Pro-Life

How I Became Pro-Life
By Doris Gordon

In 1959 I read a book that changed my life and thoughts profoundly.  Its name
was "Atlas Shrugged"; its author, Ayn Rand.  It was her ideas together with
those of Nathaniel Branden, a famous psychologist who was once closely
associated with her, that made me eventually pro-life.  Ironically, both
strongly support abortion.

Rand and Branden taught me aggression is wrong; that human relationships should
be based upon persuasion and voluntarism instead of coercion and fraud; that
the moral and the practical are one and the same, in the long run at least;
that first of all we must do no harm; and that each of us is personally
responsible for our own actions, but not the actions of others.

I also learned that the chief source of coercion and fraud is the state; that
instead of being helped and protected by the state, we are harmed in countless
ways; that in order to create a more humane and healthy society, we should
turn away from the state and strengthen those voluntary institutions in society
which do in fact promote the good -- such as the family, private charities, the
free enterprise system, and even the churches.  I say "even", for, as some of
you may know, I am an atheist.  I point this out just to make it clear my
pro-life position is derived entirely from philosophical and scientific ideas
and is not influenced by religious beliefs.

I don't know when I first thought about abortion, but I had always accepted
the idea in some vague sort of way.  But twelve years ago, I attended a lecture
given by some disciples of Rand.  Someone in the audience challenged their
pro-abortion position and then a debate ensued about when the human being comes
into existence.  This struck me as odd, for Ayn Rand's philosophy, which she
calls Objectivism, starts from the premise that existence exists, "existence"
meaning something physical exists.  Why were they disagreeing about when
something as physical and as easily observable as the human body comes into
existence?

This shocked me into thought.  It was easy to figure out that the human being
begins to exist at conception.  It took just one more step to decide that the
human being at conception is capable of having rights; for if *all* human beings
have rights, so do the unborn.

But I couldn't go further, for there seemed to be a conflict of rights between
the mother and her child in the womb.  In 1973, the Washington Post printed my
letter about this.  It said in part, "The abortion issue will remain insoluble.
The reason is that there are two basic rights in conflict... the right to life
in the child and the right to liberty in the mother...  The implementation of
one right requires the violation of the other...  Some may argue that life is a
higher value than liberty.  But then there was Patrick Henry who said, 'Give me
liberty or give me death.'  Life without liberty can be meaningless and of no
value."  It seemed to me that if someone was enslaving me, I would have the
right to kill that person if that was the only way I could free myself.

The belief that there is a conflict of rights between mother and child still
persists, not only among pro-abortionists, but among pro-lifers.  I no longer
believe such a conflict exists, but it took me three more years to figure out
why.  I am going to give you some of the reasoning I went through.  It may
sound complicated and confusing in part, especially if you are hearing it for
the first time, but the bottom line is very simple and everyone knows it:  There
is no conflict of rights between mother (or father) and child because parents
have an obligation to care for their children and, therefore, children have a
right to that care.  Most of us, even pro-abortionists accept this idea about
children after they're born.  Even the state acknowledges this is true, for the
state compels parents to support their children.  If children are children
before as well as after birth, then parents have the obligation to care for
them, also.

This means women have no right to choose to kill their unborn or to evict them
from their bodies.  Mothers have the obligation, instead, to house and feed
them and protect them in the womb.  Perhaps when the pro-abortionists wear their
buttons saying "Choice," we should wear one saying "Responsibility."

Now I will go more into the ideas that changed my mind about abortion.  To do
this I have to talk about my views on the military draft.  The draft and having
an unwanted pregnancy have something in common:  They are both involuntary
servitude in the sense of having to do something against one's will rather than
by choice.  I may say some things that some of you will strongly disagree with,
but right or wrong, it was my work on the draft and amnesty issues that gave me
the idea and courage to form Libertarians for Life.  Libertarians agree that the
draft is immoral and I hope to use this common understanding to help explain why
abortion is immoral, too.  Perhaps my comments will be useful in talking to
non-libertarians, too.

