Apparently, Lots of Libertarians Don't Think Women are People Either

[paft.livejournal.com]

So The Mercatus, a right-wing think tank, has declared North Dakota -- which recently passed an incredibly restrictive anti-abortion law, one of the free-est of all the fifty states

Once again, we see that when right wing libertarians use the word "liberty," they're using their own extra-special definition of it. As Salon has pointed out reproductive freedom apparently isn't even entered into the calculations,

Women, you see, just don't count.



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Comments

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Because they're not a born living human and do not have the civil and legal rights of personhood. Show me a single nation that assigns those rights to fetii.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Again, we could be the trailblazers on that if we prefer. We need not see another nation do something for it to be a good idea to do ourselves.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Again what is lacking is a good reason to abandon tradition, you dubious conservative. I have heard no good reason to create a situation where the State has to act on behalf of non-sentient fetuses Vs. the interests of the woman carrying said fetii.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

If anything, the killing of the unborn is the deviation from tradition.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

No, its not. Women have been attempting to end/prevent pregnancies for eons.

[aviv-b.livejournal.com]

Whose traditions? Because abortion has been with us, well forever. (As was infanticide). Male dominated legislatures may have forbid it but that has never stopped a woman from aborting a fetus. But because women didn't write the history, you assume it didn't exist.

Do yourself a favor, google abortion in colonial america - I think you might be surprised.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

But because women didn't write the history, you assume it didn't exist.

Well, no. It's more that actually codifying it into law is what's new, and what the deviation is. After all, we realized we were wrong on infanticide.

[aviv-b.livejournal.com]

and why is that, do you think? Because a being born, able to live independently of another has its own agency. 16 cells do not.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

A fetus isn't 16 cells.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

My newborn's sense of independence is pretty limited, if not outright nonexistent. It doesn't follow that agency alone is the driving force.

We could look back and say "yeah, we were wrong about abortion" in 100 years. Heck, we could go in the other direction and say we were wrong about infanticide (although I doubt it).

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Surely you jest. You have a degree in history, correct?

[oslo.livejournal.com]

Now now - don't get personal!

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

I'm a repeat offender - I repeat, I will offend again!

[oslo.livejournal.com]

I'm sure there's a perfectly valid reason for distinguishing between the "tradition" that has consistently(?) condemned abortion and the "tradition" that has continued despite that norm, such that it's only obvious why the former really deserves the label "tradition."

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Correct. How am I wrong?

[oslo.livejournal.com]

Do you deny that women have been trying to end their pregnancies for almost as long as they've been getting pregnant? Do you deny that this practice has its own history that has been passed down from generation to generation, much like a "tradition" is? If not, then on what basis do you refuse to acknowledge this historical practice as a "tradition?"

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Legally?

[oslo.livejournal.com]

Sometimes legally, sometimes not, sometimes illegally but with the tacit support of non-enforcement. Why does legality matter?

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Well, that's the context of what you dove in on.

[oslo.livejournal.com]

I don't think we can coherently speak of there being a "legal tradition" without acknowledging the broader social context in which that law has evolved. The question of what the "legal tradition" has been is not, in other words, satisfactorily answered by simply looking at the code books and seeing what has been statutorily the case for some period of years.

There are really all kinds of factors here. For instance: What has been the actual practice of abortion in the United States? How has that practice been viewed, socially, and how did it interact with the official legal system? Were there laws that prohibited it? Were those laws enforced? How and how often were they enforced? How did changing medical practices and infant mortality rates affect these questions?

If we want to know what the "tradition" really has been, we need to understand that panoply of factors. And maybe we look at some of those factors and decide that some of them aren't relevant to the question; but we can't just say, when we speak of what's been the "tradition," that we're just talking about what's been true in purely formalistic, legal terms.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Well, we don't want to execute women for having abortions, which seems an implication of fetal rights.