A Personal Position Statement: My Body, My Rights

[An Unabashed Atheist]

As some of you probably know, I am not a liberal so much as a libertarian. I believe in small, un-intrusive government, which I see as the key to maximum liberty. In the past, libertarians tended to support the Republican Party. Now, the Republican Party has become distinctly statist; the Republicans are now the party of big government. As such, from the national right down to the local level, I am voting all Democrat. Indeed, the Dems are now truly the party of small government. And, there is no better example of this than the abortion issue.

In my view, if there is anyplace that an individual has total and complete autonomy, it is that individual's own body. In short, with respect to my own body, I am the sole arbiter of what's OK and what isn't. In a very literal sense, my body is my property, to do with whatever I wish.

In that spirit, I oppose any and all abortion restrictions. I don't support parental consent. I don't support parental notification. I don't support spousal notification. I don't support waiting periods. I don't support mandatory counseling. I don't support limiting late-term abortion. I support no conceivable restriction, as any conceivable restriction would violate the principle of complete individual autonomy over one's body. One's body is one's own property; any entity residing within one's body is also one's own property.

In upholding the aforementioned general principle, I also oppose any and all laws with respect to personal drug use. Though I have never used any illicit drugs and have no desire to ever do so, it is my feeling that laws regarding personal drug use are a clear infringement on individual autonomy with respect to one's body. Clearly, one has a right to destroy one's personal property. In that spirit, recognizing one's body as one's personal property, in any legitimately free country one should be allowed to destroy one's body via the terrible effects of drugs. Surely, if one commits a crime against others while on drugs, the crime itself must be punished severely. However, in my view, laws regulating personal behavior with respect to one's own body are totally incompatible with the overriding principle of liberty.

[KarenS]

1. I agree with you,,, on every point.

except I'm not a Libertarian.

:hi:

[An Unabashed Atheist]

2. Shucks...

Maybe, if you listen to me pontificate enough, I can nudge you into the Libertarian corner. On second thought, I don't expect to win many converts. After all, there's only 1 Libertarian in all of Congress!

[Jacobin]

14. I love Ron Paul's rants on IraqNam

They are better than any other congresscritter by magnitudes

[An Unabashed Atheist]

18. Indeed.

Indeed.

It's unfortunate that Mr. Paul refuses to recognize the absolute right of a woman to abort.

[PurityOfEssence]

26. But he'll suck corporate dick, cut taxes and deregulate all day long

He still votes with the Republicans. He still IS a republican.

Just because the extreme selfishness of libertarianism makes him rage against foreign involvement doesn't mean he's a friend of anybody except himself. Libertarians are EXTREMELY SELFISH ADOLESCENTS. They are examples of arrested development. They are either blind to the realities of interdependence or are willingly playing a cynical and greedy game.

Libertarians may come down on the reasonable side of certain comportment like drugs and sexuality, but their true motivation is to suck the blood out of society without ever paying anything back in. We are blessed in these days of sophisticated civilization to benefit from the laws and REGULATIONS that keep things stable, and we should be humble and willing to pay money (taxes) to sustain that which is best for all. Libertarians rage against this reality, and for all of their laissez-faire detachment, they leech off of the society they refuse to sustain.

Ron Paul has been a great voice of reason against the would-be conquers of the world, but he still votes with them and has as his principal driving motivation a sense of supreme selfishness borne from a feeling of superiority and cloaked with some delusional excuse that he's just one of the boys. He's better than you are, but his expressed political stance is that we're all equal. Fuck the weak and infirm.

Fuck him.

People who don't see his feudal and primitive mindset as anything other than selfish thuggery need to get a grip. Yeah, he hates foreign entanglement, but that's just because nothing's worth anything unless it enriches him personally. The dynamic soul of Libertarianism is a bunker mentality, and that's truly conservative: leave me alone so I can amass mountains of money and never have to deal with you inferiors.

[cynatnite]

3. I disagree on a few smaller points...

but the overriding fact is our bodies belong to us and not the government.

You made a good clear well-defined argument! :thumbsup:

[FreedomAngel82]

4. While I agree

the conservatives won't buy it. They'll claim the fetus has a right too as a citzen and to the Constiution etc. It's all about choices and consequences and freewill but yet they don't want you to have it. I say they're selfish while claiming to be the party of God. God loved and trusted me enough to make my own decisions with life so why are they taking freewill away? They're nothing but selfish.

[FloridaPat]

5. Disagree with the drug laws. If people only killed themselves, I wouldn't

care. But a lot of these druggies kill others in their pursuit of the high and money to buy it. Also, families are destroyed because of the additions. Same with alcohol

[kestrel91316]

6. Here's how you reconcile that: my right to use drugs/alcohol ends

where your body/property begins. Harsh punishment for harming another person's body or property while using drugs/alcohol. No punishment for responsible personal use.

