Political Junky
Gold Member
- May 27, 2009
- 25,793
- 3,990
- 280
The Ayn Rand Institute: Pro-Choice Is Pro-Life
Pro-Choice Is Pro-Life:
The Philosophical Basis of a Woman's Right to Abortion
by Andrew Bernstein
This talk is a defenseon philosophical grounds&of the right to abortion. To validate this right requires a rational theory of rights, one grounded in fact, not faith or feeling. In establishing the basis of this right, Dr. Bernstein also demonstrates that anti-abortionists have no rational basis for using the phrase "right to life."
Dr. Bernstein presents the scientific arguments used by anti-abortionists, then demonstrates the errors in those arguments: failure to recognize the biological nature of the fetus; equivocation on key terms; and obliteration of the distinction between actual and potential.
Dr. Bernstein grounds his view of rights in an ethics of rational egoism and contrasts it with the theory of self-sacrifice espoused by anti-abortionists.
Both political conservatives and liberals deny the principle of individual rights and the egoist ethics on which rights depend. Only Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism validates both rights and egoism, thereby providing the only valid philosophical basis of a woman's right to abortion.
Ayn Rand:
"One method of destroying a concept is by diluting its meaning. Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living."
Pro-Choice Is Pro-Life:
The Philosophical Basis of a Woman's Right to Abortion
by Andrew Bernstein
This talk is a defenseon philosophical grounds&of the right to abortion. To validate this right requires a rational theory of rights, one grounded in fact, not faith or feeling. In establishing the basis of this right, Dr. Bernstein also demonstrates that anti-abortionists have no rational basis for using the phrase "right to life."
Dr. Bernstein presents the scientific arguments used by anti-abortionists, then demonstrates the errors in those arguments: failure to recognize the biological nature of the fetus; equivocation on key terms; and obliteration of the distinction between actual and potential.
Dr. Bernstein grounds his view of rights in an ethics of rational egoism and contrasts it with the theory of self-sacrifice espoused by anti-abortionists.
Both political conservatives and liberals deny the principle of individual rights and the egoist ethics on which rights depend. Only Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism validates both rights and egoism, thereby providing the only valid philosophical basis of a woman's right to abortion.
Ayn Rand:
"One method of destroying a concept is by diluting its meaning. Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living."
