Incoherence in defense of legal abortion

Conservative provocateur and Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren gained fame by broadcasting her straightforward—and at times controversial—analysis of politics and culture.

A supporter of border security, law enforcement, and President Trump, Lahren sits squarely within the mainstream Republican camp on many issues. But, when it comes to abortion, she veers not just to the left, but to the extreme left.

In 2017, Lahren announced to the hosts of The View that she considers herself “pro-choice.” Her logic was based on her support of limited government. “I’m pro-choice,” Lahren declared. “Stay away from my guns, and you can stay away from my body.”

Her comments solicited conservative backlash, and her employment at TheBlaze ended abruptly after the appearance. Since then, Lahren has only doubled down on her position. On a recent episode of a Fox Nation podcast, she reiterated: “I’m pro-choice. Not because I’m pro-abortion, not because I’m not pro-life, but because I believe in limited government.”

Does Lahren have a point? Should conservatives, most of whom believe that the state should be restrained from having control over much of our lives, including, for example, our decision to get or not get a COVID vaccine, also relieve the government of its responsibility to restrict or regulate abortion?

Perhaps this sounds persuasive to the state-skeptical, especially the most libertarian among us.

But even the staunch libertarian acknowledges that the government has some role in a nation. This is what separates the libertarian from the anarchist. What would the state’s extremely limited role be if not to protect the most fundamental right that exists—the right upon which all other rights are built—the right to not be murdered? After all, the listing of rights in the Declaration of Independence is not arbitrary: We are guaranteed first life, then liberty and the pursuit of happiness, because without life, both liberty and the pursuit of happiness are moot.

The smallest government has at least one role, and that is to protect the lives of the legally innocent. Lahren herself agrees with this via her support of law enforcement, the military, and border security. These entities represent a government’s job to protect its people from harm. She obviously believes this is within the rightful purview of the state.

So, her case for “small government” includes protecting innocent life in ways that heavily involve the federal government and cost taxpayers millions of dollars, but doesn’t extend to the government simply saying “no” to the murder of babies in the womb. The “pro-choice” case in the name of “small government” is inconsistent when paired with a support for the military and police. Either it’s the government’s job to protect innocent life or it’s not.

The only way to reconcile this argument is to hold to the erroneous belief that babies in the womb aren’t like the rest of us outside the womb. While we deserve government protection, for some arbitrary reason, babies in the womb don’t. This is identical to the reasoning progressives have for allowing abortion while still supporting other laws against murder.

So, no, this isn’t a conservative or libertarian case for abortion. It’s just the same, old, tired, incoherent, barbaric, godless argument for why it should be OK to dismember babies, simply because their size, location, and helplessness makes it easy to do so.

The entire foundation for the belief in limited government is the idea that it’s God—not the state—who gave us our rights and determines morality. It is that there is a Higher Power, whose authority transcends that of any government and has created us equally in His image, from which we derive the concept of a government of, by, and for the people rather than a government that tyrannically rules over us.

A true believer in limited government wouldn’t look to politicians in power to decide which humans are worthy of protection against murder and which ones aren’t. That’s what legal access to abortion is: the state arbitrarily deciding some humans don’t have rights or value and can therefore be murdered. This should make any conservative shudder.

God is the giver of rights, arbiter of morality, and definer of human worth. He made each of us in His image, purposely knitting us together in our mother’s wombs (Genesis 1:27, Psalm 139:15-16). He abhors and forbids murder, because humans are immensely valuable (Genesis 9:6, Exodus 20:13). He also instituted the government to punish evil and reward good (Romans 13:4).

Abortion is evil. It kills an innocent human being. Thus, like all forms of murder, it should be illegal. Anyone who argues otherwise does so from a place of depravity and ignorance—not conservatism or Christianity.