Sep 22 2024 18 mins 17
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 443.
“Abortion: A Radically Decentralist Approach,” 2024 Annual Meeting, Property and Freedom Society, Bodrum, Turkey (Sep. 22, 2024). This will also be podcast soon at the Property and Freedom Podcast as PFP284. See: “Abortion: A Radically Decentralist Approach” (PFS 2024).
Update: see Christos Armoutidis, "Preargumentation Ethics and the Issue of Abortion," J. Libertarian Stud. 28, no.1 (2024); and Oscar Grau, "On Argumentation Ethics, Human Nature, and Law," in A Life in Liberty: Liber Amicorum in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, edited by Jörg Guido Hülsmann & Stephan Kinsella (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2024).
https://youtu.be/v9bDRDD2wWU
Panel discussion:
https://youtu.be/vFCZLT4tMY4
Notes below, followed by Youtube's automatic transcript.
Abortion: A Radically Decentralist Approach
Stephan Kinsella
Property and Freedom Society
2024 Annual Meeting
Bodrum, Turkey
September 19–24, 2024
Alright, let’s have as much fun as we can with a topic like this.
Contentious issues among libertarians:
Anarchy vs. Minarchy
Forms of state: monarchy vs. democracy
Open borders vs. mass immigration
Intellectual Property (we are winning this one)
Israel vs. Gaza
Ukraine vs. Russia
Abortion: Pro-choice and Pro-Life
I’ve changed my own mind a bit on this issue, after becoming a parent: from pro-choice. to more sympathetic to pro-life arguments, and to my current decentralist view
Traditionally libertarians have tended to be pro-choice, including virtually all Objectivists, though there were always some minority pro-life voices (e.g. Doris Gordon of L4L).
In recent years many seem to be more conservative, and more friendly to religion, and many more opposed to abortion than in the past.
The LP removed its pro-choice plank in Reno in 2022 as part of the Mises Caucus takeover, the “Reno Reset,” arguing that the issue is not settled and each candidate should be able to adopt their own position on this issue.
On some issues it seems possible to make progress. Many libertarians come from conservatism, or sometimes leftism, moving at first towards libertarian minarchism and then eventually to libertarian anarchism.
I changed my mind on the IP issue and have managed to persuade a large number of people to adopt the anti-IP position.
Views change on the issue of open borders and immigration and on particular issues like Israel vs. Gaza and Russia v. Ukraine.
But it seems almost impossible for anyone to change someone else’s mind on the abortion issue.
The fact that this issue seems intractable, often rooted in deep lifestyle preferences or religious beliefs, is relevant, I think to how this issue is best solved in a political-legal sense.
See Loren E. Lomasky, Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 91: “The intractability of the dispute … may itself be philosophically significant.”
There are the well-known arguments
Pro-choice
There is the modern, or feminist, argument: it’s my body.
Of course the response is that there is a baby inside which complicates the matter
For this reason even most pro-choice people do not not favor legality until birth
Ayn Rand: “abortion is a moral right-which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved.” (“Of Living Death,” The Objectivist, Oct. 1968, 6)
In Rand’s view, opposition to abortion arises from a failure to grasp both the context of rights and the imposition that child-bea...
“Abortion: A Radically Decentralist Approach,” 2024 Annual Meeting, Property and Freedom Society, Bodrum, Turkey (Sep. 22, 2024). This will also be podcast soon at the Property and Freedom Podcast as PFP284. See: “Abortion: A Radically Decentralist Approach” (PFS 2024).
Update: see Christos Armoutidis, "Preargumentation Ethics and the Issue of Abortion," J. Libertarian Stud. 28, no.1 (2024); and Oscar Grau, "On Argumentation Ethics, Human Nature, and Law," in A Life in Liberty: Liber Amicorum in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, edited by Jörg Guido Hülsmann & Stephan Kinsella (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2024).
https://youtu.be/v9bDRDD2wWU
Panel discussion:
https://youtu.be/vFCZLT4tMY4
Notes below, followed by Youtube's automatic transcript.
Abortion: A Radically Decentralist Approach
Stephan Kinsella
Property and Freedom Society
2024 Annual Meeting
Bodrum, Turkey
September 19–24, 2024
Alright, let’s have as much fun as we can with a topic like this.
Contentious issues among libertarians:
Anarchy vs. Minarchy
Forms of state: monarchy vs. democracy
Open borders vs. mass immigration
Intellectual Property (we are winning this one)
Israel vs. Gaza
Ukraine vs. Russia
Abortion: Pro-choice and Pro-Life
I’ve changed my own mind a bit on this issue, after becoming a parent: from pro-choice. to more sympathetic to pro-life arguments, and to my current decentralist view
Traditionally libertarians have tended to be pro-choice, including virtually all Objectivists, though there were always some minority pro-life voices (e.g. Doris Gordon of L4L).
In recent years many seem to be more conservative, and more friendly to religion, and many more opposed to abortion than in the past.
The LP removed its pro-choice plank in Reno in 2022 as part of the Mises Caucus takeover, the “Reno Reset,” arguing that the issue is not settled and each candidate should be able to adopt their own position on this issue.
On some issues it seems possible to make progress. Many libertarians come from conservatism, or sometimes leftism, moving at first towards libertarian minarchism and then eventually to libertarian anarchism.
I changed my mind on the IP issue and have managed to persuade a large number of people to adopt the anti-IP position.
Views change on the issue of open borders and immigration and on particular issues like Israel vs. Gaza and Russia v. Ukraine.
But it seems almost impossible for anyone to change someone else’s mind on the abortion issue.
The fact that this issue seems intractable, often rooted in deep lifestyle preferences or religious beliefs, is relevant, I think to how this issue is best solved in a political-legal sense.
See Loren E. Lomasky, Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 91: “The intractability of the dispute … may itself be philosophically significant.”
There are the well-known arguments
Pro-choice
There is the modern, or feminist, argument: it’s my body.
Of course the response is that there is a baby inside which complicates the matter
For this reason even most pro-choice people do not not favor legality until birth
Ayn Rand: “abortion is a moral right-which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved.” (“Of Living Death,” The Objectivist, Oct. 1968, 6)
In Rand’s view, opposition to abortion arises from a failure to grasp both the context of rights and the imposition that child-bea...
