Abortion Rights and Majority Rule

A Washington Post op-ed, Women are not ‘community property,’ a Georgia judge rules, echoes a fundamental American principle: individual rights to life, liberty, and property are inalienable and precede government. Ruth Marcus, quoting extensively from Judge Robert McBurney’s decision overturning a Georgia abortion law that prohibits abortion once there is a “detectable human heartbeat,” writes:

“Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote,” McBurney wrote. “Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted, not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights to liberty and privacy, even taking into consideration whatever bundle of rights the not-yet-viable fetus may have.” 

Bravo! This is exactly the point. It’s why the blather about leaving this decision up to individual states gets things wrong. The choice is for the woman to make, not the government, at any level. [My emphasis]

Marcus is a solid Leftist on most issues. As such, she is not a consistent defender of inalienable  individual rights (to put it mildly). 

I posted this comment:

“Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote.”

Absolutely! Protecting our liberties from democracy is fundamental to Americanism. And it goes for all of our fundamental individual rights, including rights to free speech, property, and free trade. But the Democratic Party was founded on the primacy of majority vote, and has held that reactionary position since 1828, when it held that the enslavement of a racial minority should be determined not by reference to the principle of inalienable individual rights promised in Declaration of Independence, but to popular vote in each state.

To this day the Democratic Party still adheres to its horrifying anti-American roots. To wit:

President Joe Biden: “The fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland: "The right of all eligible citizens to vote is the central pillar of our democracy, the right from which all other rights ultimately flow.” 

Vice President Kamala Harris: “And the freedom that unlocks all the others: the freedom to vote.”

Well, by its own long-held totalitarian democratic principles, the Left should be cheering the end of Roe. Leaving a woman’s fundamental right to her own body to the whims of state voters is exactly what “The fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow” looks like.

And, what about a woman’s, or anybody’s, other property? I couldn’t address this point explicitly due to word limitations. But, as John Locke understood, “every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his.” The Founders concurred. The fundamental right to property begins, but does not end, with the functions of one's body. Property rights extend open-endedly to encompass the results of the work of one's mind and body. A woman's body is not subject to majority vote. Neither is the money I earn or the house I buy with that money, or a businessman's pricing policies. All of these rights are linked. You violate one, and you violate all.

In other words, rights to material and intellectual property extend from right to person. Of course, the Left routinely violates property rights in the economic realm, and increasingly threatens rights in the intellectual realm. Where is their outrage when Kamala Harris proposes price controls and wealth taxes, or the Biden Administration creates a “Disinformation Governance Board?”

Memo to the Democrats: Be careful what you wish for. You’ve long preached the supremacy of democracy over inalienable individual rights. The overturning of Roe v. Wade, which returned the right to reproductive freedom to state voters, is exactly what your democracy worship means. You can’t cancel the foundational principles of the Declaration of Independence in your quest for your statist Progressive policies, and then call on them when it’s convenient. Either you adhere to them or you pay the price.

I have long ago decided that I would never vote for a Democrat, at least on the national and state levels. The Democratic Party’s historical support for slavery, democracy fundamentalism (in direct opposition to our constitutionally limited republic), white supremacy, the KKK and lynching, Jim Crow, and socialism. That, to this day, it has not changed its ideological and philosophical stripes compels me to write off the party as the central focus of anti-Americanism. I don’t expect that to change in my lifetime.

Related Reading:

In SCOTUS’ Draft Opinion Overturning Roe Abortion Ruling: Double Standards of Left and Right Exposed

On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

The Dangerous Totalitarian Premise Underpinning the Justice Department’s Suit Against Georgia’s New Election Law

The Truth about Harris’s Proposed Tax on Unrealized Capital Gains

On the Candidates’ Disastrous Price Policies—and Harris’s Moral Obscenity

Senator Mike Lee is Right: America ‘is not a Democracy’

America; Democracy or Republic or Both--Why it Matters

Right to Abortion, Not Others' Wallets

You Can’t be Pro-Rights and Anti-Rights Simultaneously

Alyssa Rosenberg has an interesting opinion piece in the Washington Post—interesting, but not in the way she means it. 

I’m pro-choice, but I’m grateful for what pro-life groups did this week, Rosenberg opines. Why?