[An Unabashed Atheist]

8. Exactly.

Harshly punish irresponsible behavior, such as harming other people. However, actually wait for irresponsible behavior to have occurred before doling out punishments. If you make drugs illegal, you are punishing responsible and irresponsible users equally. If, however, you make drugs legal, you are awarding responsible users their freedom while retaining the right to punish criminally irresponsible users. It's completely fair.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

20. Not possible...

Go to any village in Columbia or Afghanistan where the drug lords are in power. They hold the absolute authority over life and death of the citizens because of your "responsible use" of recreational drugs. People are being held in virtual (and in some cases, actual) slavery in order to keep the drugs flowing. Nobody on this board would willingly go to these places, much less set up housekeeping.

Back in the 1980's, I snipped my Shell credit card and sent it back to the company because they were supporting apartheid. A friend of mine pointed out that I won't do business with Shell, but I have no problem giving my money to the Columbian Drug Lords. I stopped using drugs shortly thereafter.

[An Unabashed Atheist]

23. Response

First, I do not use recreational drugs, nor have I tried any, nor will I ever try any.

You make a logical point, but it doesn't change my view. After all, I support Free Trade without mandatory labor/environment standards. I believe in a free market, where supply and demand set the tone. I'm also an isolationist in terms of foreign policy, and staunchly oppose the US involving itself in another country's domestic affairs. Colombia is responsible for Colombia. The US is responsible for the US. I believe in both individual and country-by-country self-reliance.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

28. How Noble of You...

You support Free Trade that allows Banana Republic dictators to pocket "gifts" from American manufacturers (such as, ironically, the Banana Republic), while their people work in sweatshops. In China, twelve-year-old girls spend the day in the stifling heat of factories where the conditions could be described as nineteenth-century, were it not for the very-twentieth-century toxic fumes swirling around the place.

Columbia is responsible for Columbia? Who do you think is buying all the drugs? Whose money is it that pays for the bullets that rip up the villages and towns? If you're completely amoral, you can sit back and say it's not your fault and not your concern. But eventually the problem winds up here in the form of drive-by shootings and lesser criminal behavior that exists because of drug trafficking.

The world is not nearly as uncomplicated as you suppose.

[lildreamer316]

12. Well;

usually the drug or alcohol use is a way of avoiding an underlying psychological problem. If we gave more value in society to people getting help without stigma, then said person would be able to deal with such and not resort to those lengths.Drugs and alcohol are also seen as rebellion and bad in a forbidden way;if that connotation was removed by making them legal, all the thrill would be taken away from it. Addicts would be pitied and dismissed (more so than now); it would not be as "cool'.In all, the person should take the responsibility to go help themselves so they did not harm others; a value that some of the Christian churches seem unable to communicate. Same problem we have with deadbeat dads.

[Nikki Stone 1]

7. Recommended

:kick:

[An Unabashed Atheist]

11. Appreciate the support.

I appreciate the support!

When one makes a personal position statement, one never knows if the point of view being expressed will be embraced or roundly rejected. Glad to know it hasn't been the latter in this case.

[bluedawg12]

9. This part is well said especially>

"One's body is one's own property; any entity residing within one's body is also one's own property"

It's good and true.

[An Unabashed Atheist]

10. Thank you.

Thank you for commenting.

I staunchly stand behind that quote.

[Jacobin]

13. Hey, welcome to DU

I have a lot of the same views. I don't agree with the majority of DUers on gun control.

Its kinda funny if you think about it:

You never see a bunch of women in power sitting around a table signing legislation to restrict what a woman does with her reproductive organs....its always MEN. Its about men controlling women....

I'm a man and I can see that

[An Unabashed Atheist]

15. Regarding Gun Control

I know that I am in a distinct minority here, but I strongly oppose most gun control policies. Personally, I have no use for guns; however, for me, this all goes back to the freedom issue.

Let me make an analogy:

I oppose laws against personal drug use. Drug users can be separated into two categories: responsible drug users and irresponsible drug users. I believe that irresponsible drug users should be punished for the crimes they commit. However, I strongly oppose punishing responsible drug users, as they have committed no crime. In my view, making drugs illegal punishes both responsible and irresponsible drug users equally. It makes simply using drugs a crime, irrespective of whether such use is responsible or irresponsible. That's fundamentally unfair.

Analogously...

I oppose laws against gun ownership. Gun users can be separated into two categories: responsible gun users and irresponsible gun users. I believe that irresponsible gun users should be punished for the crimes they commit. However, I strongly oppose punishing responsible gun users, as they have committed no crime. In my view, making guns (including assault weapons) illegal punishes both responsible and irresponsible gun users equally. It makes simply possessing guns a crime, irrespective of whether such use is responsible or irresponsible. That's fundamentally unfair.

