Pro-Life Libertarians?

The blog Surfeited with Dainties smartly picks up the various commentators who have recently been expressing libertarian dismay with the libertarian Ron Paul’s opposition to abortion.

The blog’s author, Michael Brendan Dougherty, points, for instance, to this extraordinary passage from the American Prospect ‘s Dana Goldstein:

Earth to liberals and moderate conservatives who value individual rights and liberty: Ron Paul is not your guy, at least not if you believe women deserve the same freedom as men . . . . What is “freedom and toleration” without a woman’s right to control her reproductive destiny? What is an “ability to grasp that not all human problems are soluble” without the acknowledgment that unplanned pregnancy, and the havoc it brings, are features of human life that can not be eradicated?

Ah, yes, Dougherty remarks, “We don’t want to go back to the bad old days before Roe v. Wade when only men were allowed to get abortions.” For that matter, isn’t that an odd use of the word destiny ? “Why, Ron Paul, won’t you allow women to determine their pregnancies by allowing the stars to predetermine them? Also, is it smart for pro-choicers to defend themselves by saying that ‘unplanned pregnancies’ involve features of ‘human life that can not be eradicated’? Presumably you can eradicate the ‘features of human life’ that are in utero.”

Not being much of a libertarian outside of economic matters, I don’t quite get the attraction of the Ron Paul road-show (though Tucker Carlson has a fun fear-and-loathing feature about it all in a recent issue of the New Republic ). But a smart libertarian case against abortion is worth considering. Certainly more so than the easy assumption of a gotcha! moment in the libertarian Ron Paul’s pro-life stance—particularly when it comes from the journalists Dougherty mentions, many of whom are not even close to libertarians themselves.