Murder is always a crime
I have always taken what I regard to be a classically liberal and ruggedly secular approach to the issue of abortion, a matter which I feel is best dealt with by reference to degree rather than dogma....
View ArticleAccommodating reality
I suspect the constant trench warfare in American politics over abortion is somewhat mystifying to our overseas observers, and I think abortion poses some real philosophical problems for libertarians...
View ArticleSamizdata slogan of the day
State funding of abortions is, however, a completely different matter. The pro-choicers say it’s a matter of choice. Let it stay that way, then, without forcing people who oppose infanticide to fund...
View ArticleAbortion and Constitutional government
The federal court sitting in (of course) San Francisco has struck down the recent federal ban on “partial-birth abortion.” First, I agree with this decision, but on federalism grounds, not the privacy...
View ArticleWho pays the cost?
The Cost of “Choice” Edited by Erika Bachiochi Encounter Books, San Francisco, 2004 This is a frankly partisan book, and though subtitled Women Evaluate the Impact of Abortion, it would be fair to say...
View ArticleLiberty and abortion
Abortion is an issue that is only simple for people at the extreme ends of the debate. Many leftists support abortion (and generally wants it to be taxpayer subsidised, of course) on the grounds it is...
View ArticleDoes not compute
A Boston woman who gave birth after a failed abortion has filed a lawsuit against two doctors and Planned Parenthood seeking the costs of raising her child This case should not long survive in the...
View ArticleWhat about people who bomb abortion clinics in America?
When reading on the internet about Islamic terrorism, commenters often mention that there is also terrorism by Christian fundamentalists in America, where there have been bombings of abortion clinics...
View ArticleThinking aloud on a mountainside
Imagine you are mountain climbing or hill walking with a friend. Disaster strikes, and your friend is badly injured. Weather conditions are such that if you leave him overnight, he will certainly die....
View Article“I helped shut down an abortion debate between two men because my uterus...
So Oxford student Niamh McIntyre writes in the Independent. She says, The idea that in a free society absolutely everything should be open to debate has a detrimental effect on marginalised groups....
View Article“A huge, stifling bubble”
How sad that the “huge, stifling bubble” being described is a university. I am not quite clear who wrote the following article for student magazine The Tab. The byline says Lucy Kehoe, a co-editor of...
View Article“Does the climate crisis violate the rights of those yet to be born?”
“Does the climate crisis violate the rights of those yet to be born?” asks Astra Taylor in the Guardian. She seems to think the answer is “yes”, but fails to make much of a case. The article is full of...
View ArticleHow not to change minds on abortion
Last December Meghan McArdle tweeted, “Looking at abortion opinion, it’s actually quite striking how little men and women differ on this question. The whole pro-life is about men telling women what to...
View ArticleIt pays to argue against what your opponents actually believe
They say that the Earth’s magnetic poles swap places every few hundred thousand years. “Roe v Wade: US Supreme Court ends constitutional right to abortion”, reports the BBC. A miracle or a catastrophe,...
View ArticleThis is the age of the fact checker
Politico on Twitter said, Clarence Thomas claimed in a dissenting opinion that Covid vaccines are derived from the cells of “aborted children.” No Covid vaccines in the U.S. contain the cells of...
View ArticleArrested for her thoughts
This video of a woman called Isabel Vaughan-Spruce being arrested for praying silently in Birmingham has gone viral. The version to which I link is from the Daily Caller. I have written my own...
View ArticleThe BBC frequently does tell people “who to support and who to condemn”
Four days ago John Simpson of the BBC wrote this article, “Why BBC doesn’t call Hamas militants ‘terrorists’ – John Simpson”, in which he said, “It’s simply not the BBC’s job to tell people who to...
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