However, I DO support background checks.

[Castilleja]

16. Great post!

I'm kicking it.... :kick:

[An Unabashed Atheist]

17. Thanks!

Thanks for the positive remark!

[Delphinus]

19. I agree with what you say.

Let me ask this, though, about religion.

Don't Christians believe that they are here by the grace of their God and, therefore, their body, their mind, their soul belongs to "him"?

I'm not a Christian, which is why I'm asking.

And, beyond that, I just remembered the cartoon of Alito who responded, when told by a woman senator that she is going to ask him some questions, "Do you have your husband's permission?" Do those staunch Christians believe that they have dominion over their wife's body because they are the master of the house?

[An Unabashed Atheist]

22. Comments

Thanks for commenting.

I'm sure that observant Christians believe that their bodies belong to God, and perhaps even that men are meant to control women. However, I scoff at this silliness and reject the notion that it should play any role in our political system. Religion, in my view, is silly, superstitious nonsense. It's no more real than Mother Goose stories. So, I refuse to take these kinds of ideas into consideration when forming my stance. I see no difference between taking those ideas into consideration and taking "Hansel and Gretel" into consideration.

[ballaratocker]

31. Alito

You mentioned Alito and was interested in his stance on disclosure of abortion to husbands/significant others. It is an area I would like to ask D.U.'ers about as I am currently in a discussion on another message board. I posted the following info on my blog: http://hauttedaugge.blogspot.com
I must admit, this is not a topic I have ever really delved into. My beliefs on abortion are fairly set. I take the Hillary Clinton line: keep abortion safe, legal and rare. However, moving into the realm of disclosure muddies the waters a little. One now ventures into the dynamics of private relationships.
My gut instinct on this one? My lefty side leans towards non compulsory disclosure. I think there is a role for government intervention in social issues. However, I believe there is a place to stop. I am a believer in that the state can impose democratically approved and transparent legislation upon those participating in the public sphere (i.e. business, public institutions, non-profit organizations) to ensure that all citizens are able to fulfill their potential on an equitable playing field and be safe from harm from others. It can go into the personal sphere in relationships if parties are in physical danger or being physically harmed (i.e. child/spousal abuse, spousal rape etc.). However, if no living party is being physically hurt, I don't believe the government has a right to legislate on that.
In my head, I am now rolling around a hypothetical situation. A woman gets an abortion without her husband's knowledge. While I might consider this a little ethically dodgy, I do not believe that this is something that should be dragged into the legal sphere. Why? For the following two reasons:
1) The man is not being physical damaged. He may be mentally scarred but that varies from person to person. However, he may just be as mentally damaged if he found out his wife was having an affair with his brother. I believe mental stress varies from person to person. However, physical harm is straight up and down. If you get hit with a tire iron upside the head, that hurts no matter what and the offender should be punished (if not in self defense).
2) The fetus is not a living being and therefore does not qualify to being physically harmed. However, I will add a note that I do believe that at a certain point, a fetus does become a person and therefore can be harmed. At that point, I believe that abortion is morally questionable, full stop. However, early in a pregnancy, a fetus is not a self aware, living being and therefore does not qualify as a candidate for harm. It is part of a woman's body and is hers to do with what she wishes.
For those two reasons, I believe the most poignant thing here is to ask in this situation 'Whose rights are being profoundly damaged?' It's not the man's, while he is being dealt with in an unethical way, he is not being harmed in a manner that is definite and/or permanent beyond a reasonable doubt. It's not the fetus' (depending on point in time).
What in essence disclosure legislation would do is pass judgment on is the ethics of a woman in a private relationship. The woman would not be definitely and/or permanently harming the man or any other human being. To boil it down into lay speak: she might be being a little deceitful in her personal dealings but are we now going to make laws against wives being deceitful or 'disobedient' to their husbands? Why not then revoke no fault divorces (They were introduced in Australia in the seventies. I would be curious as to whether they are functional in other countries)?
Whilst I would not encourage the decision to get an abortion to start with (I believe that people should look at options before abortion but that option should be legally available), I would not insist that she would have to tell her husband that she is getting an abortion.
Thoughts? We did start on the broad topic of abortion but am interested in what you guys think about Alito's stance on this.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

21. I agree with most of your conclusion, but disagree with your reasoning.

While I think that abortion should be legal, I don't think the fact that it takes place inside a woman's body is sufficient argument, because while it has an unarguably great impact on the mother, it has an even greater one on the foetus, whose body is also involved.

