 So how does this view of right then connect to the issue of abortion? Why is it that a fetus doesn't have rights? I think before we turn to that question, we should get another issue on the table, but particularly if we're going to get the objectivist approach here and it relates to the pursuit of happiness, because there's a way in which all the discussions of abortion are we want to either prevent it, outlaw it, or regulate it almost out of existence, and it's like that's taken as that's the moral position and now defend why you should be able to abort in this context or this section and it's oh well the life of the mother is threatened or it was raped and so and I think that's completely the wrong way to look at it that and if we connected to the issue of the pursuit of happiness, part of the whole enlightenment project, and I think this is one of the central aspects that Rand respects, admires, and builds on. She often quotes the Francis Bacon, nature to be commanded must be obeyed, and that what you get in the enlightenment is this we're going to transform the world. You're not given values, you have to create them and you have to do a massive transformation and you have to take control of your life and it's easy to think in the 21st century that human beings always had control over the realms of sex and procreation and I mean if you know anything about history it is just not true. It's a massive achievement, I think one of the greatest inventions in the 20th century is birth control more widely and the pill more specifically and but if you're looking at it from the context that sex is an enormous value it's experienced as an end in itself as something you do for its own sake and the threat of well it might get pregnant it might lead to kids that we don't want so that's always been a problem and that you have kids when you don't want or you have too many kids or even that you're having trouble conceiving and it's just that's sort of your fate in life. The control we now have over procreation and then so the ability to engage in sex as an end in itself without any kind of worry or threat that is such an enormous achievement and enormous value that human beings for I mean pre the 19th 20th century never had never enjoyed and that's so there's a real positive of having that kind of control over your life of deciding if you want kids when you want them how many kids you want and that birth control abortion all these things are aspects of having this kind of control so there's a real positive here that so it's not I'm pro-abortion in the sense I'm pro people having this kind of control over their life and then being able to enjoy a sex life as an end in itself and so when there's laws being proposed or passed that interfere with this freedom I viewed as an enormous negative not there's something sort of embarrassing here that you have to defend because it's like like hardcore pornography I'm ran said yeah I'm for free speech I'm going to defend this but I'm not I don't watch hardcore pornography and so abortion is not at all like that and that's the context I think to think then of like why is this part of a woman's freedom and why is a fetus doesn't have rights and and I find it interesting that a lot of times at least in my chat a lot of times when you talk about abortion it does boil down to this well this promiscuous sex you know and people who have promiscuous sex get pregnant they should suffer the consequences of their actions and it's it there is this very I think at the end of the Christian view of sex and what sex entails and what sex is okay and what sex is not that permeates the the abortion debate it's not just about what's not maybe even at all about uh the fetus it's it's it's what really bugs them is the freedom to have to have sex and and not to worry about it and that there remedies to if something negative you know something it happens that is negative like a like a unwanted pregnancy yeah and I view it it's in the opposite in the sense of instead of saying okay the condom didn't work or what the contraception didn't worry and you want to have an abortion that rather than saying okay do you have to now live with your decision this is taking responsibility of someone thinking or a couple thinking no we're not ready for kids now we're too young or we're not in the right financial position or we just don't want kids they're taking responsibility and that's what's being taken away from them if abortion is off the table it's one form in which they take responsibility for their sex life and for whether they should have children or not and the idea that you take that away from them and in the name of personal responsibility I think is that it's the opposite of the truth of what has happened or in the name of the pursuit of happiness of a potential and a potential human being and not a real human being so you're denying them choice you're denying them responsibility you're denying them the options in the name of something that's not yet real and it's uh it but it but the anti-sex was new to me I didn't realize the extent to which it goes that there's this they won't say it's anti-sex I'll never admit that it's anti-sex but their attitude towards it is well I mean if you have sex it you know you should suffer for the consequences if there's bad out really I mean that's a really weird attitude towards towards sex and it's it is I mean this was Ayn Rand's view of Christianity's emphasis on abortion and more generally trying to outlaw contraception saying the only form that's proper is the rhythm method it's all the input terror into sex and so that it's not experienced as an end in itself and if you take the Christian view seriously that you don't really count you're supposed to be on your knees oriented towards God so the sex is it's not that sex is an orientation towards yourself towards your own life happiness pleasure it's not a means to some other thing but if that's the whole morally that's what you're supposed to do you can see why they would be really really anti-sex because it's it's the of the a major major form in which you experience your life as an ended itself and that's exactly what philosophically they're at war with yeah and and you know even the Old Testament is filled with the idea that the purpose of sex is procreation there's no there's no purpose beyond that it's procreation and and it's it's very anti even uh masturbation because it's a waste it's way and it and at the end of the day it's pleasure and they're and they're against that so there's there's a whole line through religion the judo so-called judo-christian tradition of being uh of being anti-sex anti-pleasure and creeding and I think what what happens when you take away abortion is you create now a cloud over the sexual act of stress of worry and that's exactly what they're trying to do yeah so in that context that there's an enormous positive here that's being attacked yes I think then when you think of the issue of rights and if you take seriously the whole view that rights the fundamental right is a right to life which means to your own life to live it and to enjoy it and the pursuit of happiness is emphasizing that it is for your for yourself here on earth for your happiness pleasure enjoyment fulfillment and if you take that seriously what the whole perspective is is you have independent beings trying to figure out in a social organization how can we make the an organization in which each of us can be pursuing our own happiness and yet still interact and when we think it's it's profitable to interact with other people we're able to do that and when we think it's not we're able to go our separate ways but the whole perspective is you're dealing with individual separate entities each who should be they might default on this and they might not put the effort or the thought into it but who should be pursuing their own lives and happiness and and then rights are principles you formulate to say okay society has to respect everyone's life their ability to think for themselves to earn and keep the property they produce and to pursue their own happiness it's fundamentally it's you're projecting adult human beings figuring out how to interact socially in a way that would be at least possibly beneficial to all of them that is if they think about their lives and so on everyone can pursue and enjoy their life and happiness and the when you're talking about a fetus or even before a fetus an embryo you're not talking that there's nothing like an independent being that would be thinking about the pursuit of its life and happiness it doesn't have a life yet it is a part of dependent on biologically physically philosophically you would say metaphysically it's a dependent on the mother and that it's not a separate being and it doesn't have rights it's more plausible to grant rights to animals there are independent things than it is to to an embryo what we need today what i called a new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason by the intellect not by feelings wishes women's or mystic revelations any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist brought all right before we go on reminder please like the show we've got 163 live listeners right now 30 likes that should be at least a hundred i figure at least a hundred of you actually like the show maybe they're like 60 of the matthews out there who hate it but but at least the people who like it you know i want to see i want to see a thumbs up there you go start liking it i want to see that go to a hundred all it takes is a click of a click of a thing whether you're looking at this and and you know the likes matter 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