Kort Explores conundrums of the human condition

Our free secular society is under increasingly violent attack by terrorists attempting to cloak their crimes behind a banner of religious beliefs, but whose actions are ultimately in the service of intrusive statism and the incremental destruction of freedom in America. Assisted and concealed by misguided citizens beguiled by claims of a "higher purpose", these monsters within our midst kill in the name of saving lives, abuse their rights as citizens of a free society to intentionally obstruct and deny the rights of other citizens, and pretend that their despicable acts of cruelty and violence are justified in the name of religious beliefs whose central figures preached only peace, tolerance, and respect for others.

Just as in all of the too many crimes against humanity that have been committed in the name of religion down through history, the gods of peace and forgiveness are again being transformed into gods of violence and murder in the service of those claiming to be their current temporal representatives. Encouraged by false prophets and venal religionists seeking to advance their own temporal power by claiming exclusive possession of the will of their god, legions of the deceived have been convinced that they have been granted some kind of moral imperative to impose their twisted fears and superstitions on nonbelievers. Unable to implement their morality through nonviolent means, these increasingly dangerous fanatics increasingly resort to terrorism in their efforts to force the secular state to deny the rights of all citizens.

One of the most basic principles of our society has always been that your exercise of your rights ends where you intrude on my rights - your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins. All of us have the right to disagree with the exercise of anyone else's basic human and civil rights, but none of us have any right to unilaterally deny anyone else those rights with which we disapprove - regardless of our beliefs in one or more gods, or any other "higher authority" we might claim to be serving. My right to my own opinions and perversions ends when I attempt to impose them on you against your will. Crimes committed in the name of one or more gods are no more valid than those committed in the name of greed, psychosis, emotional dysfunction, or willful negligence.

It's not surprising that those who advocate the expansion of statist power to control reproductive rights want to focus the debate on the messy details of some medical procedures. Isolated from any overall perspective, nearly all medical procedures can be portrayed in lurid ways designed to offend the tender emotion driven sensibilities of the unthinking. The blood and gore of open heart or major orthopedic surgery far exceeds the messy details of the vast majority of legal abortions. But few rational individuals with a reasonable overall understanding of the issues involved would advocate outlawing open heart and orthopedic surgery simply because what goes on in the operating room appears "gross and revolting" to those unaccustomed to surgical procedures.

Attempting to redefine the "debate" over reproductive rights into a narrow critique of some associated medical procedures does a serious disservice to the rational consideration of the real overall issues involved. The real question isn't whether certain medical procedures should be allowed, but is in reality the question of whether citizens can possess fundamental rights and freedoms, and whether we continue to live in a free society.

Contrary to the claims of the religionist terrorists, the entire issue of regulating abortions is completely outside of the proper scope of the state. Not only does the state lack the "moral" authority to involve itself in the issue of reproductive rights, it lacks any basis under which it has the right to even consider the issue.

Those seeking to disguise their assault on the freedoms of mature citizens like to claim that they are simply advocating "respect" for the imaginary "rights" of the potential citizen represented by the unborn fetus. But this is just yet another deceptive emotion laden smoke screen since in order to "honor" the imagined "rights" of this potential citizen, the state must first eliminate the most basic human and civil rights of an already existing independently viable citizen in the person of the mother. The fetus simply can not possess or exercise any "rights" until it can do so without first violating prior existing rights of the mother. As such, in the issue of reproductive rights, the fetus must remain a nonentity until such time as it is capable of independent existence outside of the womb.

In the case of reproductive rights, no one other than the prospective mother has any right to intrude into that ultimate of private issues of deciding whether or not she will participate and bear the costs of carrying her fetus to term. By definition, pregnancy is a wholly personal event that from a biological perspective is exclusively within the domain of the individual whose body provides the ongoing basic life-support that makes the whole process possible.

Pregnancy has a very real physical cost for the woman. The fetus is entirely dependent on access to the physical assets and processes of the mother. The fetus simply can't exist without imposing a cost on the mother. The issue arguably changes once the fetus becomes capable of life independent of the direct support of the mother. But as long as the fetus is not an independently viable individual and is entirely dependent on the mother, only she has any right to decide whether she will continue to provide that support and tolerate the growth of the fetus within her body.

The concept of control is integral to the concept of ownership. The "ownership" of property becomes a hollow illusion if ownership does not include the right and power to control that property. The most fundamental principle on which our free society was founded was that a Freeman owned his own body, and was the sole authority over how he chose to use the property of his person and live within his own body.

In a free society, unless you willingly transfer your rights, your body belongs to you - not to the king, not to some political commissar, not to some imaginary god, or any other perversion of statist authority. The exceptions to this principle, of course, are those who by their willful actions put themselves outside of the social contract, and must be denied some or all of the rights of Freemen in self-defense by the rest of society.

In order for abortion to even be an issue within a secular society we must first accept that individuals do not own their own bodies, but rather that our bodies are physically owned by the state. We have historically referred to those who have been deprived of the rights of ownership over their own bodies as slaves, while those who seek ownership over the physical bodies of others have historically been referred to as slave owners.

All of our freedoms will be compromised if the state gains the power to eliminate the reproductive rights of the free citizen. We can see this today in the efforts of statists to expand intrusive government regulation into an ever wider variety of life-style decisions of citizens. Consider the degree the statist have intruded into such traditional hallmarks of freedom as the use of substances from intoxicants to vitamins, the right to effective self-defense by bearing arms, child care and education, basic health care decisions, the right to practice one's own religion while being free from the religions of others, etc.

By attempting to expand the power of the state to control the bodies of women, those advocating restrictions on reproductive rights are in reality advocating a basic transfer of rights and powers from the individual to the state. By attacking the rights of free citizens to exercise control over their own bodies, those claiming "concern for the unborn" are actually attacking the most basic principles of our free society, and demonstrating a virulent lack of respect for the most basic rights of all citizens.

In order to consider "abortion" to be a valid issue for discussion, you must first accept that the state has the right and power to intrude into the most personal aspects of its citizen's lives. In order to claim that the state has the right and power to impose control over the reproductive processes of the citizens, you must first accept that the power of the state to dictate the details of how citizens will live their lives exceeds the basic rights of the citizens to live free within their own persons and exercise control over their own bodies. Statist control over reproductive rights directly violates the most basic principles of our free society, and directly contradicts the most basic concepts of freedom and individual liberty.

Are we a society of Freemen or slaves of the state? Is our government the servant of a free people, or the authoritarian slave owner of the people? As a Freeman, I oppose the efforts of statists to intrude into the wholly personal issue of reproductive rights. Whether a woman carries a fetus to term or decides to terminate her pregnancy is no one's concern but her own.