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Hobby Lobby Opponents: Intellectually Stunning

For anyone who, like me, believes an employer should not be forced to pay for his or her employee’s abortifacient, see what you’re up against (i.e. not much):

But you already knew that.

I am, for the record, pro-choice in the literal sense — literally pro-choice — which means: I believe fully in the pregnant woman’s right to choose abortion or choose to give birth, as she and she alone decide —  just as I fully in an employer’s right to choose to pay or not pay for his or her employee’s abortifacient, according to the employers conscience and convictions. Or to put that another way: employees do not work for an employer by right but by contractual agreement and therefore have absolutely no right over their employer’s conscience or personal beliefs or personal convictions.  The employees in such a scenario are deprived of no legitimate rights of they own. They are free to quit at any time. They are free to pursue employment elsewhere.

There is no right to have your birth control paid for.

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“Fetal Rights,” Abortion, And Public Funding Of Abortion

By definition, a fetus does not possess rights because the things in nature that give rise to rights are human individuation and the faculty of volition, which in turn gives rise to moral agency.

A fetus is the diametric opposite of individuated: it lives off of a fully individuated host. For this precise reason, the right belongs exclusively to the host — i.e. the pregnant woman — from whom that fetus derives its life entire. When the fetus is born, it becomes individuated. It is at this point that rights begin.

There are no such things as fetal rights — just as there are no such things a zygotic rights or cytoplasmic rights or protoplasmic rights.

On this issue, as on many others, I stand in complete disagreement with so-called libertarians (a meaningless word), many of whom are far to the left and many of whom are far to the right. I am, for the record, a classical liberal. And here’s one thing I’d like for someone to explain to me at last:

How does it follow that because a woman does possess the inalienable right to choose abortion or not, I or anyone else should therefore be forced to fund the abortions of others, as Barack Obama and the leftwingers are now demanding?

Answer: it does not. It does not follow.

This is a non-sequitur fallacy writ large.

My rights, your rights, everyone’s rights stop where another’s begin.