In the case of the draft, I believe involuntary servitude is aggression.  In the
case of the usual pregnancy, it is not.  The distinction hinges on whether or
not we owe something to someone else.  Involuntary servitude is justified only
in order to compel someone to give what he or she owes to another.  None of us
can point to another person and say you owe me X number of years of service in
the military.  But children can point to their parents and say you owe me care.

Now I can point my finger at each one of you and say you owe me something and
that is to never initiate aggression against me.  I, of course, owe you the same
respect.  Otherwise, when we speak of "owing," it means that a particular person
owes a particular debt to a particular person or persons.  We have to be able to 
identify the parties involved and show exactly what that debt is and how it
arose.  We can't owe to an abstraction such as "society" or "the country", only
to individuals.

Libertarians believe strongly in defense, but the freedom of even one of us
must not be violated in the name of defense.  Defending freedom by infringing
freedom is a contradiction in terms.  We should and can be both pro-defense and
pro-individual liberty at the same time.

The general principle here and the one that should guide all our chosen actions
is that the ends do not justify the means; that is, the initiation of coercion
or force is impermissible, whether committed by the individual, the group, or
the state.  This means that peaceful people have the right to be left alone and
go their own way.  We may stop murder or theft because people owe us
non-aggression.  We may compel payment on contracts or compensation in the case
of accidents.  Something is owed in these cases and the debtors and creditors
can be identified.  We are entitled to gain or to keep our own life, liberty and
property for ourselves and free from harm.

Having been harmed in some fashion does not entitle us to make a claim against
just anyone.  Being in need, even when the need is real, does not justify taking
from someone who does not owe us, who is not directly responsible for that
owing.  If you or I take when nothing is owed, unless that person gives
willingly, we are guilty of stealing.  And we know the Biblical injunction,
"Thou shalt not steal".

Many of us agree that you and I have no right to use coercion against people
who don't owe us anything.  The same prohibition applies to groups of people
who constitute the government.  The reason is simple: unjust acts do not become
just when legalized.  Legalizing abortion did not make that right.  Majority
rule does not justify aggression.  Might does not make right.  Defending our
liberty is important, but if the United States of American deprives us of our
liberty, where can be safe?

Let's consider the argument that my son and daughter or yours have an obligation
to submit to the coercion of a draft.  If our children have such an obligation,
to whom to they owe it?  If it cannot be shown that they owe it to me or to you
or to any other individual, then there is no such obligation and you or I have 
no right to threaten or punish them with imprisonment if they won't go.  And
therefore, neither do we have the right to use the arm of the law to do so.
No law can justify aggression.

It has been argued that they, or perhaps we, too, owe some service to our
country because of the benefits the country gives to us.  Perhaps we do get
some things from the state, but don't we pay for them with our taxes and
inflation?  Furthermore, the individual has no real choice, for the most part,
about what he is given.  And then he is compelled to pay for it, sometimes by
spilling his blood.  If someone were to send you unordered merchandise in the
mail, no one would have the right to compel you to pay for it and the state
recognizes this fact.  The only thing it could be said that each of us owes our
country is to respect the freedom of everyone else.  That is the only way to pay
for the benefit of freedom or to protect it.  The protection of the rights of
the individual is the only justification for the existence of government, and
this is recognized by the Declaration of Independence.

Now pregnancy and abortion are different matters in regard to the justice of
involuntary servitude.  This is so because we we can show very clearly how one
individual owes another.  We are responsible for the foreseeable consequences of
our own actions as they affect others: that is, when we impose ourselves upon
others without their permission.  We are especially responsible when the person
affected has absolutely no choice about being stuck in the situation, as is the
child in the case of pregnancy.

Sometimes I hear the argument that the child was not affected by being conceived
because no child existed before conception.  But how else can we explain the
child's situation except by referring to the actions of the parents?  Parents
can't blame their unborn children for their mother's pregnancies.  Conceiving
children may be unintentional on our part, but having sex is usually a
voluntary act and most people know getting pregnant is a possible side effect.
We have some choice in the matter of creating children.  It is the children who
have no choice about being affected when we experience the pleasures of sex.

