This is a follow-up on my post of 5/15/22, in which I called out the self-defeating hypocrisy of abortion rights advocates who conflate the right to abortion with the right to access abortion. To further drive home the point, I want to draw attention to a New Jersey Star-Ledger article by NJ.com reporters Susan K. Livio and Brent Johnson titled Murphy announces new push to expand abortion access as N.J. gears up as a sanctuary state.
Intending to “send a message to women across the nation that we simply will not go backwards,” Gov. Phil Murphy on Wednesday announced proposals that would make abortion care cheaper in New Jersey and train more clinicians to treat people traveling from states where the procedure is expected to be illegal.
Cheaper? For whom?
In January, the Democratic governor signed a bill that enshrined abortion rights into state law.
As I’ve noted before, that characterization is very misleading. That bill is not just about abortion rights. The law actually says something quite different. It “codifies the constitutional right . . . to freedom of reproductive choice, including the right to access contraception, to terminate a pregnancy, and to carry a pregnancy to term.” My emphasis. “Access” here means to get contraception, abortion, and pre-natal care at someone elses’s non-concentual, coerced expense—a clear violation of the rights of individuals who want to exercise the choice not to pay for those services.
Before Murphy signed the law, it was stripped of a provision that would have required state-licensed insurance plans to cover the cost of abortion care.
This is clearly good. But it was not done to protect rights. It was taken out because “Socially conservative Democrats . . . didn’t want to make it ‘too easy’ to terminate a pregnancy.” What this does show is that “access” means some people—in this case, insurance premium rate payers—would be forced to pay for services provided to others.
”Abortion is health care and health care decisions should be left up to the individual,” [Murphy] added. “Your body belongs to you. I do not know how to be more clear.”
Yes, it’s clearly true. Unfortunately, that’s not a principled defense of individual rights.That’s merely the bait. One would think that what health care to pay for would be included in “health care decisions should be left up to the individual.” You’d be wrong.
Murphy proposed legislation that would mandate that insurance plans in New Jersey cover abortion with no out-of-pocket costs.
“A person’s ability to access abortion care should not depend on how much money they make,” the governor said.
Of course it should. Otherwise, whose money should it depend on? If a person can’t afford the care, then accessing that care should depend on the voluntary consent of those who agree to foot the bill. For those who can’t afford it, there is only the right to the procedure if others are willing to provide it free of charge, or pay for it as voluntary charity. A right to abortion is a guarantee of the freedom of action to pursuit an abortion, not the right to pick others’ pockets to cover the expense through government-imposed higher insurance premiums—which is the only way for insurance companies to meet the government’s mandate to provide that coverage.
Murphy was joined by Assemblywoman Mila Jasey, D-Essex, and Assemblyman Raj Mukherji, D-Hudson, the lawmakers who are expected to sponsor the legislation he described.
“Equality demands not just the availability of services but access to services, and it cannot be predicated upon the size of one’s paycheck and the scope of one’s insurance coverage,” Jasey told the packed room of supporters. “It is a moral imperative. We won’t go back.”
A “moral imperative?” No. It is a moral atrocity. The American concept of equality means non-discriminatory protection of our rights—all rights, property as well as reproductive—under law, not the monstrosity of equality of outcome enforced by discriminatory legal coercion—Egalitarianism. The “equality” that Jasey demands necessitates unequal treatment against people who do not want reproductive health coverage and/or do not want to pay for others' treatment through their taxes or insurance premiums. There is no equality in which one party “wins” a free abortion at the expense of another party losing their freedom of choice regarding their money at the hands of state coercion.
As an uncompromising defender of individual rights, properly understood—including abortion rights—I do not stand with Murphy, Jasey, Mukherji, and their ilk. They are imposters. They are phonies. They are frauds. You cannot support one right at the expense of another, since there is no right, and can never be a right, to violate the rights of others. A right is the sanction of freedom of action to pursue one’s values, not a guarantee of successful achievement of any particular value. There is no right to any material good or service that others must be forced to provide.
Leftist abortion rights advocates kill their own case when they turn on the other rights. They lose all moral backing. But their agenda is not really abortion rights. Tactics like equating rights to material access obliterate all rights, including the rights to conscience and property. But such tactics fit seamlessly into a socialist agenda.
This is how Leftists sneak socialism into the American nation—and under cover of actual individual rights, of all things. We who genuinely support individual rights, which means rights held equally by all people at all times, must not fall for the rights violating bait-and-switch gimmick of equating a right to pursue with a “right” to access.
Related Reading:
The Self-Defeating Disingenuousness of Abortion ‘Rights’ Supporters
The End of Roe Heralds the Rise of Pro-Abortion, Big Government Policies by CHRISTIAN BRITSCHGI: Liberal states don't want to treat abortion as a personal, private choice either.
Instead, blue state policy makers want to spend tax dollars subsidizing and promoting it.
Constitutional Distortions: Free Speech vs. Freedom of Speech
Right to Abortion vs. the "Right" to Abortion Services
Abortion and Individual Rights - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Defending Reproductive Rights Depends Upon Upholding All Rights
Karen Cherins’s Confused Understanding of Reproductive Rights Threatens Reproductive Freedom
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