the one hand, we see it as a matter of personal liberty. What business does the state have with what a woman does with her body? On the other hand, some see the right to life as one of the natural rights that government ought to protect on behalf of those who cannot protect themselves.
I happen to reside in the pro-life camp because I see abortion as an initiation of force and an act of violence against the child. However, I think Utah libertarians would do well to keep an open mind in the matter, so as to prevent atrocities such as the following from occurring:
11-year-old gives birth in southern Mexico after being denied abortion despite rape
The girl was raped by her stepfather at the age of 10 and forced to give birth against her will, putting her health and life in jeopardy. This language sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Church leaders have said that some exceptional circumstances may justify an abortion, such as when pregnancy is the result of incest or rape, when the life or health of the mother is judged by competent medical authority to be in serious jeopardy, or when the fetus is known by competent medical authority to have severe defects that will not allow the baby to survive beyond birth. But even these circumstances do not automatically justify an abortion. Those who face such circumstances should consider abortion only after consulting with their local Church leaders and receiving a confirmation through earnest prayer.
We pro-lifers must be very careful concerning the amount of control we give the government over these matters. In places such as these where abortion is flat-out illegal no matter what, the Church’s counsel cannot be followed, the girl’s right to self-defense was violated, and her liberty in this very personal matter was compromised.
After reading this story, I adopted a more wise stance on the issue of abortion and found that, once again, state solutions tend to trample rights more often than protecting them.
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I am a pro-lifer 99.9% of the time, with the only exception being if the mothers life is in danger. That’s it.
Abortion is a very controversial subject that seems to always have people that are always extremely set in their view on the subject. I’ll start off saying I personally am not for abortion I think that it is wrong and it could be better to take the child to term and give it to a family that can’t have a baby. But not everyone is willing to do that. Even though that is how i feel about abortion I am Pro-Choice cause it should be up to the mother to determine what she does with her body. If you ban it completely and make it illegal you will get girls going to much more dangerous measures to attempt to kill their unborn fetus. Abortion may be morally wrong but it should be up the mother to decide.
So, it should be up to an individual to decide if another completely innocent individual gets to live or die? Abortion is murder.
My stance on this issue is a little complex and I know I’m going to be all over the place on this explanation, but try to follow me here. I really don’t agree with people having an abortion, especially if they are using it as a form of birth control (though I really don’t think as many people do this as we think). I have no problem with people having an abortion if the baby is the result of rape or incest. Having said that, I also don’t oppose abortions. I used to think that if people didn’t want to get pregnant then they should either not have sex or use protection. I don’t think that anymore because I know that no protection is 100% and to ask people not to have sex is just stupid. Anyone who hasn’t had a pregnancy scare when they were neither emotionally ready, financially stable, etc. can’t really understand what it is like. Which is why I don’t oppose it. Does that make sense?
Yes Brian that makes sense and I feel falls in line with my stance on the issue as well. And those that haven’t had to deal with abortion personally don’t know what it’s like to go through one. It’s easy to have an opinion on the matter but until your faced with it you don’t know.
“And those that haven’t had to deal with abortion personally don’t know what it’s like to go through one. It’s easy to have an opinion on the matter but until your faced with it you don’t know.”
Anyone can say that about anything, but that doesn’t take away a persons right to have an opinion on the matter or make their opinion any less important. I have a baby. When we got pregnant my wife was unemployed and I was making 7.25 an hour thirty hours a week. I could have decided that I wasn’t ready to have a baby and just gone and had an abortion. But I had the sack to man up and take care of my baby. Abortion, like suicide, is the easy way out. Abortions for convenience sake makes me sick, and that, unfortunately, I feel is the main reason people have them.
Every choice we make has a consequence, and we have no control over what it will be, good or bad. By choosing to have sex, with or without protection, you are accepting the possibility that it could result in a pregnancy.
Having an abortion because you are not emotionally ready or financially stable is like flipping “the natural order of things” the bird. It’s a cheap loophole. If you are not in a position to care for a baby, you should not be having sex, period.
There has been a lot of good discussion in this thread about the morality of abortion. I appreciate everyone’s input.
Getting back to the topic of the post, however, I’m curious to hear what everyone thinks about what role the state should play in the matter. Immoral isn’t and shouldn’t be the same thing as illegal. Should the state have a role in the matter at all? If so, what would the nature of that role be? How do you justify it? Is there a limit to what the state ought to be able to prohibit or force on us?
I don’t know what the exact laws are, but whatever they are I think they should be the same in every state. I don’t think if you can’t get an abortion in your state that you should be able to go to another state to get it done.
I definitely agree with Bryan on that point. And yes I think the state should be able to illegalize it. Abortion is harming a non-consenting other, is it not?
To comment on part of this matter, the way I see it, if someone is raped then their liberty has been violated. To force them to give birth to a child they didn’t choose to become impregnated with would also be a violation of their liberty. Unfortunately, killing the child is also an act of aggression against the liberty of the child, who also did no wrong. So we have two innocent parties, and it appears the liberty of one must cancel out the liberty of the other…but not quite. There is one way, and one way only to preserve the liberty of both the unwilling mother and the child–the mother must be given the liberty to choose, and she must freely choose to give birth to the child. Of course giving the mother that liberty means she has the freedom to choose abortion, but if we want to provide the opportunity for both parties to have their liberty we must allow for this possibility, must we not?