There are two philosophical/political groups in contemporary society that I know of who seem to speak of a “right to life”, more than anyone. The first group are the so-called “conservatives” when they talk about the issue of abortion. They hold themselves out as being proponents of the “right to life”. The other group are those who admire or ascribe to the fundamentals of the philosophy of Ayn Rand, such as myself. How is the conservative position on the “right to life” different from Ayn Rand’s position on the right to life, specifically when it comes to the issue of abortion? What do conservatives mean when they speak of a “right to life”, and is that different from how Ayn Rand speaks of a right to life?
I will explore this issue below. My goal here is to contrast, not to refute, the conservative position with that of Ayn Rand. I am not primarily engaging in a polemical argument here for purposes of debate. This does not mean I am neutral on this topic. My position on this subject will probably be apparent. I have also expressed some of my views regarding this matter before.
Ayn Rand on the Right to Life
“A ‘right’ is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action—which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)” (“Man’s Rights”, The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand) http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/life,_right_to.html
Some essential features of the Randian view on the right to life include:
(1) Life is self-sustaining and self-generated action
In other words, individuals are required, by the nature of reality, to take action to produce the values necessary for their survival. The values needed to live, like food, clothing and shelter, do not generally exist in nature. They must be produced by someone.
(2) Rights are about freedom of action in a social context. What is meant by a “social context”?
Some dictionary definitions of “society” are:
“…companionship or association with one’s fellows : friendly or intimate intercourse…”
“…a voluntary association of individuals for common ends especially : an organized group working together or periodically meeting because of common interests, beliefs, or profession…”
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/society
So, “society” is a group of individuals interacting with each other. For Rand, social interaction is about the gain derived from doing so, for each individual. Society is not an end in itself. “Society” has no existence apart from the individuals that comprise it. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/society.html
For Rand, “freedom of action in a social context” means the individual ability to act without certain types of force being used, either directly or through threats, to stop that action, by others in society.
What kinds action must individuals be free to take in a social context? They must be free to “…engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action…”
(3) Can some people have the right deprive others of their lives, in order to sustain their own existence?
Since each human being must be free to take the actions necessary to sustain his own life, and it is his right to do so, there can be no “welfare rights”. In other words, there can be no right for others to provide food, clothing, shelter, or the other necessities of life.
“The right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work (on any economic level, as high as his ability will carry him); it does not mean that others must provide him with the necessities of life.” (“Man’s Rights”, The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand, emphasis added.) http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/life,_right_to.html
The “Conservative” Position on the “Right to Life”
There is a certain amount of difficulty in understanding and explaining the conservative position on this issue. There is no single “conservative voice” that speaks for everyone calling their self a conservative on this or any other issue. I will therefore highlight three different positions, taken by individuals or institutions, that I think will be widely regarded as representative. These are: Ronald Reagan, the Catholic Church, and Billy Graham.
(1) Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan spoke of the fetal “right to life” in a Presidential Proclamation in 1988:
“One of those unalienable rights, as the Declaration of Independence affirms so eloquently, is the right to life. In the 15 years since the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, however, America’s unborn have been denied their right to life. Among the tragic and unspeakable results in the past decade and a half have been the loss of life of 22 million infants before birth; the pressure and anguish of countless women and girls who are driven to abortion; and a cheapening of our respect for the human person and the sanctity of human life.” (Proclamation 5761 — National Sanctity of Human Life Day, 1988) https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/proclamation-5761-national-sanctity-human-life-day-1988
Reagan references the Declaration of Independence, which says:
“…all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” (Declaration of Independence)
Rand’s position is similar to that of the Founding Fathers: “The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence.” (Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand) http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/government.html
Since Reagan believes that a fetus has the same “right to life” as a biologically distinct human being, he must have believed that government must take action to protect that right. (The contradiction will become apparent when we discuss what a “fetal right to life” would have to entail, below.)
(2) The Catholic Church
The Catholic church, and various Popes, have spoken on the issue of abortion many times. The Catholic church’s positions on issues like abortion is often very philosophical, and well thought-out. As such, their pronouncements are often very revealing of the institution’s fundamental philosophy and governing principles.
