{"id":204885,"date":"2019-06-22T11:44:53","date_gmt":"2019-06-22T16:44:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=204885"},"modified":"2019-06-19T16:27:55","modified_gmt":"2019-06-19T21:27:55","slug":"open-letter-libertarian-party-right-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/open-letter-libertarian-party-right-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Open letter to the Libertarian Party: Your pro-abortion position is costing you votes"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div><p><em>The following is an open letter submitted to Live Action News for publication.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dear Libertarian Party delegates,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After learning the principles of liberty, we, and many Americans like us, found no other party that reflects them better than the Libertarian Party. With Republicans continually drifting farther from personal and economic liberty and Democrats transitioning towards socialism, why would any freedom-loving citizen not want to join the Libertarian Party? What prevents the Libertarian party from overtaking the Republican Party as America\u2019s popular party for higher ideals in common freedom? We believe the answer lies with a grave inconsistency in the party\u2019s official platform.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We too recognize that \u201cabortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on [both] sides.\u201d Nevertheless, to say \u201cthat government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration\u201d contradicts other statements such as, \u201cThe prescribed role of government is to protect the rights of every individual including the right to life,\u201d and, \u201cEssentially, we believe all Americans should be free to live their lives and pursue their interests as they see fit as long as they do no harm to another.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before we go any further with this letter, we don\u2019t want to presume anything on the party\u2019s behalf. Allow us to simplify the issue of abortion for clarity and concision. Essentially, when it comes to abortion, there is only one question that needs to be answered: \u00a0what are the unborn? We all agree \u201cthat all individuals have\u2026 the right to live,\u201d and that a fundamental role of limited government is to uphold the right to life. After all, the greatest loss of liberty is the theft of life. So, are the unborn whole and distinct individual human beings, or are they not? If they are, then life and liberty must apply to all individuals, not merely the collective born.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If the unborn are not individual human beings and statement 3.5, which states all people are <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">born<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> with certain inherent rights, is true, then the party\u2019s platform would be consistent and we would see no reason why anyone who loves liberty should not join. However, it is not true that people are <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">born<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> with certain inherent rights. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">People have inherent rights<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, period. What difference does six inches through a birth canal make on a person\u2019s inherent rights? Where you are has no bearing on what you are. If you are an individual human being inside the womb, then you have inherent rights, and therefore \u201cgovernment is to protect the rights of every individual including the right to life,\u201d since, \u201cwhere governments exist, they must not violate the rights of any individual: namely, (1) the right to life \u2014 accordingly we support the prohibition of the initiation of physical force against others.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We are a people living in an era of scientific enlightenment; we can no longer claim ignorance to the facts and characteristics of what constitutes a whole and distinct individual human being. We believe there are many Americans like us who consider the Libertarian Party the closest to our principles, but whose moral and intellectual conscience and commitment to liberty prohibit any participation with political collectivism and human rights infringements.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/sCN8M_PG-x8\" width=\"640\" height=\"355\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong>WATCH: <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/clump-cells-person-live-action-video-debate\/\"><em>Clump of cells or person? New Live Action video ends the debate<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We ask you to consider amending the official position so that everyone who seeks \u201ca world of liberty; a world in which <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">all individuals<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> are sovereign over their own lives and no one is forced to sacrifice his or her values for the benefit of others\u201d can join the party with moral and intellectual cohesion and consistency. Specifically, we suggest omitting section 1.5 on abortion altogether and amending section 3.5 on Rights and Discrimination from \u201cLibertarians embrace the concept that all people are born with certain inherent rights,\u201d to \u201cLibertarians embrace the concept that all people are <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">endowed<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> with certain inherent rights.\u201d We believe these amendments will have several effects. First, they will realign the platform to the original language in the Declaration of Independence. Second, they will do away with the arbitrary and dangerous inconsistency of affording people their inherent rights at a particular age or after a rite of passage. Third, they will liberate the party from the strictly pro-choice fold and release the many individuals who, like us, believe abortion is morally abhorrent, intellectually dishonest, a breach of inherent rights, and contrary to natural liberty, to in good conscience join the party of liberty.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, in the same spirit of Benjamin Banneker in his appeal to Thomas Jefferson, we challenge you to rise to the pinnacle of liberty, morality, and ideological preeminence by amending the platform; creating harmony and consistency in the principles of life and liberty for all, born and preborn. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201c\u2026you were then impressed with proper ideas of the great valuation of liberty, and the free possession of those blessings to which you were entitled by nature; but Sir how pitiable is it to reflect, that altho you were so fully convinced of the benevolence of the Father of mankind, and of his equal and impartial distribution of those rights and privileges which he had conferred upon them, that you should at the Same time counteract his mercies, in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren under groaning captivity and cruel oppression, that you should at the Same time be found guilty of that most criminal act, which you professedly detested in others, with respect to yourselves.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For liberty and life,<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Andrew J. McDonnell<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ignacio Reyes<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/liveactionnewsonline\/\">\u201cLike\u201d Live Action News on Facebook<\/a>\u00a0for more pro-life news and commentary!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following is an open letter submitted to Live Action News for publication. Dear Libertarian Party delegates, After learning the principles of liberty, we, and many Americans like us, found no other party that reflects them better than the Libertarian Party. With Republicans continually drifting farther from personal and economic liberty and Democrats transitioning towards [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":40347,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[7077],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Open letter to the Libertarian Party: Your pro-abortion position is costing you votes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Are the unborn whole and distinct individual human beings, or are they not? If they are, then life and liberty must apply to all individuals....\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/open-letter-libertarian-party-right-life\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Open letter to the Libertarian Party: Your pro-abortion position is costing you votes\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Are the unborn whole and distinct individual human beings, or are they not? 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