The Abortion Question by Hogeye Bill

May 3, 2022

There are several levels to the abortion issue: the moral level, the legal level, and the constitutional level. Here is my opinion of all three, from the most important to the least.

1. Morality: A woman has the general moral right to have an abortion (meaning: evict a fetus) at any time during pregnancy. This follows directly from her self-ownership - her right to decide what to do with her own body. Those who deny this human self-ownership make one or both of the following false claims. They either claim that killing a human is always wrong, or that having sex is a valid enforceable slavery contract.
   

   The first argument is clearly wrong, since there are recognized circumstances when killing is permissible, such as self-defense, defense of innocent others from aggression, and to escape slavery. Another more controversial example is killing an attacker using an innocent shield as hostage, when the shield also is killed in the process. The woman who opts for an abortion is effectively freeing herself from nine months (or more if you include child-rearing) of involuntary servitude.

   The second argument is ludicrously silly. Only a virgin or a madman would claim that fucking is a valid slavery contract. Generally, the arguer makes the transparently absurd claim that a person agreeing to the risk of X (e.g. getting pregnant, infection by a tapeworm, getting raped) implies that one agrees to the result and should do nothing to remedy that result. Thus, if you go camping and pick up a tapeworm, or fall and break your leg, then (according to this lame argument) one must keep the tapeworm and not get your broken bone set. It implies that a woman who goes out at night, risking rape, agrees to get raped! It is amazing to me that so many people fall for this absurdity.

2. Legality: In a free society, that is, one without monopoly statist law, the abortion issue would not exist, just as with all-private education the winner-take-all issues of teaching sex education or Critical Race Theory would not exist. When people can choose the educational products, then the whole notion of forcing others into conformity does not arise. For abortion, those people who believe that abortion is a right would subscribe to legal systems (PDAs, private defense associations) which protect that right. People against abortion would subscribe to PDAs which prohibit abortion. Everyone gets what they want for themselves, and no one is forced. Strident anti-abortionists could refuse to date people who subscribe to pro-choice PDAs, and people who strongly support the right to abort can, if they choose, boycott people who use anti-choice PDAs. Freedom of association prevails; winner-take-all imposition of some people’s values over others would be gone. Unfortunately, most people live in a statist conformity society where winner-take-all rulership prevails, which leads us to the third consideration.
3. Constitutionality: The US Constitution does not enumerate a right to abort, thus by its 10th Amendment that decision is left up to the people or the states.

   Amendment X: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

   Thus, Roe v Wade was a flawed, unconstitutional decision, and constitutionally deserves to be overturned. It was a terrible decision which has caused divisiveness, tribalism, and an increase in central government authoritarianism. After Roe is repealed, women will still be able to get abortions, since such intrusive government violations of individual rights have historically been overcome by free people who ignore such decreed unchosen laws. Morality trumps rulers’ decrees. Anti-abortion laws will have all the lack of success of anti-marijuana laws and anti-gun laws. People will ignore and evade the abortion laws quite easily, if only because of the cheap and safe abortion drugs available. If you think that Texas law can stop abortions, then you probably think that no one smokes pot in Texas. Stupid, unjust laws beg to be ignored. I predict that, within 20 years of Roe’s repeal, most states will have legal abortion. It will be similar to pot, where today the majority of states have legal pot, and in the rest “everyone” smokes it anyway.

Pro-choice people should resist using authoritarianism (the government) to enforce their views on dissenters. Instead, they should do what they can to make abortion drugs available to anyone who wants them. A wise man said, “An unjust law is no law at all.” There are enough freedom-loving Americans that is is virtually guaranteed that local or state anti-abortion laws will be generally ignored. I trust Americans to say “fuck you” to tyranny, and trust that government will remain incompetent to enforce unjust laws effectively.

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