Pro-Choice About What?

By Alec Parent

Many liberals love to brag about how they are “pro-choice” on abortion. They try to paint their pro-choice ideology as indicative of them being the ones who support individual liberty and freedom. But is this really true?

Nope.

In reality, most liberals are among the most anti-choice people around. Don’t believe me? Let’s go down the list.

• Education- Many liberals don’t support school choice, oppose the greater expansion of private schools, and vote to maintain the Teachers Union’s stranglehold on public education.
• Guns- Many liberals support gun control and don’t believe people should be able to choose to purchase a gun to defend themselves.
• Healthcare- Many liberals don’t believe that people should be able to choose to buy insurance over state lines. They also believe in mandating that people buy health insurance.
• Social Security- Most liberals believe in forcing people to pay into social security. They don’t believe that people should be able to choose where to invest their personal retirement savings.
• Property Rights- Many liberals oppose allowing more freedom for homeowners to  choose to do what they please with their private property and have no problem with the abuse of eminent domain.
• Freedom of Ideas- Many liberals support the Fairness Doctrine which would, despite its name, eliminate the ability for people to choose the type of ideas they want to hear. (and I thought they were all about tolerance…)

Of all of things you can allow choice on, abortion is one of the most absurd. I tend to be quite libertarian on social issues, but people shouldn’t be able to kill an unborn child and play it off as a “personal choice”. It’s murder plain and simple. You don’t say that people should have the right to murder someone else on the street, so why is abortion ok? The only difference is that the unborn child can’t do anything to stop it.

There is one unifying trait in the list of choices posted above. It is that all of the choices don’t interfere with someone else’s personal rights. Abortion does just that.

What irks me even more is people who say, “Well, I don’t personally support abortion, but people should have the right to choose.” What a cop out. What if someone said, “I don’t support slavery, but people should be able to make the choice for themselves whether to buy a slave or not.”?

The conclusion here is this: While those on the left love to talk about personal freedom with regards to abortion, they don’t walk the walk when it comes to other areas of personal freedom. In the end they are statists. Abortion on the other hand isn’t an issue of personal freedom but of human life and murder. To interfere with the right to life that an unborn baby has is not a “personal choice” that people should be able to make.

Alec Parent is the founder and editor-in-chief of nextgenbloggers.com