On Friday, June 24th, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down Roe v Wade, a nearly 50 year precedent regarding the authority of the state and federal governments to regulate abortion. This has, and will continue to be, an emotional and deeply personal topic for Hoosiers on both sides of the issue.
While the Libertarian Party holds no official position on the abortion topic, and our members and candidates express their own opinions on it, both the Libertarian Party and libertarian political thought are rooted in the ideas of self-ownership, bodily autonomy, medical freedom, individual privacy, freedom of association and expression, and personal choice with personal responsibility.
Even with the court’s recent action and state legislatures taking up the issue, one simple fact should be remembered, abortion will not disappear. This procedure has existed in one form or another since the dawn of humankind.
For those who want to see abortion eliminated, we must attack the circumstance that develop the need. We can do this by encouraging parents to engage their children with age appropriate reproductive health education, supporting private organizations that provide free contraception and reproductive health screenings, removing the barriers to adoption and foster parenting, and treating rapists like the violent criminals they are.
The Indiana General Assembly has been called back for a special session on inflation relief and will likely add this issue to their agenda. We encourage the elected legislators to consider the points made in this letter during the drafting, debating, and passage of any bill on this topic.
For a more nuanced discussion on Libertarianism and Abortion we recommend reading the CATO article: The Hard Problem of Abortion Rights