Posted on 07/24/2012 4:30:21 PM PDT by wagglebee
“Reproductive rights.” That’s how Planned Parenthood and pro-abortion politicians have been terming the right to abortion.
Recently, I’ve been reading about John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) and his The Second Treatise of Government (1690). There’s a reason that Locke’s philosophy is timeless, why I still marvel at it after six years of learning about it, and why the world still marvels at it after 322 years.
It’s because Locke scientifically concluded that man is born with rights and the state’s duty is to protect those rights. Unlike Thomas Hobbes, who argued that man’s life is short, nasty and brutish and that an absolute government is needed to stamp out that brutishness, Locke argued that in a state of nature (where there is no government), God has given man inalienable rights, life, liberty, and property. Every human lives with the freedom to act as he (or she) pleases. He has command over his own personhood – he owns himself (his reason, his labor, and the fruits of that labor).
Governments are instituted among men because the natural law can be and is violated. The government’s role is to protect those rights. Not to manipulate or create others.
We already see how the right to life is literally mutilated by the pro-abortionists.
But with the manipulation of the term “reproductive rights” we see the creation of rights that the government was not instituted to protect. And with that creation, we see a contradiction between these new rights and our traditional and harmonious, inalienable ones.
In the state of nature, man is born with dominion over himself alone. He is not born as a subject. And he is not born with dominion over anyone else. Acknowledging this right to individuality and freedom and creating laws to defend them are fundamental to the maintenance of a free society.
But once you say that you have a right to an abortion, you capsize that free society. Not only do you obliterate the right to life, but you claim that somebody else’s reason and labor is your right. You claim dominion over somebody else. You institute slavery.
Regardless of whether a doctor or institution disagrees with abortion, once a society legally recognizes a right to that service, that doctor or institution must provide it. The society legally recognizes a person’s ownership of another human being.
The true reproductive right is to choose to participate or not to participate in procreation. This does not conflict with natural law. Life, liberty, and property are preserved.
But “reproductive rights,” or “reproductive justice,” conflict with natural rights, the rights that our nation was founded to defend. That’s why Roe was such a crazy decision. Not only did the Founders not include anything about abortion in the Constitution, but they would never have done so because recognizing abortion as a right would be a disgusting contradiction in a free society.
It’s because Locke scientifically concluded that man is born with rights and the state’s duty is to protect those rights. Unlike Thomas Hobbes, who argued that man’s life is short, nasty and brutish and that an absolute government is needed to stamp out that brutishness, Locke argued that in a state of nature (where there is no government), God has given man inalienable rights, life, liberty, and property. Every human lives with the freedom to act as he (or she) pleases. He has command over his own personhood – he owns himself (his reason, his labor, and the fruits of that labor).
Governments are instituted among men because the natural law can be and is violated. The government’s role is to protect those rights. Not to manipulate or create others.
We already see how the right to life is literally mutilated by the pro-abortionists.
But with the manipulation of the term “reproductive rights” we see the creation of rights that the government was not instituted to protect. And with that creation, we see a contradiction between these new rights and our traditional and harmonious, inalienable ones.
In the state of nature, man is born with dominion over himself alone. He is not born as a subject. And he is not born with dominion over anyone else. Acknowledging this right to individuality and freedom and creating laws to defend them are fundamental to the maintenance of a free society.
But once you say that you have a right to an abortion, you capsize that free society. Not only do you obliterate the right to life, but you claim that somebody else’s reason and labor is your right. You claim dominion over somebody else. You institute slavery.
Regardless of whether a doctor or institution disagrees with abortion, once a society legally recognizes a right to that service, that doctor or institution must provide it. The society legally recognizes a person’s ownership of another human being.
The true reproductive right is to choose to participate or not to participate in procreation. This does not conflict with natural law. Life, liberty, and property are preserved.
But “reproductive rights,” or “reproductive justice,” conflict with natural rights, the rights that our nation was founded to defend. That’s why Roe was such a crazy decision. Not only did the Founders not include anything about abortion in the Constitution, but they would never have done so because recognizing abortion as a right would be a disgusting contradiction in a free society.
And this is what the Founding Fathers understood perfectly when they stated, "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men." The Founders understood that ANY other role of government was destructive.
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Every time someone tells me that Texas is conservative I remind them that Charlie Rose, Dan Rather, Scott Pelley, Jim Leher all started their news careers in Texas. Being consrvative is a state of mind not a place.
Well, the argument the whores/abortionists/libtards use is that the child is not born, thus not have rights.
However, the Declaration of Independence clearly asserts that mankind's rights are "endowed by their Creator." This means our rights exist from the moment of creation, and in the case of the individual that would be at the moment of conception.
Governments are instituted among men because the natural law can be and is violated. The government’s role is to protect those rights. Not to manipulate or create others.
AMEN to that, dear wagglebee!!!
All thanks and praise be to God!
From Trenchard & Gordon, Cato's Letters (1721):
All men are born free; Liberty is a Gift which they receive from God; nor can they alienate the same by Consent, though possibly they may forfeit it by crimes....Cato's Letters, published out of London, were avidly read in the American colonies up to the time of the Revolution. These Letters clearly reflect, not only Locke, the "Father of the Glorious Revolution" of 1688 (and world-class political philosopher); but the thought and belief of the Framers of the U.S. Constitution.
Liberty is the power which every man has over his own Actions, and the Right to enjoy the Fruit of his Labor, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Member of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys.
The fruits of a Man's honest Industry are the just rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal Equity, as is his Title to use them in the Manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above Limitations, every Man is sole Lord and Arbiter of his own private Actions and Property....
Thank you so very much, dear wagglebee, for this most excellent post!
“This means our rights exist from the moment of creation, and in the case of the individual that would be at the moment of conception.”
Wrong. To them, the conception is just a phenomenon where a victorious semen fertilizes an egg. The real birth of an individual is where he or she applies for food stamp and government housing.
This passage perfectly states why euthanasia is also a violation of our God-given rights. We CANNOT legally or morally forfeit our right to life.
bkmk
Here in Northern Nevada the Obama champaign is repeated running a TV ad featuring a plain-jane thirty something woman pitifully expressing fear at the prospect of Mitt Romney becoming president. The poor hapless woman frets that she would be denied “free” contraceptives and abortions. I hope the DNC continues to squander its funds on this lame ad. This ad assumes that all women are victims of sexist men.
Indeed, that is so WRT euthanasia! And ditto with suicide.
Nor can we justly surrender any of our other rights to dictators — notwithstanding their blandishments, promising safety, public goodies at someone else's expense, or what-not in exchange for our God-given liberties.
Inalienable rights inhere in ourselves as grants of God. There's no moral way to get rid of them.
Among other things, this means we cannot give consent to our enslavement by dictators.
The only way to "get rid of" our inalienable rights is to forfeit them, by committing a crime, the determination of one's guilt for which is left to the unanimous finding of a jury of one's peers....
Thanks ever so much for writing, dear wagglebee!
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