Tag Archives: Abortion

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Abortion: The “Rape and Incest Exception” is Demagoguery

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English: Photograph of abdomen of a pregnant woman
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Whenever abortion comes up in a political context, pro-choice advocates highlight pro-life candidates’ refusal to support a “rape and incest exception” to any proposed ban on, or regulation of, abortion. The 2016 presidential campaign is no exception. This week CNN anchor Dana Bash handed the hot potato to former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. Huckabee’s response:

“A 10-year-old girl being raped is horrible. But does it solve a problem by taking the life of an innocent child? And that’s really the issue.”

Pro-choice publications predictably erupted, painting Huckabee as cold-hearted for his position. But that position flows inexorably from the logic of his larger pro-life stance, and is in fact a libertarian argument.

Notice that I said A libertarian argument, not THE libertarian argument.

Libertarians differ among ourselves on abortion (no, I’m not going to tell you where I come down on it). Some of us are pro-choice. Some of us are pro-life. But all of us view the issue through the lens of the same principle: That it is impermissible to initiate force and that we may only use force defensively or to recover damages from someone who “threw the first punch.”

Pro-choice libertarians believe that a fertilized embryo or in utero fetus is not a person with rights, that the mother is fully entitled to control of her own body, and that forbidding her an abortion would be an initiation of force against her.

Pro-life libertarians believe that at some point prior to birth (for some, that goes all the way back to conception), a fertilized embryo IS a person with rights — a person who has initiated force against no one and who therefore may not be permissibly killed.

There are other, more nuanced, libertarian arguments about abortion, but those are the bare basics.

Coming from the pro-life libertarian position, both the 10-year-old pregnant girl and her unborn child in this story are victims of an aggressor (the rapist whose actions resulted in the pregnancy). Abortion violates the rights of the unborn child, who is not an aggressor, and is therefore morally impermissible (unless, of course, it becomes a matter of self-defense, i.e. carrying the baby to term would kill or gravely harm the mother).

The problem with the “rape and incest exception” position is that it doesn’t address the questions raised above.

If abortion is a right, it’s a right whether rape or incest are involved or not.

If abortion is not a right, rape and incest don’t make it into a right.

To put it more bluntly, the “rape and incest exception” attack is demagoguery — a crass play on emotion rather than an appeal to fact. As a pro-choice argument, it’s an epic fail.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Planned Parenthood: If You Have to Ask Why, The Answer is Usually “Money”

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Planned Parenthood volunteers help bring the f...
Planned Parenthood volunteers help bring the fight for health insurance reform to the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Planned Parenthood pops up regularly on the political radar as “pro-choice” and “pro-life” activists wage their decades-long battle over abortion. The latest controversy is over a series of videos released by a “pro-life” organization, purporting to show that Planned Parenthood is in the business of selling what pro-choicers call “fetal tissue” and pro-lifers call “baby parts” to medical research companies. And as usually happens when such controversies arise, there’s a move on in Congress to “de-fund” Planned Parenthood.

I’m not interested in re-litigating the issue of abortion per se here (that argument will never end), but I do think it’s important for all of us — “pro-choice” and “pro-life” alike — to understand what Planned Parenthood is and how it operates.

Ideological considerations aside, abortion in America is an industry, and Planned Parenthood is a business. It calls itself a “non-profit,” but in legal parlance all that means is that it isn’t owned by individuals or stockholders who rake off its profits.

Planned Parenthood boasts more than 800 local franchises and knocks down a billion dollars a year. Its CEO’s salary and benefits top half a million dollars annually; other executives and franchise managers also earn low- to mid-six-figure salaries. It IS a business, full stop.

More to the point, Planned Parenthood is a “politically connected” enterprise which games government to subsidize it and protect its  business turf.

Of Planned Parenthood’s billion dollars in annual revenue, about half comes from the federal government as direct corporate welfare. Its supporters don’t call it corporate welfare, of course. They claim its services are good and necessary and that the payout is justified. Shoes and books are good and necessary too, but if Nike or Amazon asked for a $500 million check from Uncle Sugar, we all know what we’d call it.

Planned Parenthood claims to work on behalf of women’s reproductive health, but uses its political clout to lobby strongly against, among other things, congressional efforts to make many forms of birth control available “over the counter.”

Why would Planned Parenthood do that? Answer: Plain old economic protectionism. If a woman can just drop by the pharmacy at Wal-Mart for her contraception, she doesn’t have to go through Planned Parenthood’s clinics and see Planned Parenthood’s doctors for a prescription. That would help the woman, but it would hurt the case for continuing the corporate welfare checks. This tells us something about Planned Parenthood’s priorities.

When it comes to fetal tissue “donations” that are actually sales — Planned Parenthood charges a “processing fee” — it’s reasonable to assume that the organization’s involvement is self-interested. That’s not to say that fetal tissue research is good or bad, but rather simply to point out that Planned Parenthood doesn’t care deeply enough about it to take a business loss on the proposition.

When it comes to continuing the half a billion dollars in annual taxpayer funding, the answer should be “your corporate welfare is going away — sink or swim in the marketplace on your merits.”

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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