In today’s fractious political world, it’s important to extend credit where it’s due. And so, as a pro-choice liberal, I want to thank a group of pro-life organizations that spoke up this week in support of a congressional deal to improve the child tax credit. Antiabortion Americans United for Life hailed the bill, which will primarily help lower-income families and families with a larger number of children, as “a core part of an American pro-life and pro-family future.” Pro-choice Center for American Progress President Patrick Gaspard described the legislation as “an unmissable opportunity to reduce poverty among low-income children and families.”

Why is Rosenberg grateful?

The often-justified liberal criticism of pro-life conservatives has long been that they elevate the lives of unborn babies over the lives of mothers, and that they’re eager to prioritize children in the womb but not in the world. [true] After birth, it becomes more important to refuse “attempts to expand the welfare state” [true] than to feed poor children when school is out during the summer [which means, to feed poor children at taxpayer expense]; more vital to enforce a traditional heterosexual nuclear family where women stay home than to make sure children have access to safe, quality day care [“access” here means access to other people’s wallets to pay for the day care]; more essential to reject federal help than to make sure children have health insurance [again, meaning at taxpayer expense].

The contradictions in the stances of liberals and conservatives becomes obvious here, though the contradictions are flipped. Both the welfare state and abortion bans are rights-violating. The welfare state, which is based on forced redistribution of wealth, violates the individual right to decide how, when, and if to use one’s own money for charitable purposes. Abortion bans violate the individual right of women to control one's own body and doctor’s right to perform abortions if the doctor so chooses.

Now, as far as welfare statism goes, the tax credit is one of the least bad options, because it allows the parent or guardian to keep more of what they earn. True, sometimes the tax “credit” is not a credit at all, but becomes “refund”—i.e. a handout—at taxpayer expense if the parent’s tax liability is less than the allowable credit. But at least the tax credit idea requires the parent to file a tax return, which means to be working.

But the broader point here is a moral one: To be a principled individual rights advocate (individual rights properly understood), one must be against the welfare state and in favor of legalization of abortion. 

Note what is going on here. Both conservatives and liberal are supportive of rights violations in their own spheres of interest. But it is the conservatives who are caving, and moving toward the liberals’ pro-welfare state principles. The liberals, the most consistent violator of individual rights, is winning, thus validating the truth of Ayn Rand’s observation that “In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins [italics in original].” 

Related Reading:

Biden’s Concept of Freedom is the Path to Slavery

A Right to Pursue versus a ‘Right’ to Provision: The Declaration and its Reactionaries

My Challenge To the GOP: A Philosophical Contract With America

The U.S. Constitution is About Individual, Not ‘Human’, Rights

Collectivized Rights—Ayn Rand

Moral Rights and Political Freedom—Tara Smith

Ayn Rand’s Theory of Rights: The Moral Foundation of a Free Society—Craig Biddle for The Objective Standard

On the Respect for Marriage Act

Congress has passed the  Respect for Marriage Act, and it will become law upon President Biden’s expected signature. In Bill protecting same-sex, interracial unions clears Congress

Mary Clare Jalonick reported for The Associated Press,

The legislation would not require states to allow same-sex couples to marry, as Obergefell now does. But it would require states to recognize all marriages that were legal where they were performed and protect current same-sex unions if the Supreme Court decision were overturned.

This is a preemptive act, in case the same-sex marriage right recognized in Obergefell v. Hodges is overturned. As I wrote on Facebook, This is a very good bill, in my view consistent with Federalism and the 14th Amendment. 

The 14th Amendment states that 

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. [my emphasis]

Note that U.S. citizenry supersedes state citizenry, in terms of “privileges or immunities,” i.e. individual rights. This Amendment, one of the so-called “Civil War Amendments,” was a monumental advance for individual rights. The U.S. Constitution now made explicit what was implicit from the Founding—that no longer can any state violate the Federally guaranteed rights of any American, by, say, enslaving them, denying them the right to vote, or violating any other inalienable individual right. 

Of course, the Respect for Marriage Act is wholly unnecessary as long as Obergefell v. Hodges, the pro-14th Amendment SCOTUS ruling that nullified state laws banning same-sex marriage, is not overturned. But it is not at all certain that the SCOTUS will not overturn Obergefell given the horrendous anti-Constitutional reasoning behind the shockingly reactionary Dobbs ruling, which ignored the Ninth Amendment and 14th Amendments and violated the Constitution’s philosophic conscience, the Declaration of Independence, to overturn Roe v. Wade.

* [Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law on December 13, 2022, USA Today reported.]