Not only are children not responsible for the consequences of a mother's
pregnancy upon herself, neither are they to blame for their need to remain in
the womb.  This need is something we impose upon them when we create them.  The
child's life and needs are a package deal.

Once having brought children into a state of dependency, we have the obligation
to bring them safely out.  This means we must wait until they are able to come
"out" safely.  This also means parental obligation continues after childbirth.

As one libertarian said about abortion:  Creating a child is like inviting
someone into your home and rendering him incapable of living on the outside for
nine months.  We have no right to toss him out.  Another libertarian, a
psychiatrist, made an even stronger analogy.  He said when we create children,
it could be said we create "captive".  We are not entitled to kill captives nor
endanger them.  In fact, we have the obligation to care for them while they are
captive and to see that they gain release from their "captivity."  This means
in the case of children, we have the duty to bring them to a state where they
can take care of themselves.

Sometimes I hear the argument that yes, it is true that the unborn child needs
care and thus is in harm's way.  However, they say, we've given the gift of
life, something so valuable, that we bear no net obligation.  The answer is that
we do not have the right to force a gift upon anyone, and that we did not get
the child's permission.  This is not a case where the child freely accepts the
good with the bad.  So we are still responsible for protecting the child from
harm.  The net gain to the child is irrelevant.  Our obligation comes from the
fact that we impose the situation upon children without their assent.

Where parents choose not to fulfill their duty to children, such as when they
choose to have an abortion, others are entitled to defend the child's rights,
for such defense is no aggression upon anyone.  We must exercise caution here
in that the question of what other things does[sic] or does[sic] not constitute
proper care in[sic] a separate question apart from abortion and which perhaps
remains unsettled at this time.

Another point I must mention is that libertarians hold that human needs, even
when they are real needs, are no obligation in themselves.  While parents owe
care to their own children, we don't owe care to anyone else's.  The libertarian
makes a distinction between purely moral obligations and legal obligation, legal
in the sense that someone is entitled to use force against us, not merely
because the law says so, but because we have a morally enforceable debt.  Anyone
who claims there is such a debt and wishes to compel payment has the burden of
proving such a debt exists and the responsibility of his own actions if he is in
error.

Libertarianism does not require us to give to charity, but charity is not
charity unless it is given voluntarily.  If taken by force, it is not charity
but theft.  The one who forces us to give owes us a debt.  Libertarianism is
silent about the religious or moral belief that we have a general duty to others
or to God to help feed the hungry.  Libertarianism is only about owing, as I
have explained before.  In order to avoid being guilty of committing aggression
ourselves, we must leave it to each one of us to decide if, and when, and how
much one wishes to willingly help others they don't owe.  If we learn to solve
human problems by non-aggressive means, the need for charity will be far less
than it is today.

One final point about parental obligation.  If there is no such obligation, we
would have to say  that at least non-lethal abortions are permissible.  This is
because parents would have a right to evict and to abandon their children, as in
the hysterotomy abortion.  I would be interested in hearing other arguments in
support of parental obligation, including those based upon the Bible.

I seldom see any mention of parental obligation in pro-life literature.  I
wonder why it is not emphasized more.  Sometimes I read that there is a conflict
of rights between mother and child.  There may be a conflict of needs, but not
of rights.  I also hear pro-lifers say in response to the "woman's right to
control her own body" argument that life is a higher value than liberty and,
therefore the child's rights come before the mother's.  But again, it is not
a matter of the child's rights vs. the mother's.  It is a matter of the child's
rights and the mother's obligations.  The child has two rights against the
mother: the right to life, that is, the right not to be killed, and the right
to parental care.  And the mother has two obligations: her obligation not to
kill the child and the obligation to care for her child.  Libertarians for Life
thinks this is an important argument and would like others to try it out.  I
hope you will tell me your thoughts on this.

As I said at the beginning, it was the ideas of Rand and Branden that made me
eventually pro-life.  It was an article by Branden* in one of Rand's publications
that had to do with parental obligation in the case of born children.  When I
made the connection with what he said there to the abortion issue, the lights
went on and the bells rung[sic].  I had solved what I had thought was the
insoluble issue.

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