Are women entitled to individual liberty? Apparently not.
by digby
I will never in a million years understand how libertarians can use this logic:
A libertarian-leaning Republican congressman from Michigan who has been billed as the “new Ron Paul” says that he would ban “abortion-causing” birth control and a woman’s right to choose abortion more than three days after conception.
In an interview published on Monday, Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) told Reason‘s Nick Gillespie that he favored as little federal government as possible on issues like same sex marriage.
“I don’t think there should be federal definition of marriage,” Amash explained. “So I think the federal government should just stay out of this. Really, marriage should be a private contract that has nothing to do with government.”
But when it came to abortion, the Michigan Republican said that he wanted to see the government take a major role in forcing women to go through with unwanted pregnancies.
“It’s a tricky question, but where we have it now is not correct,” Amash insisted. “It should be closer to the point of conception, whether it’s instantly or the first three days. I think that’s more sensible. That’s what I think would be correct.”
On the question of contraception, he admitted that “I haven’t thought about all the types of birth control, but there are certain types of birth control that I would consider, you know, abortion causing and there are other methods of birth control that I think would be fine.”
The only way to explain this philosophical contradiction is if they believe that a woman, who is evidently not even relevant enough to be accorded mention in this discussion, is simply unworthy of fundamental individual liberty --- the alleged raison d'etre of the libertarian movement.
If anyone truly wonders why there are so few female libertarians, this might just be one of the reasons.
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