The Libertarian Assault on Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

For libertarianism, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness doesn't count for preborn children. For this reason, libertarianism simply is not compatible with Christian culture.

Dear friends and supporters:

Libertarianism isn’t our friend. We Christian proponents of cultural reclamation tend to be sympathetic to libertarianism because of its staunch opposition to statism. In the Bible and in much of history, the state has been a hostile and even persecuting enemy of God’s people and Christianity. Moreover, the Christian society is one of liberty within the bounds of God’s moral law. The state is always tempted to compete with God for its citizens’ allegiance. For this reason, statism is contra-Christian. And of all modern political philosophies, libertarianism is most anti-statist.

But anti-statism isn’t the only libertarian tenet. In fact, it’s not even its most important tenet. Libertarianism’s undergirding tenet is human autonomy, even radical human autonomy. For libertarian spokesman David Boaz,

Libertarianism is the belief that each person has the right to live his life as he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others. Libertarians defend each person’s right to life, liberty, and property.

In this definition, aversion to statism is not the result of an objective authority as it is in Christianity and the Bible. Rather, it springs from an independent, stand-alone principle, the principle of freedom for any action in a context of mutual non-harm. Ironically, libertarianism ends up in much the same place as Cultural Marxism: radical individual autonomy. The only difference is that Cultural Marxism employs the state to coercively guarantee radical individual autonomy, while libertarianism demands the state stay out of the way of radical individual autonomy. This is why in my early assessments of Cultural Marxism, I referred to it as Libertarian Marxism. In both Cultural Marxism and conventional libertarianism, radical individual autonomy is the end; the only dispute is over the means. The insuperable and fatal problem of the libertarian principle of non-harm is that it lacks any deeper standard for adjudicating what constitutes non-harm, and who is entitled to it.

As in the all-important case of abortion.

Radical Individual Autonomy Versus the Mutual Non-Harm Principle

In her recent article “What About Our Right to Life?” in Reason magazine, literary flagship of libertarianism, Georgetown professor Michele Goodwin bemoans the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the subsequent criminalization of abortion in numerous states. Georgetown might be the nation’s oldest Roman Catholic institution of higher learning, but Goodwin offers a full-throated defense of abortion rights in line with her and Reason’s libertarian convictions. That defense shows the tangled contradiction that rises when radical individual autonomy clashes with their mutual non-harm principle. This is not a problem in biblical faith. It is a problem in libertarianism.

Goodwin objects to the legal defense of preborn children on constitutional grounds. While this defense, she claims, leaves a “trail of horrors,” constituting nothing less than “cruel and unusual .. miscarriages of justice,” her main argument is that these pro-life laws violate the U.S. Constitution. Examples:

The 14th Amendment requires that states may not “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property.” This Reconstruction-era amendment designed to protect the rights of emancipated slaves is pushed into service for the abortion debate. Goodwin declares that in a post-Dobbs world, this amendment is violated when women’s “reproductive autonomy” is threatened, since in this case women lack the bodily autonomy that men do. Ironically, she previously referred to “pregnant people,” but she swiftly dropped that clumsy artifice when she needed the distinction of womanhood to make her abortion argument. Since men naturally possess “reproductive autonomy” (they can't get pregnant) while women can be deprived of liberty if they’re not permitted to get an abortion, the recent pro-life state laws violate the 14th Amendment. Apparently it did not occur to the Amendment's framers that women’s different reproductive organs from men’s might impinge on their “reproductive autonomy.” Nature deprives women of liberty, but our refusal to criminalize abortion can thwart nature.

Goodwin argues as well that pro-life legislation violates the 13th Amendment, which prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude. If you think this argument is a stretch, you’re correct. She writes,

Forced pregnancy pulls directly and indirectly from the heinous strategies of American slavery, whereby for centuries — over the objections of girls and women — their wombs served the interests of others.

Whatever one’s view of abortion, it’s hard to see how requiring a woman to bring her baby to term can be sensibly equated with slavery. No actual slaves living in the Antebellum South would’ve thought so, anyway. They knew what slavery was. And it wasn’t the inadmissibility to terminate a pregnancy.

