On Abortion and Roe v. Wade

Written on January 24th, 2011

Edited in April 2014

   The following is a message to pro-choice people who support abortion on request, but do not tolerate libertarians' pro-life and states'-rights attitudes:

   In an appearance on The View in late 2007, Ron Paul said that he believes, and the law agrees, that viable fetuses have rights, and that as an obstetrician / gynecologist, he can be held responsible for doing harm to a fetus, and so can a motorist who negligently injures a pregnant woman. So the law has established that fetuses that are wanted by their mothers have legal rights just like the rest of us.

   The federal ban on partial-birth abortion has been upheld by court decisions which have cited Roe v. Wade as a precedent. How do you feel about partial-birth abortion? Do you believe a woman should be able to have an abortion whenever she wants, i.e., that partial-birth abortions should be made legal? I hope you don’t - not because I’m a pro-lifer, which I’m not - but because then you’d have to admit that in order to legalize partial-birth abortion, we’d basically have to overturn Roe v. Wade, the precedent which you support.

   If you want to legalize partial-birth abortion without overturning Roe v. Wade, you’d have to rely on the legislature of your home state to find either Roe or the ban unconstitutional, which would require you to embrace states’ rights, which you are also against. So you find yourselves at a loss for tactics.