Related Reading:

Gay Marriage and Individual Rights

ObamaCare and Gay Marriage Rulings: One Loss and One Win for the Right

In SCOTUS’ Draft Opinion Overturning Roe Abortion Ruling: Double Standards of Left and Right Exposed

Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty by Randy E. Barnett  

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty by Timothy Sandefur

Bonnie Watson Coleman and Analilia Mejia: Another Failed Defense of Abortion Rights

Can collectivists defend abortion rights? An emphatic no. Why? Because rights are individual, and can only be defended on individualist grounds.

Which brings me to A fight for abortion rights is a fight for democracy, published as a guest column in the New Jersey Star-Ledger by U.S. Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman and democracy activist Analilia Mejia. 

Right off the bat, the title tells us that Coleman and Mejia are on the wrong premise about rights. Properly understood, rights are immune to democracy. They cannot be granted or rescinded by any vote, election, or elected representative. Rights are inalienable, or they are not rights. Looking further into the op-ed, we’ll see that the title is no aberration. From here on, all italics are mine:

What does freedom truly mean if we do not have ownership over our bodies? What democracy can we speak of?

The first sentence is spot-on, if you interpret “we” and “our '' as a collection of individuals. Individual freedom most certainly begins with ownership of one’s body. But the second sentence repudiates that critical premise, destroying the essence of what American freedom truly means.

As we look ahead to the midterm elections, our right to reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy hangs in the balance – a human right is now in the hands of individual states and lawmakers’ whims.

“Human right” is a collectivist term. Rights cannot belong to any group. The term human right infers that rights belong to the species human. But genuine rights protect the individual against the collective, be it the race, proletariat, society, or the species. Hence, individual rights. Abortion is an individual right, not a human right--and the distinction matters. But that’s not how Coleman and Mejia see it.

It’s clear that to protect and expand abortion access is to take a stand for the health and prosperity of our communities and generations to come. We are two women who think about the power of democracy often. In a functional democracy, the will of the people defines our leadership, and our laws, and reflects our collective values as a nation.

It’s clear that these two woman believe that abortion rights should be at the mercy of our communities, future generations, the power of democracy, the will of the people, and our collective values. What’s missing from this litany of collectives? The sanctity and autonomy of the individual, both mind and body.

The absurdity of defending an inalienable individual right on collectivist grounds becomes clear in the next excerpt:

When the vast majority of Americans want to safeguard our right to abortion, yet our elected leadership and the highest court in the land sides with an extreme right-wing minority and puts our health at risk, American democracy is in peril. And we must resist and fight back against this harmful agenda. 

What defines “the will of the people” if not election outcomes? Yet somehow, “our elected leadership and the highest court in the land” does not represent the will of the people if it is “an extreme right-wing,” even though these right-wing elected officials are elected and Supreme Court justices are nominated and confirmed by elected representatives. The absurdity comes down to, to fight for abortion rights, we must fight for democracy by fighting against democracy!

An attack on abortion is an attack on our humanity and democracy itself.

The right of a woman to terminate a pregnancy, like all rights, is certainly part of our humanity, individually speaking. But that requires a fight against the power of democracy. The deep irony is apparently lost on these two women that Roe protected abortion rights precisely because it took abortion rights out of the realm of “the will of the people”—democracy. The Dodd decision, in overturning Roe, gave it back to democracy. If Coleman and Mejia truly cared about abortion rights, they would be fighting against the power of democracy to violate individual rights.

Make sure that you are registered to vote in the midterm elections and research your candidates to be certain they will fight for your bodily autonomy and your abortion rights. Make your voice heard to expand the Court so the most powerful lawmakers in the land reflect and protect the will of the people.

In a free society based on individual rights, rights do not depend on the most powerful lawmakers in the land nor on the will of the people. No matter how many justices you add to the Supreme Court, you will never truly protect individual rights, including abortion rights, unless the principle of the inalienability individual rights is the standard for all high court decisions. Yet not once does the word individual appear in this op-ed. You cannot fight for abortion rights and for democracy. It’s one or the other.

The American Left’s worldview is fundamentally rooted in collectivism. It cannot let go of its tribal orientation even in the face of the Conservatives’ democracy-oriented attack on abortion rights. Socialists at heart, the Left is hopelessly incapable of defending abortion rights. To do so would require abandoning collectivism, and by extension socialism that rests on the collectivist foundation.Don’t hold your breath waiting for that day. 

