Libertarians & Abortion

I cannot understand the pro-choice stance of libertarians on the issue of abortion. What does a libertarian believe in more than individual rights? The pursuit of happiness and the ability to makes ones own decisions is at the core of their belief structure. To be left alone is their desire for all people.

It is the desire of all pro-lifers as well as the unborn (I feel comfortable speaking on their behalf) that the unborn be left alone. What individual right does an unborn child have if that childs life can be taken at the whim of its mother? Certainly not the right to life, which the Constitution claims is endowed to us all by our Creator and is unalienable. The rights of the mother are subjugated to the rights of the unborn child because the unborn child is defenseless. To disagree is to say that a mentally retarded child, because it is dependent on someone else to sustain its life, should only live if the person that the child is dependent upon desires. Being pro-choice simply because you believe in individual rights is a logical fallacy.

The central question of the abortion issue is this: at what point does life begin? If life begins when the sperm meets the egg, then abortion at any point post-conception is murder because it terminates a life - a life that has no choice in the matter. Any self-respecting libertarian should be pro-life if he believes that life begins at conception. There is nothing inherent about libertarianism that argues that life begins at any point after conception; being pro-choice is not inherent to being a libertarian.

I once heard someone say that abortion has the highest mortality rate of any medical procedure because half of the people involved die. The weight of such a statement ought to be more than any moral human being can stand. Many pro-choice Americans lament genocide across the globe and yet do not understand that they are in full support of perhaps the most egregious genocide of all, the American Genocide, which has claimed more than 50 million American lives since 1973.