Libertarian perspectives on abortion


promote individual liberty and seek to minimize the role of the state. The abortion debate is mainly within right-libertarianism between cultural liberals and cultural conservatives as left-libertarians generally see it as a non-issue as they support legal access to abortion as part of their general support for individual rights, especially in regard to what they consider to be a woman's right to control her body. Religious right and intellectual conservatives have attacked such libertarians for supporting abortion rights, especially since the demise of the Soviet Union. Libertarian conservatives claim libertarian principles such as the non-aggression principle apply to human beings from conception and that the universal right to life applies to fetuses in the womb. Thus, some of those individuals express opposition to legal abortion.

Support for legal abortion

Russian-American novelist Ayn Rand argued that the notion of a fetus's having a right to life is "vicious nonsense" and stated: "An embryo has no rights. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born". She also wrote: "Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered".
Anarcho-capitalist philosopher and Austrian school economist Murray Rothbard wrote that "no being has a right to live, unbidden, as a parasite within or upon some person's body" and that therefore the woman is entitled to eject the fetus from her body at any time. However, explaining the right of the woman to "eject the fetus from her body", Rothbard also wrote that "every baby as soon as it is born and is therefore no longer contained within his mother's body possesses the right of self-ownership by virtue of being a separate entity and a potential adult. It must therefore be illegal and a violation of the child's rights for a parent to aggress against his person by mutilating, torturing, murdering him, etc." Rothbard also opposed all federal interference with the right of local governments to fashion their own laws, so he opposed the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision. He believed that states should be able to author their own abortion policies. He also opposed taxpayer funding for abortion clinics, writing "it is peculiarly monstrous to force those who abhor abortion as murder to pay for such murders".
19th-century individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker initially concluded that no one should interfere to prevent neglect of the child, although they could still repress a positive invasion. However, Tucker, having reconsidered his opinion, resolved that parental cruelty is of non-invasive character and therefore is not to be prohibited. Tucker's opinion is grounded on the fact that he viewed the child as the property of the mother while in the womb and until the time of their emancipation unless the mother had disposed of the fruit of her womb by contract. In the meantime, Tucker recognized the right of the mother to dispose of her property as she sees it fit. According to Tucker's logic, "the outsider who uses force upon the child invades, not the child, but its mother, and may be rightfully punished for doing so".
Walter Block, Rothbardian writer and professor of economics at Loyola University New Orleans, provides an alternative to the standard choice between "pro-life" and "pro-choice" which he terms "evictionism". According to this moral theory, the act of abortion must be conceptually separated into the acts of eviction of the fetus from the womb; and killing the fetus. Building on the libertarian stand against trespass and murder, Block supports a right to the first act, but except in certain circumstances not the second act. He believes the woman may legally abort if the fetus is not viable outside the womb, and the woman has publicly announced her abandonment of the right to custody of the fetus.
In "The Right to Abortion: A Libertarian Defense", the Association of Libertarian Feminists created what they call a "systematic philosophical defense of the moral case for abortion from a libertarian perspective". It concludes: "To sacrifice existing persons for the sake of future generations, whether in slave labor camps for the utopian nightmares of Marxists or fascists, or in unwanted pregnancies, compulsory childbearing, and furtive coat hanger abortions for the edification of fetus-worshippers, is to establish hell on earth".
Capitalism Magazine supports the pro-choice position, writing:
Harry Browne, the Libertarian Party candidate for president in 1996 and 2000, rejected the terms "pro-life" and "pro-choice" and stated about abortion: "Whatever we believe abortion is, we know one thing: Government doesn't work, and it is as incapable of eliminating abortions as it is of eliminating poverty or drugs".
The Libertarian Party's 2004 presidential candidate Michael Badnarik had a similar position, writing: "I oppose government control over the abortion issue. I believe that giving the government control of this issue could lead to more abortions rather than fewer, because the left-right pendulum of power swings back and forth. This shift could place the power to set policy in the hands of those who demand strict population control. The government that can ban abortion can just as easily mandate abortion, as is currently the case in China". The party's 2012 presidential candidate Gary Johnson wanted to keep abortion legal.

U.S. Libertarian Party national platform

The official position of the United States Libertarian Party is unconditionally pro-choice, admitting no legal restriction on abortion for any reason, by any method, or at any stage of gestation. Its 2012 political platform states, "Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration."

Other organizations

Other pro-choice libertarian organizations include the Association of Libertarian Feminists and Pro-Choice Libertarians.

Opposition to legal abortion

The pro-life libertarian group Libertarians for Life argues that humans in the zygotic, embryonic and fetal stages of development have the same rights as humans in the neonatal stage and beyond. Doris Gordon of the group notes that the principles of both the Libertarian Party and Objectivist ethics require some obligation to children and counter with an appeal to the non-aggression principle:

Departurism

is a theory developed by Sean Parr which, like evictionism, holds that the mother may evict but not directly kill the trespassing fetus, but, contrary to evictionism, neither may she kill him by eviction. The mother, if her actions are to conform to gentleness, must allow for the continued departure of the trespasser until such time that eviction no longer entails his death. That is, it is only the fatal eviction of a fetus during a normal pregnancy that departurism argues is discordant with gentleness and, thus, a NAP-violation.

Anti-abortion political officials

Pro-life Republican and former Libertarian congressman Ron Paul says in "Abortion and Liberty":
His main position calls for overturning Roe v. Wade and letting the states decide the issue. Ron Paul's son, Republican Senator Rand Paul, calls himself "totally pro-life" and supports "any and all legislation that would end abortion or lead us in the direction of ending abortion". In 2008, the Libertarian Party candidate for president was Bob Barr who has called abortion "murder" and opposed legalized abortion.