Related Reading:

Right to Abortion vs. the "Right" to Abortion Services

In SCOTUS’ Draft Opinion Overturning Roe Abortion Ruling: Double Standards of Left and Right Exposed

Rights vs. Privileges

Jasmine Winters Double Standard on Abortion ‘Access’ Undercuts Abortion Rights

Defending Reproductive Rights Depends Upon Upholding All Rights

America; Democracy or Republic or Both--Why it Matters

Jasmine Winters Double Standard on Abortion ‘Access’ Undercuts Abortion Rights

In I work at an abortion clinic and know that access to abortion is difficult, even in New Jersey, New Jersey Star-Ledger Guest Columnist Jasmine Winters writes on the difficulty some women have accessing abortion in NJ despite state laws guaranteeing that right. Some women don’t live close to abortion providers, so must travel to get to one, sometimes as far as 100 miles. This is a financial hardship for some, and one can sympathize with their difficulties.

Winters also focuses on anti-abortion activists’ intimidation tactics. Patients at clinics often are

forced to deal with anti-abortion protestors who harass them and try to block their entrance to the clinic. It’s a common misconception that these protestors are silent and unobtrusive, or speak to patients with compassion and in good faith. The reality is that anti-abortion extremists are acting as vigilantes to try to take away patients’ rights to access care in a safe environment.

Again, one can sympathize with the staff and patients of these clinics who must deal with these bullies. Such tactics are not free speech or legitimate protests. They are harassment and thuggery. 

Then came this bait-and-switch that undercuts Winters whole article:

And people who don’t have insurance should be able to rely on state funding — we have enough for everyone in our community. We should also protect our state’s providers as well as patients who come from out of state from being sued, extradited, subpoenaed, or criminalized in any way by states with cruel abortion bans.

[my emphasis]

Once Winters pivoted from the right to access abortion to the “right” to access other peoples’ wallets in order to pay for that access, she exposes herself as no better than the “extremists” she condemns for wanting to physically intimidate and block women from entering abortion clinics. She calls for forcing taxpayers to pay for abortions, which is also an act of a bully, which is made worse under cover of law, which is legalized aggressive force.

“My body, my choice” necessarily includes “my money, my choice.” Life is an integration of body and mind, the spiritual and the material. A person must work to earn the money needed to access the goods and services one’s life requires. It follows that a person must be free to make the necessary choices regarding the buying of these values. When Winters says women “should be able to rely on state funding,” she is saying the taxpayers who fund the state (or rate-payers who fund health insurance) should be denied their own choice on how they spend their own money.

One can sympathize with people who have trouble affording abortion or any other good or service. But that doesn’t justify what amounts to legalized theft.  Money belongs first and foremost to the individuals who earned it—not to the “community”; not to the state; not to abortion clinic workers; not to the pro-abortion rights faction; and not to Jasmine Winters. But to the individuals who earn it in the first place. And only those individuals have the right to decide how they spend their money, including whether to pay for another person’s abortion (or any other material value)*. When Winters asserts “we have enough for everyone in our community,” she is arrogantly claiming to speak for everyone. But she has only the moral right to speak for herself and her own money, not everyone else and their money. 

As a strong supporter of reproductive freedom, including abortion rights, it disturbs me tremendously when people like Winters equate the right to abortion with the right to force other people to pay for their abortion. Such package dealing undercuts and destroys the argument for abortion rights. You cannot defend one right by violating another right. There is no “right” to violate the rights of others. Your body and your money are both equally your property, and only the individual has a right to decide what to do with her body and her money.

* [As this sentence implies, I am against the entire redistributive welfare state. So I am fully consistent.]

Related Reading:

The Self-Defeating Disingenuousness of Abortion ‘Rights’ Supporters

NJ Governor Murphy’s Immoral Scheme to Violate Rights Under the Guise of Abortion Rights

Right to Abortion vs. the "Right" to Abortion Services

Defending Reproductive Rights Depends Upon Upholding All Rights

Gorsuch, Legal Abortion, and ‘Access’

‘My Body, My Choice’: Daysi Calavia-Robertson Pathetically Weak Defense of Abortion Rights

In a New Jersey Star-Ledger op-ed, Daysi Calavia-Robertson (NJ Advance Media for NJ.com) asserts that people opposed to vaccine mandates—which she calls “anti-vaxxers”—have wrongly accused abortion rights advocates of hypocracy for simultaneously supporting vaccine mandates.