For instance, Pope John Paul II wrote the following on the subject of abortion:
“Man is called to a fullness of life which far exceeds the dimensions of his earthly existence, because it consists in sharing the very life of God. The loftiness of this supernatural vocation reveals the greatness and the inestimable value of human life even in its temporal phase…. At the same time, it is precisely this supernatural calling which highlights the relative character of each individual’s earthly life. After all, life on earth is not an ‘ultimate’ but a ‘penultimate’ reality…” (IOANNES PAULUS PP. II, EVANGELIUM VITAE “To the Bishops Priests and Deacons Men and Women religious lay Faithful and all People of Good Will on the Value and Inviolability of Human Life”) https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae.html
Here, the Pope said that human life is not primarily its “temporal phase”, i.e., our actual biological existence, and the sum-total of our experiences, emotions, thoughts, goals, desires, and happiness. In fact, so says the Pope, our “life on earth” is not an “ultimate” but a “penultimate” reality. In other words, the life that you actually live is nothing but a mere means to the end of your “spiritual life” after you die. (Who determines what is best for that “spiritual life”? The Pope, of course.)
It is rare to see such an express contrast to Ayn Rand’s philosophy laid bare like this. Rand said:
“Man must choose his actions, values and goals by the standard of that which is proper to man—in order to achieve, maintain, fulfill and enjoy that ultimate value, that end in itself, which is his own life.” (“The Objectivist Ethics”, The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand, emphasis added.) http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/standard_of_value.html
By way of contrast, the Pope is saying that this life is “penultimate”, which means “…last but one in a series of things; second last…”. In other words, your actual life that you are living is merely a means to the end of your “spiritual life”, which is the “ultimate value” according to the Catholic church. The Pope says you are to sacrifice this life for a (non-existent) afterlife.
Pope John Paul II went on to say that the “threat” of abortion is the same as the threat of things like poverty, hunger, and disease:
“Today this proclamation is especially pressing because of the extraordinary increase and gravity of threats to the life of individuals and peoples, especially where life is weak and defenceless. In addition to the ancient scourges of poverty, hunger, endemic diseases, violence and war, new threats are emerging on an alarmingly vast scale.” (IOANNES PAULUS PP. II, EVANGELIUM VITAE “To the Bishops Priests and Deacons Men and Women religious lay Faithful and all People of Good Will on the Value and Inviolability of Human Life”) https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae.html
An earlier Pope said that the right to life comes not from the fetus’s parent’s but directly from God:
“Besides, every human being, even the child in the womb, has the right to life directly from God and not from his parents, not from any society or human authority. Therefore, there is no man, no human authority, no science, no ‘indication’ at all—whether it be medical, eugenic, social, economic, or moral—that may offer or give a valid judicial title for a direct deliberate disposal of an innocent human life, that is, a disposal which aims at its destruction, whether as an end in itself or as a means to achieve the end, perhaps in no way at all illicit. Thus, for example, to save the life of the mother is a very noble act; but the direct killing of the child as a means to such an end is illicit.” (Address to Midwives on the Nature of Their Profession Pope Pius XII – 1951) https://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius12/P12midwives.htm
No “human authority” has the right to sanction abortion, which means the Pope has the right to impose his will over that of any democratically elected government. (So much for governments being instituted among Men.)
Given this authoritarian premise, it is no wonder that some Catholic Bishops are seeking to influence the American political system by denying communion to prominent pro-choice Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden. (https://www.miamiherald.com/news/article261652522.html )
(3) Billy Graham
Protestant Evangelicals tend to follow a similar line of reasoning as the Pope and the Catholic church:
“Q: Where in the Bible does it say that abortion is wrong, even murder? A: From the writings of the Rev. Billy Graham Abortion has divided our nation like no other issue in recent times. The Bible places the highest value on human life. It is sacred and of inestimable worth to God, who created it ‘in His own image.’ The Bible recognizes the unborn as being fully human…. We must never think that we can solve one moral crisis by condoning another, especially the crime of murder, for unrestrained abortion is nothing less than that…. The issue of abortion is not whether people have the right to terminate the life of a child; the real issue is whether or not people will insist on running their own lives according to worldly standards that oppose God’s law.” https://billygraham.org/answer/where-in-the-bible-does-it-say-that-abortion-is-wrong-even-murder/
The only likely difference from the Catholics is that Protestants believe the information can all be obtained from the Bible. One doesn’t need an “intermediary” with god, like the Pope, to explain what God wants -you’re supposed to waste your life on nothing all by yourself.
