For decades, Democrats have tried to frame the abortion question in essentially libertarian terms, as one of opposition to government intruding on personal decisions. But by making support for taxpayer funded abortions their default position, candidates for the 2020 Democratic nomination have undermined their ability to make the small government case for abortion rights.
Libertarians themselves, it should be said, are divided on abortion. For some, the issue is straight forward: If you support limited government, you cannot support restrictions over what women try to do with their bodies. However, libertarians also believe that the primary function of government is to protect the right to life, so to those libertarians who believe an unborn child qualifies as a life, it naturally flows that they’d believe it is legitimate for government to protect that child’s life and liberty.
Reason’s Stephanie Slade (a self-described pro-life libertarian) observed that Wednesday night’s debate showed, “that for the 2020 Democratic hopefuls, it’s not enough for abortion to be legal. To meet the criterion of ‘justice,’ the procedure must be paid for by someone other than the woman seeking it.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who supports putting all Americans on a single government-run plan, said “I would make certain that every woman has access to the full range of reproductive health care services, and that includes birth control, that includes abortion, it includes everything for a woman.” Julián Castro said, “I don’t believe only in reproductive freedom. I believe in reproductive justice. And what that means is just because a woman, or let’s also not forget someone in the trans community…is poor doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have the right to exercise that right to choose. And so I absolutely would cover the right to have an abortion.”
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said that all insurance companies should be forced to cover abortion.
The declarations should come as no surprise after Joe Biden abandoned decades of support for the Hyde Amendment that prevents Medicaid from covering abortion, arguing that lower-income women must be given equal access to abortions.
This is, of course, a consistent liberal position — that if you believe free healthcare is a right and that abortion is a right, it would follow that you believe everybody has a right to free abortions. But it is no longer a position that can be justified on libertarian grounds where the case would be that women have a right to abortions, but taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to pay for them and insurers shouldn’t be forced to cover them.
As none other than Biden himself put it in 1986 in explaining his opposition to taxpayer funded abortion, “If it’s not government’s business, then you have to accept the whole of that concept, which means you don’t proscribe your right to have an abortion and you don’t take your money to assist someone else to have an abortion.”
