Michael Mitchell: Archive

The abortion issue isn't about when life begins, it's about when rights begin, making it the most important issue in life in society, the difference in principle between a free state and totalitarianism. Rights are what determines whether or not the government should get involved in our lives, whether or not we need government at all.

Abortion is a moral issue for the pregnant woman (and her abortion provider, of course), but it's a political issue for everyone else, i.e., none of our fucking business whether it's right or wrong for her. When do we as a society have the right to stop someone from doing what they think is best for their life? When someone physically interferes with someone else's right to do what they think is best for their life.

That's the only moral view of what constitutes a crime, when someone's rights are violated. It's not whatever the government decrees it to be or what some interest group thinks is best for the good of the culture. The government is not a tool for "social change" or for imposing anyone's ethical standards (personal value-judgments) on the rest of us. It is force, the power to protect our (individual) rights and nothing else, a power we consent to because we know we can't effectively defend our rights without it.

A fetus is biologically-dependent on its host. How can it have rights it can't even exercise? The right to life isn't merely the right to be alive. It's the right to live your life however you think is best, to act in your own interests without physical interference from others. The right to abortion is an extension of the right to life, as are all other rights, and you can't have them if something living inside you has rights that violate them.

You can't advocate forcing a woman to be pregnant, to force her to biologically support another life living inside of her, while claiming to be a proponent of life at the same time. The right to life can only begin at birth.