Billy Graham believed that abortion was murder, and that the primary issue is not whether people have the right to an abortion, but whether or not people will insist on running their own lives according to “…worldly standards that oppose God’s law”.
Just as Pope John Paul II indicated, our lives, for Protestant Evangelicals, are not of ultimate importance. Our lives serve some “spiritual life” that we have after we die. We are to live not for our own sake, but for when we die. In practice, this means we are supposed to listen to people like the Pope and Billy Graham, and renounce our happiness in the here and now to the extent they say it is necessary to keep from “opposing God’s law”.
A Common Theme Amongst Conservative Voices On This Issue
All three of these conservative positions rely on the following assumption: The mere fact that a fetus is reflexively and biologically attached to the mother’s uterus, means that the mother has an obligation to allow the fetus to remain biologically attached to her uterus for nine months. The conservative position on the right to life is not just that a fetus has a right to exist on its own, like an actual person, since it cannot. It has a right to be provided with nutrition, sustenance and biological protection from the elements while it develops.
It is undoubtable that even if the fetus could somehow be medically removed from the mother’s uterus surgically without damaging it, this would still be considered murder by the “conservative right to lifers”. (Since a very undeveloped fetus outside the uterus, say within the first few months of development, would die within seconds or minutes.)
To illustrate the conservative position with a more extreme example, if a woman told her doctor to surgically remove her uterus, along with the fetus inside, this would certainly be considered no different than an abortion by the conservative institutions and individuals listed above. They would consider it murder, even though the woman is in no way damaging the fetus itself. (She has simply withdrawn biological sustenance from the fetus.)
This is why the most consistent and philosophical of the three “groups” of conservatives above, the Catholic Church, see their view of the “right to life” as no different than the supposed “right” of poor people to receive free food, medical care, and other welfare benefits from the state:
“”Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated as mere instruments of gain rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others like them are infamies indeed.” https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae.html
Here, the Pope is saying that not only is abortion a sin, but so is free market capitalism. Employers and employees don’t set the terms of working conditions in accordance with their own self-interest. Furthermore, it is an “infamy” to let people live in “subhuman living conditions”, implying that the poor must be provided with housing even if they have chosen not to work to earn the money necessary to obtain shelter.
Later in the same article, the Pope makes his desire to redistribute wealth more explicit. The Catholic church is often criticized for causing hardship amongst poor Catholics by discouraging birth control. As a result, traditional Catholic families are often too large in the poorer countries of Latin America, resulting in real hardship, and even starvation, for those large families. The Pope’s solution to this problem? Don’t blame the Church’s birth control policies. Blame capitalism and the failure to redistribute wealth from wealthy countries to poor countries:
“In the face of over- population in the poorer countries, instead of forms of global intervention at the international level-serious family and social policies, programmes of cultural development and of fair production and distribution of resources-anti-birth policies continue to be enacted.” https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae.html
The Conservative “Right to Life” Position Is Really A “Right To Receive Welfare Benefits Provided By Others” Stance
Unlike the Randian position, which says each individual is free to take action to sustain his or her own life, the conservative position on the “right to life” is the “right” of a fetus to receive biological sustenance for nine months, just like the “workers” supposedly have a right to a “fair wage”, that is not set by free competition and freedom of contract in a free market. The fetus has the same “right to life” as is claimed by socialists when it comes to providing cradle to the grave welfare benefits to those who did not produce anything. It has the same internal contradiction, too. It ignores the question: Provided by whom?
“If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.” (“Man’s Rights” in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.) There can be no such thing as the right to enslave, i.e., the right to destroy rights.” http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/welfare_state.html
At least with the socialists’ “worker’s rights” we are referring to actual, biologically distinct, human beings. In the case of the “rights of the unborn”, we’re talking about enslaving women to imaginary people.