Quite possibly one of the most divisive questions in the Culture War, abortion remains a subject of intense moral, philosophical and political disagreement.
Progressives and pro-choice advocates defend abortion on several grounds: bodily autonomy, the right to make decisions about one’s own body, disagreements over when a fetus acquires moral personhood, and pragmatic concerns about the consequences of restricting access to abortion, including poverty, suffering and unwanted parenthood.
Conservatives and pro-life advocates, meanwhile, emphasise the right to life of the unborn, the moral status of the fetus, religious or philosophical principles, and the possibility of adoption as an alternative to raising a child.
Somewhere between these positions sits the classical liberal tradition, which offers no universally accepted answer to abortion. Thinkers such as Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman defended abortion rights, while others, including Ron Paul, have argued for protecting unborn life. Murray Rothbard’s libertarian framework was subsequently developed in a heterodox direction by Walter Block, offering an approach rooted in self-ownership and competing claims over bodily rights.
Disclaimer: I personally lean pro-life. I believe it is important to disclose this perspective from the outset, particularly when examining an issue on which one’s starting assumptions can influence one’s conclusions. However, this article is an attempt to test, rather than simply reaffirm, my existing position. I am open to counterarguments and changing my views should the reasoning warrant it.
Natural Rights
At the heart of classical liberalism lies the principle that individuals possess rights that are not simply granted by governments, but exist independently of political authority. These are commonly understood as natural rights: rights inherent and inalienable to individuals by virtue of their nature, rather than privileges bestowed by the state.
But if natural rights are universal and inalienable, who exactly possesses them? And can these rights conflict with one another?
Consider the relationship between the right to life and the right to liberty. Life is a prerequisite for exercising virtually every other right; without it, there can be no meaningful exercise of personal freedom. One might therefore argue that the right to life is more fundamental than other rights.
However, this does not necessarily establish that it must always take precedence when rights appear to conflict. After all, the saying goes, “give me liberty, or give me death”. The familiar declaration that individuals possess unalienable rights to life and liberty does not, by itself, establish a hierarchy between them. Nor does it explain how such rights should be reconciled when their exercise appears incompatible.
If both the pregnant woman and the unborn possess natural rights, we must establish what those rights entail and how they interact. If the unborn does not possess the same rights as a born person, we must explain why. And if the right to life takes precedence over bodily autonomy, we must establish the philosophical basis for that conclusion rather than simply assume it.
Hence, this begs the question: are natural rights inherent to every human, or do they belong only to those who qualify as persons?
Humans or Persons?
The distinction between being a human and being a person may appear trivial, but it lies at the heart of the abortion debate. Biologically, the question of whether an embryo belongs to the human species is different from the philosophical question of whether it possesses the same moral status and natural rights as a born individual. The former is a question of biology (in which case, the answer would be yes); the latter is a question of ethics. Establishing one does not automatically settle the other.
One position holds that natural rights belong to every human being simply by virtue of being human. On this account, rights do not depend on intelligence, consciousness, independence or the ability to reason. After all, a newborn does not possess the rational capacities of an adult, nor does someone in a temporary coma necessarily possess an active awareness of their surroundings. Yet we would hardly conclude that either should be deprived of their fundamental rights. If rights depend on possessing particular mental capacities, it becomes necessary to explain why those capacities matter and how the principle can be applied without undermining the equal rights of other human beings.
The opposing approach distinguishes biological humanity from personhood, arguing that the possession of certain characteristics may be relevant to moral status. These might include consciousness, self-awareness, the capacity to experience suffering or the ability to develop preferences. However, each proposed criterion raises further questions. Must these characteristics already exist, or is the potential to develop them sufficient? If consciousness is essential, does the absence of consciousness temporarily remove someone’s rights? If rationality is the standard, what protects those who cannot reason independently?
If we accept that natural rights are inherent and inalienable, the most consistent starting point is that they cannot depend on an individual’s current level of intelligence, consciousness or rationality. These are characteristics that develop over time, can temporarily disappear, or may never fully develop.
Instead, the classical liberal principle suggests that rights belong to the individual human being, rather than being earned through the acquisition of particular abilities. A newborn does not acquire a right to life upon developing rational thought, nor does an unconscious adult cease to possess that right while unable to exercise it. In both cases, the individual’s inability to exercise certain capacities does not, in itself, negate their rights.
Applied to abortion, this reasoning supports the conclusion that the unborn should not be excluded from possessing a right to life merely because it has not yet developed the capacities of a born or independent human being. If it is an individual human organism, and if natural rights belong to human individuals as such, then its stage of development alone cannot justify denying it those rights.