In Hey Anti-vaxxers, ready to march for abortion rights?, Robertson makes several meaningful errors in her argument. For starters, she writes:

One of my friends, an anti-vaxxer, snarkily asked why those losing their constitutional right to an abortion had been “so silent” when she and so many others were forced to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

“Where was this, ‘My body, My choice’ energy for the vaccine?” she asked. She said she would’ve lost her job had she “refused” to “get vaxxed.”

Robertson doesn’t think so. But her friend asks a valid question. But it comes with an apples-v.-oranges package-deal that needs to be cleared. There is a distinct difference between a government issuing a broad mandate across the population and a private entity like a business requiring vaccines for its employees. 

This is a critical distinction with individual rights implications. Properly understood, a vaccine mandate issued by the state violates individual rights. An employer “mandate”—which is really a condition of employment to work at that company—violates no one’s rights. When the government mandates vaccines, it means get a vaccine, period. A business can not mandate a vaccine for anyone. It can simply say if you’re not vaxxed, you can’t work here.

And there is an unjust assumption here also; Robertson’s equating of mandate opponents generally to vaccine opponents specifically. You can be pro vaccine and anti vaccine mandate. By equating anti-mandate with anti-vaxxers, Robertson is guilty of package-dealing. 

So right off the bat, Robertson mis-frames the issue. Beyond that, she writes:

I thought, she can’t be serious. But she was. And I thought, does she really think this is the same thing?

In fact, they’re not. A government outlawing abortion is not the same as an employer requiring vaccines. Unfortunately, Robertson doesn’t make that connection, which would have been a powerful point in her favor. Instead, she chooses trivia.

Anti-vaxxers, you see, have co-opted the “My Body, My Choice” slogan. They’ve made the slogan, that for nearly five decades has been synonymous with the abortion and reproductive rights movement, somehow now apply to their oh-so-unworthy plight to not get vaccinated for an infectious disease during a pandemic.

This is arrogant—and silly. The issue of a person being legally required to get a vaccine most certainly is a “My Body, My Choice” issue. She vehemently disagrees on superficial grounds:

What anti-vaxxers fail to understand is the two issues of body autonomy are not the same. The choice they want to preserve is a pinch on the arm that carries a minimal risk and is low cost for most people.

This is what happens when you abandon principles. 

Certainly, the degree of life disruption matters. And that should certainly be acknowledged. But on principle, there’s no difference. Both mandates—to get a vaccine and to carry a pregnancy to term—clearly violate the “My Body, My Choice” principle. If Robertson actually thought in principles, she would understand this. And it would add power to her position.

Moreover, the very idea that that slogan was “co-opted” by the “anti-vaxxers” ignores the fact that the principle behind it, if not the exact slogan, long predates the current pro-choice movement. “My Body, My Choice” is not the sole property of pro-choicers. The principle dates back at least to The Enlightenment, when John Locke, the leading influence on the Founding Fathers, proposed his theory of property rights, which begins with the idea that “. . . every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself.”

This “Property in his own Person” was interpreted broadly, both by Locke and the Founding era generation. It included property in one’s conscience, labor, happiness, etc. It was also consistent with the legal issue of abortion in the Founding era, which was generally allowed by law until later in a pregnancy, specifically understood to be when “quickening”—movement is felt in the womb by the woman—occurs. This means abortion was generally legal until well into the 2nd trimester. 

Daysi Calavia-Robertson’s defense of abortion rights, if you can even call it a defense, is very poorly argued on many important fronts. As a supporter of abortion rights, rooted in the broader principles of inalienable individual rights, this is very frustrating to me. Pro-choicers like Robertson will never win the day with shallow, obviously flawed arguments like those presented here. You can’t win on abortion rights by sidestepping the fundamental moral, political, and Constitutional principles involved that lead to inalienable individual rights more broadly.

Related Reading:

Vaccine Mandates: What they Are, What They and Are Not, and Why Vaccines Should Not Be Mandated

Alito's Abortion Ruling Overturning Roe Is an Insult to the 9th Amendment

In SCOTUS’ Draft Opinion Overturning Roe Abortion Ruling: Double Standards of Left and Right Exposed

Abortion and Individual Rights - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Defending Reproductive Rights Depends Upon Upholding All Rights

Right to Abortion vs. the "Right" to Abortion Services

Right to Abortion, Not Others' Wallets