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Regarding Abortion
In an earlier post I lamented Ron Paul’s policy on abortion, saying that I am personally pro-life, but have come to accept the pro-choice option on grounds of liberty. I had generalized-from-self that this was the standard Libertarian party-line, falling under the “none of my business” clause of the Libertarian Manifesto, along with homosexuality and drug use.
It turns out I was wrong; many Libertarians, Ron Paul among them, reject a pro-choice view.
Politically, Ron Paul has said that the issue of abortion should be decided on a state-by-state basis. Personally, he is fiercely pro-life. In a recent speech Ron Paul said that “freedom of choice does not apply to abortion”, and even went so far as to demand a reversal of the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 which found that most laws against abortion violated a woman’s constitutional right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Of all the issues that attract me to Ron Paul’s candidacy, this is by far the least appealing. Truth be told, the odds are that Mrs. Zaphod and I will be spitting out a little degenerate sometime in the next few years. But right now, we don’t use want kids, so we use birth control. We don’t need any help in making this decision. As a matter of fact, it’s none of your damn business, but I’m sharing this to prove a point.
Let us say that (God-forbid), Mrs. Zaphod got knocked-up this week. Again, playing the odds, we would most likely welcome a child with open arms. However, there could be other variables at play. Perhaps the father is psychotic. Perhaps the mother is unfit. Perhaps the couple is poor, and can not afford food. Perhaps the couple is over-employed, and can not afford time. Perhaps the father is a drunk. Perhaps the mother is a whore. The sick, sad details of the world around us are better left to the mass media, but my point is simple:
Forcing the birth of an unwanted child is an act of cruelty to all involved.
Adoption you say? Fuck adoption. My mother was adopted, and is quick to remind you of this fact. Why is this issue always on the forefront of her mind? Because she went stark-raving mad a long time ago, and has long since lamented for a fictional twin sister lost to the fates of Oklahoma. Try as she might, her adopted mother could not help but “play the adoption card” during every family argument, completely obliterating the self-esteem of an already troubled young girl.
Yes, I have known families that included adopted children, and a multitude of hybrid-step-families with multiple parents and siblings from various marriages. Some of these groups form wonderful and healthy families, and these children go on to enjoy emotionally healthy childhoods that mature them into to stable adults.
HOWEVER: the gross majority of step-families and adoptive families I have met have included a plethora of dysfunction. Most of these children became uneven, sociopathic, or more often, chronically depressed adults. There is some stubborn gene living in the minds of most people, some clear evidence of Darwinian evolution, that forces the psuedo-parent to subconsciously reject “other people’s children” and favor their “real kids”. I have seen this time and time again, in my own family, and in the families of others. Allow to say this as bluntly as possible: step-families and adoption are to be a measure of last resort. Any psychologist willing to tell the truth would agree with me: statistically speaking, these families are fighting an uphill-battle from day one.
But does this mean that these unwanted babies are better off dead? Not necessarily.
Here’s how it works: I was created. I have a creator. Literally, my creators were mom, and dad, and the good people of the Chevrolet van division circa 1979. Spiritually, my creator was a phenomenal universal machine, perfectly calibrated to allow for a few short years of blissful reality. This creator, be it an atheist process, or divine machinery, endowed me with a brain, and a penis. I was also endowed- by my creation, not by my government- with certain inalienable rights. Among these: life, liberty, and the pursuit of getting laid.
If my soon-to-be-wife and I decide to bring a baby into this world, that is our decision to make. There is not a person alive more capable to make it than we ourselves. The rest of you, just like us, may have theories, and opinions, and spiritual interpretations, but they are no better, and no worse, than our own. This is why you are equally free to decide right and wrong for yourself.
From a purely biological standpoint, the moment a man deposits his semen he forfeits all rights to it. Finders keepers, losers weepers. If the woman’s body produces a zygote from this concert, the man will not know this until he has been told. Unless the woman chooses to include him in this new life, he cannot participate. Once included, he might choose not to participate anyway- but before the man can make his decision, the woman has already made hers- to tell him, or not to tell him, that is the question.
This zygote, should it survive endless peril, will ideally develop into a perfectly healthy fetus. At some point, a single cell living within a woman’s uterine wall may become a unique human being. But at what point does this transition take place? A zygote is most certainly a physical part of a woman’s own body, which she owns as surely as her property, her labor, and her right to political representation. A fetus is clearly a living, unique human being, thus created, thus entitled to all the same rights the rest of us consider unalienable. This is a question with mental, physical, emotional and spiritual dimensions, and cannot be answered by a lone bible verse or government policy. Shame on those of you who would even attempt to reduce this awesome question to such an irrelevant debate!
I believe that there are situations where a death before birth is an appropriate solution. I believe there are other times where adoption allows the creation of an entirely new family. I believe that sometimes the greatest families are created by accident, and that sometimes the best-planned families end up in shambles of broken dreams and broken hearts. In all cases, these decisions must be made by those individuals involved- not by our perverted society, always forcing itself in unwanted places, sheltered under the eternal hoax of “democracy”. This is not democracy- this is mob rule! These children, and soon-to-be children, deserve better than this! To hell with us all for even creating a society so vile in the first place!
Dr. Paul, I respect you, and I support you. But I am a man, and as a man, I make my own decisions, and face the consequences of those decisions. I don’t expect the government’s help, and I sure as hell don’t need the government’s permission. Even if abortion were outlawed in this Great State of Florida, if my wife wanted one, you can bet your ass that I would find her one. Nothing would change, except for the health of women already in the worst of positions- their health would be threatened by the re-emergence of back-alley abortionists.
Dr. Paul, as you full-well know, the free market supercedes the state, as it always has, and always will. The free market will provide me with marijuana, heroin and crack cocaine, regardless of the laws you pass or reject. The free market will provide me with slave labor, sex objects, and back-door abortions. The free market will provide me with whatsoever I demand, regardless of your moral persecutions. Unlike the hypocrisy of the state, the free market makes no such judgments, which, coincidentally, is why most Americans have always preferred it to the turncoat cheerleaders in Washington D.C.
Ron Paul, I believe you, more so than your contemporaries, understand the true nature of Liberty, the ugly side of Freedom, and the many shortcomings of the U.S. Constitution. I believe you understand the paradox of choice. I believe that you understand perfectly well that abortion, like racism, is a horrific institution, but an institution that the state lacks the power to stop.
This is a horrific discussion, Dr. Paul, but one that you have brought to the table, and one that I shall answer without pulling punches. You yourself have daughters and granddaughters. Imagine for a moment that they are the victim of unwanted sexual advance. Do you then expect them to carry to term the genetic progeny of a deranged animal? Would they, could they, ever mother such a child, or bear to offer it away to adoption? Of any of the horrific emotions and decisions faced at a time such as this, tell me sir, how would government intervention assist anything?
Would government intervention prevent reckless people from procreating and spreading sexually transmitted disease? Nothing in our history shows me that it would. Nothing in our history shows me that it could.
On this issue you are fighting the raw primal instincts within each man and woman; the desire for sex; the desire for progeny- now viewed through the prism of our 21st-Century world view and the chaos that surrounds us.
Simply stated: after more than fifty years of legal persecution, students across America continue to smoke dope, speed around in sports cars, and engage in reckless sex acts. There is no force in heaven or on Earth more powerful than the innate stubbornness of teenagers. There is no ignorance greater than that of the human condition. There is no emotion more eternally perplexing than that of love.
And to hell with any state, and any statesman, who denies this to be the natural process of mankind!
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