However, this still leaves us with the question of how that right interacts with the pregnant woman’s bodily autonomy, and does not automatically determine what the law should permit or prohibit. But it does establish a starting principle: if natural rights are genuinely universal, the burden of argument falls on those who would exclude a category of human individuals from their protection.
Which Takes Precedence?
As abortion inevitably clashes the right to life with the right to bodily autonomy, the question is not simply whether life is more valuable than liberty, but whether natural rights establish a hierarchy in which one takes precedence over another.
The Non-Aggression Principle (NAP), central to libertarian philosophy, holds that the initiation of force against another person is impermissible. In its familiar formulation, one’s freedom ends where another person’s rights begin. As the saying goes, the freedom of my fist ends at your jaw.
If the unborn possesses a right to life, then abortion may be understood as an act of aggression against an innocent individual. From this perspective, bodily autonomy cannot justify an action that violates another person’s rights, just as individual liberty does not ordinarily justify assaulting someone else.
The opposing argument applies the same principle in the other direction. If bodily autonomy entails that no individual has an unconditional entitlement to another person’s body, then compelling a woman to continue a pregnancy may itself constitute an infringement of her rights. From this perspective, the fact that another individual’s survival depends on one’s body does not automatically establish a right to use it.
Libertarian philosopher Walter Block attempts to reconcile these competing claims through his theory of evictionism. He argues that a woman should have the right to evict the fetus from her body, since the right to life does not entail an unconditional right to occupy another person’s property or use their body. However, if the fetus can survive outside the womb, it should be removed using the least harmful method available.
Yet where it cannot survive independently, Block maintains that eviction may nevertheless be permissible, even if death follows. To equate this scenario to another, consider someone who deliberately deprives a dependent individual of food when they know that person cannot obtain it independently. Although the act might be described as withholding assistance rather than directly killing, its foreseeable consequence is death, and the courts would almost certainly convict the culprit of murder or manslaughter.
On this reasoning, ending a pregnancy without violating the unborn’s right to life would be permissible only when the fetus is viable and can be removed using a method that preserves its life (which is possible roughly 24 weeks in).
Furthermore, a fetus does not voluntarily enter the womb or choose to depend on the mother’s body. Unlike a trespasser who knowingly occupies another person’s property, the unborn has no capacity to consent to its existence or deliberately violate another individual’s rights. It is therefore difficult to classify its presence as an act of aggression under the Non-Aggression Principle. The fetus is not an aggressor in the ordinary sense; it is a dependent human being whose existence necessarily involves the use of another person’s body.
Conclusion: A Liberal Answer?
Can classical liberalism provide an answer to the abortion debate?
Definitely not a universally accepted one. Its principles of individual liberty, natural rights and limited government have been used to defend opposing positions, and the Non-Aggression Principle cannot resolve the disagreement without first establishing whose rights are at stake and what those rights entail.
The considerations made in this article support the conclusion that ending a pregnancy should not be permitted when doing so unjustly violates the unborn’s right to life. Where the fetus can survive outside the womb, ending the pregnancy without unnecessarily sacrificing its life offers a possible reconciliation of the competing claims. Where it cannot, the conflict is considerably harder to resolve. Bodily autonomy alone does not settle the question, just as the right to life alone does not automatically establish the full extent of another person’s obligations to sustain it.
Of course, this does not exhaust the arguments in favour of abortion. Socioeconomic hardship, sexual assault, incest, and severe fetal impairments are among the circumstances in which abortion may be defended on moral or practical grounds. Utilitarian approaches, for instance, may consider the suffering, welfare and likely consequences for everyone involved, potentially reaching different conclusions depending on the circumstances. But they are harder to justify when solely considering classical liberal philosophy, as if the fetus has the natural right to life, such issues do not negate that right.
Ultimately, the liberal tradition does not offer a simple formula that resolves every conflict between life and liberty. It does, however, require us to take both seriously, apply principles consistently and justify any restriction of individual freedom. If the unborn is indeed a rights-bearing human individual, its right to life cannot be dismissed merely because protecting it places limits on bodily autonomy. Equally, those limits cannot simply be assumed; they must be defended through a coherent account of natural rights.
In the rare clash between life and liberty, the lesson learned here is not that liberty always takes precedence over life, or vice versa. It is that neither can be invoked as a slogan to avoid the difficult work of establishing what our rights mean, where they end and what we owe to one another.
