by Ron Paul
Similar circumstances could be avoided by explicit agreements between the partners—including the intended final outcome for the embryos not implanted in the potential mother.
No one could possibly be forced to accept an unused embryo—and this points out the need for ethical behavior on the part of the physicians not to over-produce embryos. Although held in suspended animation, the embryos, in many ways, have already been “aborted.” Compulsion through legislation to solve the problem would not be wise.
Education, persuasion, and boycotts must be the tools for pro-life advocates to handle this most difficult problem. Pro-lifers could choose to play a part in adopting unwanted embryos on a voluntary basis.
Some may argue that the act of providing too many embryos that are never implanted is an act of aggression, just as if the curette removed the embryo from the uterus. I don’t agree. The embryos were conceived with the use of medical technology designed for one purpose, and that was not to destroy life, but rather to enhance life.
The infertility specialist can hardly be compared to the abortionist who performs a deliberate and clear act of aggression to destroy a fetus. The difficult circumstance of too many embryos is a result of human error and mismanagement, not an act equivalent to abortion. Dealing with this problem, without coercive government regulation, still allows us to recognize the special value of all human life.
Any temptation to over-legislate in this sensitive area should be avoided. The use of volunteerism, education, and contracts may be an imperfect solution for solving the problem surrounding frozen embryos, but it’s far better than having the U.S. Congress deal with it. A moral, ethical society can sort out this particular dilemma. If there seems to be no adequate answer, maybe we haven’t met the criterion.
Preventing the death or excessive creation of embryos should be dealt with in a manner like the morning-after pill. For practical and libertarian reasons, RU486 cannot be banned, and limiting its use must result from the standards we voluntarily set for ourselves. The same is true in dealing with embryos outside the body that have already been aborted.
We, as pro-lifers, cannot hide behind the laws and expect a law to do what we, in our own families and churches, have failed to do.
The ultimate respect for life that the right-to-lifers believe is critical for our survival as a civilized society cannot be legislated when a direct act of aggression is poorly defined or difficult to legally or medically prove.
We, as pro-lifers, cannot hide behind the laws and expect a law to do what we, in our own families and churches, have failed to do. Better the wrath be directed toward the liberal church leaders, who have a bizarre understanding of the sanctity of life, and condone abortion, than toward those of us who choose to write fewer laws.
Democratically Determining Rights:
After the Webster ruling, the consensus was that each state would democratically determine the legal status of the pre-born and laws would be written accordingly. There is a sound precedent in this country for states writing laws regarding acts of aggression, enforcing the laws, and prescribing penalties. But the states, through the legislature, in response to lobbyists, cannot arbitrarily decide that murder, theft, or fraud are victimless crimes, thus legalizing acts of aggression. Rights should never be determined by the majority.
Inalienable rights cannot be arbitrarily defined by various legislatures or by majority vote. Individuals either have a right to life and liberty, or they don’t.
If the pre-born are declared non-human, subhuman, or not alive, and are disqualified from protection, it should be a national policy, just as other positions on civil liberties are.
The first amendment is certainly not negotiable through majority vote of the various state legislatures. Unfortunately, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments have been arbitrarily disavowed by our entire legislative and judicial system.
If the pre-born is alive, legal, human, and deserves liberty and life, this fact cannot be negotiated or diluted by popular vote. Popular vote and law never justified the denial of the inalienable right of the American slave.
The first amendment is certainly not negotiable through majority vote of the various state legislatures.
Rights either exist or they don’t. There is no middle ground.
The states, nevertheless, under our system of government, will remain responsible for dealing with penalties for any and all acts of aggression, including the killing of the unborn. The right to live is inalienable and absolute (acts of aggression can justify killing in self-defense), but the punishment and the policing of abortion practices reflect public opinion and the consensus of the various state legislatures.
Rights should never be put on the auction block and determined by majority opinion. The whole thrust of the Constitution in a free society is to protect the rights of the minority, the weak, the infirm, and the poor from abuse by the majority, the strong, the healthy, and the rich.
Parental Consent:
It’s easier for a minor to get an abortion without parental consent, than it is to receive medical care in a hospital’s emergency room. Traditionally, treating a minor without parental consent is malpractice. The parents or legal guardians are clearly responsible for the care of the child and deserve notification of any pending treatment. In today’s world, that has all changed. Since abortion on demand is mainly a contraceptive procedure, young teenagers are frequently involved.
Liberals and radical libertarians claim children are not responsible to their parents and that parents have no right to know if a teenager, living at home, is undergoing an abortion. Yet if complications should arise, the parent would be financially responsible for the care of the child.
Specifically denying critical medical information regarding a child to the parent is destructive to the family and enhances the power of the state. This policy cannot magically bestow adulthood on a child. The state would be replaced by the parent in granting the permission to treat.
