Abortion rights is liberty.

Maximum liberty at its core means each human being has full control over their body. Every woman must have maximum liberty over her body and the right to choose, or not choose, an abortion.

Jun 24, 2024

We cannot as a people have liberty if women do not have full autonomy and control over their bodies, including the right to choose, or not choose, abortion. Unsurprisingly, Republicans, conservatives and religious fundamentalists (who don’t seem to actually understand anything about Christianity or Jesus and his teachings) don’t believe in liberty for you and me, and so they attack our rights, including the most fundamental right to manage one’s own physical being.

As we learn more about the fallout from the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization’s Supreme Court decision ending the protections of Roe vs. Wade two years on, we must redouble our efforts to make liberty for all a central tenet of American life. The lack of access to abortion is causing real harm to women, which shows just how anti-liberty the anti-choice crowd really is.

There are reports of women nearly dying waiting to get treatment from pregnancies with horrific complications. The indignity continues when after not receiving immediate treatment, these same women become sterile and cannot have children in the future. Hundreds of thousands of women are being forced to travel for the healthcare that is their fundamental right to receive at home. And the number of babies dying right after child birth is skyrocketing as women are being forced to carry non-viable fetuses to term. This is not pro-life. This is barbaric.

Liberty is enjoyed when you do no harm to others. Abortion does not harm others. Those who want to control women claim an “other” that is not a human. It is not life, at least not in any sense of the word that has meaning as far an animal that can survive on its own outside of the womb. Because the anti-choice believers give no quarter, they argue that pro-choice people will abort any fetus at any stage for any reason. This is simply not true. Almost all abortions occur before a fetus is viable as actual human life. And the few times an abortion happens late in a term is because the fetus becomes unviable, or the life of the mother is at risk, or both. At which time abortion is absolutely pro-life and pro-humanity.

And now there is the most ridiculously egregious claim that there are post-birth abortions. There is no such thing. Killing a human baby after its birth is called murder, and that is rightly punished. Clearly, abortion is not murder.

Anti-choice activists are not pro-life. They are simply out to control you and take away your liberty and freedom. There is a simple solution for anti-choice believers that maintains everyone’s liberty; if they ever find themselves pregnant they can choose to not have an abortion.

So what to do? Number one is to make liberty a central tenet of our daily lives. The question, “Does a certain requirement or burden infringe on your liberty?” should be asked of all requirements and burdens that others seek to impose on us, especially when it will be imposed by the force of law. When a large majority of Americans take liberty for all to heart and apply it to our daily lives, it will be absolutely clear that abortion is a fundamental human right derived from your dignity to control your body.

Second, find people to run for office who believe that our laws should start by qualifying them against our individual liberty, and that when they pass laws they will guarantee each of us our liberty as long as we do no harm. This includes people willing to pass laws that guarantee us our rights, such as a woman’s right to abortion if she so chooses. If that’s you, then run for office. If it’s not you, then make sure that when you’re in that voting booth next you are choosing the candidate who wants to maximize your rights to live free.

And let’s collectively demand federal legislation that guarantees each adult American the right to make decisions about their own body as they see fit, which includes the right to abortion.