Why I am a pro-life libertarian

From my perspective, the consistent libertarian position on abortion is contingent—it depends whether you believe the entity developing in the womb counts as a human being.

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I accept that some people don’t think it does. And if I were one of them, I’d probably be pro-choice too. Like many libertarians, a fundamental question I use to adjudicate whether an act should be considered a crime is whether or not it has a victim. Drug use? Consensual prostitution? Working for less than the wage some politician has decided should be the legislatively mandated minimum? I oppose government intervention to stop any of these things, because none of them involves the use of force by one human being against another.

But for the consistent libertarian who looks at an ultrasound and sees a baby, a person, a fully human life, it’s extraordinarily hard to avoid the conclusion that abortion is an act of violence.

That’s where I come down. No doubt my Catholic faith has something to do with it, but so does my (admittedly imperfect) understanding of the science of what happens during conception and at the various stages of fetal development. In moments of honest reflection, alone only with my conscience and my God, this is the inescapable conclusion I can’t help but arrive at.

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