The argument that children are totally independent individuals, responsible only to themselves, and can make their own decisions is foolish. A ten, eleven, twelve, or thirteen-year-old certainly can’t make adult decisions. It’s not a choice of parental control and responsibility versus the child’s right to independence. It’s parental rights versus the state.
Since children can’t be responsible, it’s only a choice between parental controls versus governmental controls. The state should never qualify as parent. Yet that is the trend controlling education, medical care, and day-care centers.
The child is not capable of making adult decisions—the control and responsibility must be placed either on the state or the parents. Certainly in a free society, it should be placed in the hands of the parents or guardians.
Arguing that children can seek other guardians if they are “unhappy” is nonsense. Violent behavior toward children should be dealt with by laws governing physical abuse, not by pretending children can make adult choices in their effort to seek other guardians at will. If guardians or parents choose to relinquish their responsibility to their children, they have the obligation to seek others willing to assume guardianship.
Children cannot legally borrow money without parental consent, since parents would be responsible. But today, young people can obtain an abortion without notifying the parents. In an age of materialism, I guess, one would expect that more value would be placed on money, than on life.
Animal “Rights”:
It’s an interesting phenomenon to meet compassionate people whose hearts ache for the needless slaughter and abuse of animals, and yet show no compassion whatsoever for a live human fetus about to be aborted. I understand the right-to-lifers who are less concerned about animals since they come from a background that teaches human beings are superior and have dominion over the animal world.
Although I do not participate in hunting because I find it personally disagreeable, it’s difficult for me to understand the rabid enthusiasm some people show for seals, tu
rtles, and dolphins and yet think nothing of aborting human life. How animal life can be superior to human life is difficult to fathom. Arguing that animal rights—which in itself is difficult to define—are superior to the rights of the fetus, must surely be a contradiction characteristic of our age.
Opposing abortion and condemning cruelty to animals would be a more consistent position to take. I certainly identify with those who despise useless cruelty to animals, but to argue that a chicken or a goat has an inalienable right to life is incompatible with my political philosophy.
The bizarre position of championing animal rights in an extreme manner as part of a great crusade, while endorsing abortion-on-demand, is difficult to understand, to say the least. I can more easily identify with Albert Schweitzer’s philosophy of respect for all life. A position that endorses abortion plus an attitude that says “animals be damned” is much more consistent. Being pro-life with compassion for all animal life is consistent and is, for many, a proper position.
RU486—The Morning-After Pill:
Easy access to abortion with a morning-after pill is close to reality. Already, RU486 is available in France and China and its use as an abortifacient will continue to be refined. Just as other scientific discoveries have been used for both good and evil, this drug will be used to destroy life as well as save life (cancer) and create life (infertility).
Abortifacients have been around for thousands of years. Many have proven deadly to the mother, as well as to the fetus, and have been notoriously dangerous. Modern science, perversely used to destroy life, has now produced a drug that is an efficient abortifacient without causing great danger to the woman’s health. RU486, which is a strong anti-progestational agent, is legal in China and France and is used frequently to cause early abortions.
RU486 is a derivative of norethisterone, an artificial progestational agent used in medicine. The earlier it’s used, the more effective it is in producing an abortion. Using a prostaglandin along with RU486, makes it nearly 100 percent effective in causing an abortion in the early weeks of pregnancy. Naturally produced progesterone is critical in altering the endometrium after ovulation, to prepare the uterus for implantation if an ovum becomes fertilized.
RU486 blocks the receptor sites for progesterone and prevents the maturing of the endometrial lining so it either refuses to accept or rejects a fetus.
Opponents of abortion cannot accept the notion that the way to prevent early abortion is to ban RU486 any more than banning guns or suction curettes would reduce acts of aggression. Besides, RU486, will most likely be used in many positive ways as more knowledge is gained of its usage.
Theoretically, RU486 will be helpful in treating estrogen-dependent breast cancer, endometriosis, infertility, and possibly Cushing Syndrome. It is quite likely that it will serve as a true contraceptive without causing abortion.
Pro-lifers, who agree that making drugs like RU486 illegal is unwise, may support boycotts that would pressure the drug companies to not produce this drug for the purpose of abortion. Any attempt to make the drug illegal will slow the development of the drug for beneficial purposes and, of course, drive up its price while pushing its sale into the underground. The FDA, in its infinite wisdom, has caused enough harm already in obstructing the development of new drugs for AIDS and cancer, and they don’t need any more encouragement.
RU486 produced in the underground would also more likely be impure and dosages poorly measured, making it a more dangerous drug.
For those who would cling to the notion that prohibition of RU486 is the practical and proper position for anti-abortion forces, consider this analogy. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that 15 grains of aspirin taken at the time the menstrual period is due would bring on a menstrual period, whether or not the woman was pregnant.
