"A right is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context." The moral standard to be applied, Ayn Rand has shown, is that of man's life and what is "required by man's nature for his proper survival."The fundamental condition for man's survival is the freedom to use his rational faculty to maintain and enjoy his life. Thus, a pregnant woman, like every other individual, has the right to determine her own destiny and the destiny of her body, to choose what constitutes her own best interest and private happiness, and to work for its achievement, so long as she respects the same rights in others.These rights, and all rights, are absolute by their nature. It cannot be proper to negotiate moral principles. It cannot be proper to allow a man only a portion of the freedom he requires by his nature.What of the fetus? Does it have rights which must be respected? The concept of rights is based on man's nature and presupposes the existence of an actual, fully-formed, and separate human being. Fetuses and embryos are not actual human beings; they are potential human beings. They have no rights until they exist apart from the mother, i.e., at birth. This is not to condone the morality of arbitrarily delaying an abortion until the last months of pregnancy - when the fetus is approaching humanness. But the function of the law is to protect rights - not to dictate moral issues which involve no violation of rights. The only proper function of government is to protect man's absolute rights against violation by other men. No government, no state, no collective has any "interest" apart from the individuals of which it is composed. Thus it can have no "interest" which conflicts with any individual's rights, such as a paternalistic interest in "maternal health." Our Constitution was drafted in recognition of these principles. It was designed, not as a charter for government power, but as a protection against government power, i.e., against invasion of individual rights by the government. For this reason, the Constitution enumerates the limited powers of the government but not (as made clear in the Ninth Amendment) every individual right.These are the principles that should be advanced in Webster. If Roe v. Wade is reconsidered, the Supreme Court should affirm abortion as a right that cannot be invaded or compromised.Copyright © 1989 The Association for Objective Law. All rights reserved. The above is an op-ed article on abortion written by TAFOL officers and circulated to various newspapers by The Ayn Rand Institute on behalf of TAFOL. The Christian Science Monitor initially accepted the op-ed article for publication but subsequently rejected it. Published in Capitalism Magazine by permission of TAFOL.
The Assault on the Right to Abortion
It bears noting that although the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling correctly asserted that abortion was a right, the ruling was nonetheless doubly botched. Justices based the ruling on a right to privacy and alleged that non-enumerated rights are based on tradition.