To justify the legality of abortion, it is necessary not merely to argue "it's my body" but to explain why the rights of the mother should overide those of the foetus.

The reason *I* believe this is that I think that rights are something only people have, and the defining characteristic of a person is self-awareness. As such, I think abortion should be available on demand in the first two trimesters (where the foetus is probably not self-aware) but that it should be restricted to certain cases (e.g. rape, incest, medical grounds, impossibility of obtaining an abortion any earlier) in the third, when it probably is to some degree, although nowhere near as much as the mother.

*If* I believed that the defining characteristic of a person was e.g. a soul that entered into the body at conception then I'd believe that as mother and foetus were both equally people, the imposition on the mother of forcing her to carry to term was outweighed by the imposition on the foetus of aborting it, and hence oppose abortion.

It may be the woman's body, but it's also the foetus's, so that doesn't prove anything. Any argument justifying abortion that doesn't contain the step "a foetus is not a person" is morally invalid, and once you have that step you don't really need any others.

[An Unabashed Atheist]

24. Thanks for replying

Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

Well, I don't believe in souls, so that whole line of reasoning goes out the window.

I also don't believe that humans have a higher intrinsic life value than, say, squid--so the idea that abortion is morally wrong seems foreign to me. I believe in evolution. Evolution teaches me that every single species is a branch, or a branch from a branch, on the Tree of Life. One Tree of Life. Based upon that, I consider every species to have a totally equal intrinsic life value. So, I consider abortion no more morally questionable than killing a turkey for Thanksgiving.

In my view, when a fetus is growing within the mother's body, it is essentially a part of the mother's body. It is the mother's private property, to do with whatever she wishes. Only at the moment of live birth does the fetus become a baby, no longer the mother's private property, but rather a Constitutionally-protected citizen.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

25. Again, I don't entirely agree.

I don't believe than humans have a higher *intrinsic* value than squid, but I do believe that the value of any life is proportional to the degree of self-awareness it possesses, and to a much lesser degree the potential it has to aquire such. A race of speaking, reasoning alien squid would have as much value as humans; a brain-dead human's life, while it should probably protected to some degree for other reasons (possibility of error, feelings of loved ones), is not in itself worth more than that of a squid. What counts is *people*, not *humans*.

I presume this is why you use the word "intrinsic" - the alternative would be that never mind abortion; killing a normal human being would be no more morally questionable than killing a turkey.

My understanding is that by the start of the third trimester a foetus's mind is fairly well-developed, and as such I think that from *about* 24 weeks (I don't know enough about the medical details to be sure) it should be thought of as a person in its own right, and not simply a part of the mother, and therefore be legally protected, but before that it should not be.

[Iris]

27. In that case, you should not have an abortion after 24 weeks.

But if Unabashed has a different set of beliefs, she should be able to operate accordingly in this matter.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

29. That argument doesn't work,

Because if it did it would mean that *all* laws forbiding people from doing things are unjustified.

The one situation in which A is definately justified in forbidding B from doing something is if it will have a major negative impact on C.

You may well be able to justify late term abortions on demand by other arguments but "it's a matter of private conscience" or "it's none of your business" doesn't suffice.

[Iris]

32. As I said in my post "in this matter". It is not an argument for anything

else but this matter, which I believe is wholly unique from any other.

[Azathoth]

30. I respect your logic, even if I disagree with some of your points

I should point out, however, that following the logic of your argument to its natural conclusions can lead to some interesting repercussions. By your reasoning, for instance, human cloning must be legal, since moral/ethical/medical/safety concerns must never trump the concept of absolute personal liberty over one's own body. Further, since you apply this logic to drug laws and "oppose any and all laws with respect to personal drug use", it begs the question of whether or not you oppose laws like the prohibition against drunk driving, since those laws effectively regulate drug use. Using your absolutist reasoning, drunk driving would not be a crime unless the driver got into an accident, since he/she has the absolute right to do whatever he wants with his body whenever he wants to do it. If, on the other hand, you do support laws against drunk driving, then what you're saying is that you support the right to possess all drugs, but you believe the right to use them should be limited under mitigating circumstances (like when it puts other people at risk).

Another interesting implication of your logic is that, since you are unwilling to consider any form of parental notification for abortion, you seem to believe that the right to absolute liberty over one's own body applies equally to children as to adults. Following this logic, it would be legal for a eleven-year-old girl to choose to drink alcohol, use heroin, attempt suicide, or get breast implants without here parents' permission. Further, if her parents attempted to intervene in her actions without her consent, they would be criminally guilty of violating her rights.

I point these examples out not to criticize the principles you espouse (which I happen to agree with), but to illustrate the fact that absolutist reasoning often leads to fairly extreme results, particularly in realm of law and politics.