Abortion and "Responsibility". I came across a weblog post somewhere comparing the anti-abortion position to a pro-responsibility stance. In response to this, I wanted to state my own position in general terms. The following principles seem pretty basic, fairly obvious, and, I think, close the book on a variety of issues:

• Separation of church and State - its in the Constitution. I also consider this to be one of the few core ideas worth keeping from my Baptist heritage (although Baptists today seem to have mostly forgotten about it). This is also easy to apply: if a law is based on a strictly religious belief, the law is bad.
• Separation of my business vs your business (i.e. negative rights). This means that consenting adults have a right to do what they want with themselves and each other, provided no coersion is involved. Simple idea. I think it's listed somewhere amongst life, liberty, and property

Let's apply these ideas to abortion. First, how do we know its wrong to have an abortion? The best argument for this claim seems to be: because a religious or spiritual authority tells us so. Particularly in the case of first-trimester abortions, non-religious people are in almost universal agreement that the embryo is an ill-differentiated cell mass. Nothing more. The clash over the supposed "rights of the zygote" is clearly a religious one. If abortion is legal, the state endorses no side. The religious are free to not have abortions in accordance with their own conscience. If abortion is made illegal, it can only be said to be the state's endorsement of a religious belief.

As for responsibility: why is it the state's role to enforce "responsible" decisions? Consider an analogy: unprecedented numbers of Americans are getting irresponsibly fat. Lyposuction is an easy way out. But the only responsible thing for an obese person to do is to make a lifestyle change. So the state outlaws lyposuction. And the conservative pro-diet-and-exercise crowd scorns obese activists by saying "You should have controlled your own urges to stuff your fat faces with donuts! You made your bed, now you lie in it!" This scenario is absurd, because clearly the poor self-control of the obese is no one else's business. There are fat people and there are unwanted pregnancies. Both conditions arise from powerful biological urges. To say "you should control yourself" is ignorant, condescending, and (most importantly) not your concern.

The abortion debate has a fundamental imbalance: the burden of proof is on the anti-abortionists because they want to control someone else's actions. It just isn't enough to say "abortion is wrong." You have to prove that the state has a valid, non-religious interest in stopping it. Areas of relevant state-interest: public health, economics, education, and so on, always benefit from free access to abortion. Health: abortions are now many times safer than giving birth. No costs for prenatal care, etc. Economics: planned families are astronomically more prosperous than unplanned ones. Prosperous families engage in more commerce, investment, etc. The social benefits are overwhelming, once we acknowledge that people's bodies and minds are designed with the central goal of reproducing, and sometimes (very often in fact) the biological facts of being human can frustrate the higher intellectual goals of a planned life.