Thus, even when viewed in the harshest light of reality, abortion is at most a kind of partial suicide. Like suicide, no one really wants it to be a part of their life, but when faced with a deeply painful alternative, may well choose to do so. Unlike suicide, however, an abortion does not prevent a woman from thereafter having children and leading a highly productive life, and in fact there are undoubtedly millions of people on this earth who would never have been conceived or born but for a decision made by their mother to have an abortion when she was young and unprepared for the challenge of raising a child, in favor of having children when she was older, wiser, wealthier, more emotionally mature, and in a more stable relationship with her mate. If one accepts the notion that the state should forcefully impose a duty upon women to bring their pregnancies to term and raise unwanted children, then the same kind of constructed duties can be used by the state to dictate how children should be fed, housed, educated, clothed, disciplined, and otherwise cared for, as well as dictating how many children a couple may have. Thus, anti-choice conservatives who constantly rail against government interference in education and control of their children s decisions are just as inconsistent as liberals who argue that woman should have a choice on abortion but the government should play a big and coercive role in child care and education.
Rights are antecedent to government.
Nor does government have any just power to legalize and protect the intentional or negligent killing of prenatal children. In fact, such rights are not at all self-evident, but rather assumed for the sake of convenience by liberty lovers who were seeking some rational or spiritual justification for their intuitive thinking. This is a principle which fleshes out the concept of enlightened self interest that was introduced to civilization by Alexis de Tocqueville and other early classical liberals who were trying to strike a balance between freedom and responsibility. They recognized that it is unrealistic to expect people to respect the property of their fellow beings merely because they were told to do so by an authority figure, but if they could be shown that it was in their own self serving interest to respect the property of another, then even total strangers would have a basis upon which to engage in mutually profitable enterprises and maintain peaceful relations. When applied to the abortion issue, the productivity principle reveals that no one has more to gain from bearing and raising loving, productive children than their parents, and so the decisions they make regarding their parenting should be respected unless they cause or threaten damage to others outside the family unit.