Could early abortions be prevented by banning aspirin from the shelves? Obviously not—aspirin prices would merely rise, legitimate usage would be difficult, and the police activities used to find out who’s aborting or not would make a joke of the idea of personal liberty. It probably won’t ever be quite so simple as taking three aspirin tablets, but surely by the year 2000, modern destructive science will have achieved something close to it. This fact cannot be ignored.
There was a time in our history when medical awards were presented to great men of science who cured diseases. However in September 1989 the prestigious Albert Lasker Medical Research Award went to the French scientist, Dr. Etienne-Emile Baulieu, for developing RU486, the drug that stops the development of a fertilized egg. This award demonstrates the irony of our age.
Baulieu acknowledges that the research was done for the purpose of facilitating abortion—not for some of the positive ways that RU486 might someday be used. In accepting the award, Baulieu admitted that, even with legalized abortion, 200,000 women throughout the world die each year as a result of this procedure, and “many hundreds of thousands of women are wounded physically and psychologically.” Evidently, legalized abortion is not as safe as some have claimed.
RU486 should not be banned. It would accomplish nothing, and will not prevent its use as an abortifacient. The facts are that very early abortions on demand will one day be readily available in the form of a morning-after pill, if not over the counter, from doctors, or in the underground.
Evidently, legalized abortion is not as safe as some have claimed.
The question will be raised by some, whether prevention of implantation is an overt act of aggression, since surely it will cause the death of the embryo, albeit indirectly. If it’s construed as an act of aggression, libertarians will not participate, not because of the law, but because it causes the death of a living being.
It may be argued that the embryo, resulting from rape, is no more deserving of death than any other embryo, and altering the endometrium is the same for both. Yet the embryo, resulting from rape, is clearly not a result of a volitional act of the woman and she is not responsible for it or obligated to accept it.
I respect the view of those who hold that any altering of the endometrium is an act of aggression, but personally I believe an ovum, fertilized through the act of rape, and prior to implantation, should not preclude the woman’s right to alter her own endometrium. This means I view the ovum, fertilized through rape, as a direct threat to the woman’s well-being.
The point really isn’t what I or other right-to-life proponents think about this early stage, because it’s not legally or medically provable whether altering the endometrium did actually prevent implantation of an embryo. It’s worth a philosophic and theoretical discussion, but cannot be justification for coercive legislation. Neither is forcing pregnancy tests on all women at the time of a menstrual period worthy of consideration.
Some have argued, but never proven, that birth control pills and IUD’s are effective only because they’re early abortifacients or prevent implantation. Others have argued that birth control pills work, not by altering the endometrium, but by inhibiting ovulation (which is the conventional view), and the IUD alters the speed of sperm and egg passage, thus preventing conception.
This medical controversy cannot be settled by fiat legislation. Banning birth control pills and IUD’s because of the way they might work, while never knowing when and if, doesn’t make any sense.
However, if a known pregnancy is present and an IUD is placed in the uterus for the specific purpose of aborting the fetus, a clear act of aggression has been committed.
If RU486 is used in very early pregnancy, when pregnancy virtually is impossible to detect, without prior and restrictive police activity, no known government agency, physician, or district attorney could possibly prove a crime was committed without total sacrifice of all liberty. This would not make early abortions right but, in reality a government limited to the purpose of protecting life and liberty can do no better.
The choice to use the morning-after pill would be personal. It would involve a moral decision, and for many it would be a serious religious matter.
A position such as I have outlined, although it would not prevent early and easily accessible abortion, would still command respect for all life and liberty. Using a morning-after pill to abort a two-to-three week fetus is beyond government capacity to police. Overt acts performed for the specific purpose of killing a known live human being within the uterus should be illegal.
The choice to use the morning-after pill would be personal. It would involve a moral decision, and for many it would be a serious religious matter. The responsibility for eliminating all abortions, and having a society where even the morning-after pill was never used to abort a pregnancy, would become the moral responsibility of the individual, families, churches, and other private groups.
If this should fail, the pro-life forces cannot blame the absence of strong laws. They must accept some of the responsibility for failing to convince the people participating in abortion that abortion should not be performed, even in the early stages when no one knows for sure if an abortion actually has occurred. It would be impossible under these circumstances to distinguish between a normal menstrual period and a two-week abortion for medical and legal reasons. This would make abortions at this particular time a strictly personal, moral decision.
As tough as it is for pro-lifers, we must accept the fact that if we are to have a society free of abortion, the elimination of early abortions in the 21st Century will come only through moral persuasion, in the marketplace of morality and ideas, and will not be achieved though unreasonable intrusive legislation.
