In a very shouty exchange between Thom Hartmann and professional smug person Austin Petersen regarding the American health care system and “liberty,” an interesting red herring kept popping up. Hartmann kept asking Petersen if libertarians believe in the “right to life” espoused in the Declaration of Independence, and Petersen kept trying to change the subject by bringing up abortion (specifically, liberals’ support for abortion rights).

To his credit, Hartmann didn’t take the bait, but it is a question worth exploring. See, Petersen was trying to confuse two different meanings of the “right to life.” Hartmann was talking about the fundamental right of individuals to live their lives, while Petersen was referring to a very narrow concept that privileges the right of an unborn zygote/embryo/blastocyst/fetus over any rights that the pregnant person may have over their own body. The “right to life” of a clump of cells with slightly different DNA than the mother, in this definition, by necessity trumps the “right to life” of the mother. However, in the Declaration of Independence definition of “right to life,” I would argue that it is the mother, first and foremost, whose “right to life” is protected.

In order to protect the “right to life” of the zygote/embryo/blastocyst/fetus, it is necessary to supersede the “right to life” of the mother. This is not to say that the mother’s actual life is threatened in every instance, but the mother’s right to bodily autonomy is always secondary. Libertarians, or at least the kind of libertarians represented by Petersen, will not abide any sort of infringement on their liberty by anybody, at all, ever, apparently, including Petersen’s belief that tax collection directly involves someone coming to your house with a gun. (I find this viewpoint hopelessly childish, but that’s a conversation for another day.) Petersen seems to believe that he has the sole authority to assert and protect his own rights, and no responsibility to defend the rights of others if he does not want to.

Here’s my first question, then, for libertarians of Petersen’s ilk: do you believe that anyone other than the zygote/embryo/blastocyst/fetus itself has the right or duty to assert or protect its own “right to life” (in your definition)?

If you answer “no,” then let’s just let the zygote/embryo/blastocyst/fetuses of the world find a way to petition for redress of grievances themselves, and stop trying to derail discussions.

If you answer “yes,” how exactly should others assert or protect those rights, in a way that does not infringe the essential liberty of the mother? You have pretty much already established your principle that liberty can only be curtailed by individual consent. I could see your argument that, by consenting to sexual activity, a pregnant person also consented to bear the child. Do you see where I am going with this? It’s not always a product of “consent.” Additionally, why can’t “consent” be withdrawn? I suspect you would reserve the right to withdraw your own consent to just about anything, so how is this different? That “consent” argument is fatally flawed.

I have seen countless ways that people who oppose government intervention in anything except the uterus try to weasel out of this question. I’m even less polite about it than Thom Hartmann. I know that the majority of people who claim to be “pro-life,” but want to assert dominance over all the uteruses, are full of crap when it actually comes to caring about “life.” There is no way to definitively eliminate abortion without state power. You know it and I know it, but most of you don’t have the courage to admit it.

I’ll ask the question more simply: why do you only want to use state power to control women?