Abortion is the termination of pregnancy by the induced removal of an embryo or fetus (that is incapable of survival outside the body of the woman) which results in the death of the embryo/fetus.

The essential political question concerning abortion is: does the fetus have a right to be in the body of a woman against the will of the woman? Or: does a woman’s body belong to her, or to the government to forcibly dispose of in favor of the fetus?

A fetus does not have a right to be in the womb of any woman, but is there by her permission. This permission may be revoked by the woman at any time, because her womb is part of her body. Permissions are not rights. There is no such thing as the right to live inside the body of another, i.e. there is no right to enslave. Contrary to the opinion of anti-abortion activists (falsely called “pro-lifers” as they are against the right to life of the actual human being involved) a woman is not a breeding pig owned by the state (or church). Even if a fetus were developed to the point of surviving as an independent being outside the pregnant woman’s womb, the fetus would still not have the right to be inside the woman’s womb.

What applies to a fetus, also applies to a physically dependent adult. If an adult—say a medical welfare recipient—must survive by being connected to someone else, they may only do so by the voluntary permission of the person they must be connected to. There is no such thing as the right to live by the efforts of someone else, i.e., there is no such thing as the right to enslave.

Abortion is an inalienable right. Abortion is not a violation of any right, because there is no such thing as the freedom to live inside (or outside) of another human being as a parasite, i.e., against the will of that person.

This principle applies to both fetuses and adults. As a woman has a right to choose who she has sex with (as her body is her property), so is it a woman’s right to choose what can and cannot remain inside her body (as her body is her property). As it is evil for someone else to dictate the use of her body by raping her, so it is evil for someone else to dictate the use of her body by forcing her to remain pregnant.

As there is no such thing as the right to live inside another, whether the fetus is removed, because of incest, or rape, or “convenience” does not matter politically—whatever the reason, it is the woman’s inalienable right.

Murder is the taking of the life of another human being through the initiation of physical force. Abortion is not murder, because a fetus is not an actual human being—it is a potential human being, i.e. it is a part of the woman. The concept murder only applies to the initiation of physical force used to destroy an actual human being, such as when “pro-life” terrorists bomb abortion clinics.

A right is a moral sanction to freedom of action in a social context. Rights only apply to human beings, because only human beings survive by the use of reason (unlike cows, trees, bacteria—and fetuses). Rights only apply to human beings, because only human beings—and not parts of beings—survive by reason.

A fetus has no rights, as it does not need freedom to take any actions, but survives on the sustenance of its host. The only rational action it must take is nothing, i.e. wait for itself to develop using the sustenance provided by its host.

Under capitalism (a social system based on the principle of individual rights) abortion is an inalienable right. Any one who advocates the outlawing of abortion (especially in the first few months of pregnancy)—like Steve Forbes—is an enemy of individual rights in principle, and thus an enemy of capitalism. As for those on the Left, who think one can have a right to property without a right to one’s body, they are guilty of context dropping.

The concept fetus is used to denote the unborn human from the end of the eighth week after conception to the moment of birth, as distinguished from the earlier embryo (the product of conception from implantation in the uterus through the eighth week of development). A fetus contains all the organs and has the basic human form.

A fetus is human, in the sense that it contains human DNA; however, a fetus, like an embryo, is not a human being, as it has no means of independent physiological existence (as does a baby, child, or adult). As such, it is a potential human being, just like an acorn is a potential oak tree. It contains all of the DNA of an oak tree, but it is not an oak tree (See also Leonard Peikoff on Abortion: Real Audio).

A fetus is a potential human being, and not an actual individual, because it does not have physiological independence outside its host—the pregnant woman.

(Toward the end of a woman’s pregnancy, a fetus does have the physiological means to live independently outside its host, the pregnant women, which makes the birth of a healthy child possible, though it remains physically dependent until birth. At birth the fetus becomes a physically independent baby/child.)

Life is a state of a cell or organism characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction. A fetus is life, just as an embryo, a sperm, an ant, an acorn, and a tree, are all life. All these forms of life have no rights. The characteristic of life is necessary to possess rights, but it alone is insufficient.