Goodwin goes on to declare that states’ pro-life laws violate the 1st Amendment, since they “potentially” forbid free speech and association:

In Oklahoma, librarians were prohibited from using the term “abortion” with patrons or assisting them with searches on the subject. Violations of the policy carried a risk of a $10,000 fine, jail time, and employment termination.

But, presumably Goodwin doesn’t oppose laws criminalizing conspiracy to commit murder, even when it involves background research to assist the perpetrator with a potential crime. So it’s hard to see how the Oklahoma enforcement is, on the face of it, unconstitutional.

Finally, she claims pro-life laws violate the 4th Amendment’s right to privacy. She claims that several states have surveilled pregnant women thought to be inclined to get an abortion. Yet, as in the previous case, no one would object to police officers investigating a planned murder, and courts might not assert the right to privacy against investigative attempts to prevent a murder when there are credible grounds for believing one is impending.

A Presuppositional Dispute

It is clear Goodwin’s arguments founder on her definition of what constitutes life, just as my arguments work only if life begins at conception. The dispute must begin at this basic presuppositional level, and all applications of it on both sides are irrelevant as long as the question of what constitutes human life is not answered definitively. If life begins at conception, which is what pro-lifers believe and the Bible teaches, then the Constitutional protection of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness extends to pre-born children. If life begins sometime after conception, those constitutional rights do (or at least need) not apply.

Biblical Christians possess a standard by which to answer these questions. Libertarians do not. They simply assume that “reproductive autonomy” is a constitutional right. Biblical Christians (and many other conservatives) recognize that preborn children possess the same human rights as older children and adults.

Libertarians, therefore, cannot successfully navigate the clash between radical individual autonomy and the mutual non-harm principle. There are plenty of pro-life libertarians, but they are skeptical about the legal defense of preborn life. In other words, they don’t want more abortions, but they also don’t want the state penalizing abortion. This is another way of saying that they don’t want the state suppressing preborn homicides. Or, better, aborticides.

The Reason article is titled “What About Our Right to Life?” But we should also and equally ask, “What About Their Right to Life?”

Biblical Christians believe one of the few legitimate jobs of the state is to protect, in the language of the Declaration of Independence, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (or property). Since pre-born children are human life, the state is required to protect them. Depriving preborn children of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is contra-constitutional, and, most importantly, contra-biblical.

Libertarians, therefore, are at war, not just with the U.S. Constitution, but also with God’s word.

Conclusion

Because biblical social theory is so demonstrably anti-statist, is it appropriate to ask whether Christians may in any sense be libertarian. I believe the answer is yes. In fact, for nearly 30 years I have affirmed this possibility — even necessity. I am recognized as a proponent of Christian Libertarianism. My article “The Christian Libertarian Idea: Maximum Freedom Under God’s Law” in the September-October 1996 Christian Statesman (no online accessibility) includes that very definition:

Christian libertarianism is the view that mature individuals … are permitted maximum freedom under God's law.

In Christian libertarianism the adjective carries more freight than the noun. Freedom is maximal, but it is bound by a factor more objective and transcendent than the no-harm principle: God’s law. The state is authorized to enforce that narrow subset of God’s law appropriate to the civil sphere. Interestingly, this reduces chiefly to what the Declaration states as the protection of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The state isn’t biblically authorized to do very much, but part of that not very much is the suppression of murder, including the murder of pre-born children.

Despite its alleged principled philosophy, libertarians draw the line at the preborn. For them, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness don’t count. For this reason, libertarianism simply is not compatible with Christian culture.

Personal

For my San Diego friends: this Sunday, April 14, I’ll be speaking on “The Blazing Glory of the Ascended Lord” at Christ Community Reformed Church in Escondido. I hope to see a number of you there.

We’ve been proofing John Frame’s collected sermons Widen Your Hearts and hope to get it out the door in a few months. The reprint of my New Flesh, New Earth: The Life-Changing Power of the Resurrection comes next, and The Sanctified State: Politics in the Christian Worldview should arrive by year’s end. CCL is publishing more books and essays and articles than at any other time in its 24-year history.

Thanks helping keep us on the firing line.

Yours for the King,

Founder & President, Center for Cultural Leadership

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