A Libertarian case for supporting abortion rights even if you believe that "life

[Brandon H]

If I did not consider the unborn child to be human, I wouldn't see much of an issue with abortion. But to acknowledge the child as human and still believe it ok to kill the child doesn't quite add up. Once you acknowledge the child as human and does not have rights and it's ok to kill him / her, what other humans are ok to kill?

If pregnancy is compared to slavery and the child is considered a trespasser, why isn't the child simply removed and placed in a respirator or some artificial means to help save their life? Instead, an abortion is a violent procedure in which the body of the fetus is ripped apart with a powerful vacuum cleaner or cut apart with scissors. How can one acknowledge the child as human and justify that procedure for killing him / her? Even in the case of executing a criminal, we look for what we believe is the least painful way of doing so (taking into consideration that lethal injection may be much more painful than initially thought). Likewise, I'm a court case for a murder with a single gunshot would viewed much different from a case where one tortures the victim before killing them. (And if an abortion procedure was used to kill a fully grown human, it would be considered torture.)

[Brandon H]

Regardless of viability, why is the child killed with a brutal procedure?

And what determines viability? A certain time from gestation? There is no way to even determine when gestation took place. You can't go by size because there have been both large and small babies born that have turned out perfectly healthy? And as technology improves, what was "viable" today wasn't "viable" 10 years ago.

Torie's post reminds me of another point: is a child whose pregnancy last 9 months viable after birth if no ones cares for that child?

[Brandon H]

Viability is defined as the ability of the fetus to survive outside the womb. You are right that it may vary according to circumstance.

But how is that determined? If you remove the fetus early in the pregnancy, he / she (on the proper medical equipment) could survive a few hours or a few days or could possible survive and eventually grow into a health adult. Other than actually checking to see if the fetus could survive, there is no way to actually check viability. You can't say he / she wasn't viable yesterday but is viable today.

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I would say most libertarians support legalized abortion, but most libertarians are able to work with each other on common ground, rather than make a political enemy out of someone because they disagree on that particular issue.

[Brandon H]

You can be reasonably certain about viability during the time period where well more than 9 out of 10 abortions are performed... the first trimester or within one month of it. You can also be reasonably certain at the very end stages of a pregnancy. There is only a window of some weeks where you are unsure. According to this line of reasoning, there would be nothing wrong with testing viability by removing the fetus from the womb.

So if there is nothing wrong with it, why not do exactly that instead of intentionally killing the child with the previously mentioned (page 1 of this thread) methods? If the child can be removed and it may or may not result in death, what justifies the intentional killing?