This past week, a federal judge issued a stay on the FDA's approval of mifepristone, which for years has been a common nonsurgical means of abortion, among other things. From a Libertarian standpoint, the FDA's power to decide what is or is not legal for individuals to put in their bodies is a violation of personal liberty and autonomy.
Speaking for myself, I am in favor of there being people who can dispassionately assess the safety and efficacy of various substances for various purposes and inform the public of their findings, but how I act on that knowledge is my own business.
That the FDA had to grant approval to mifepristone before it could be legally bought, sold, and used to begin with constituted government overreach, and set us up for the current debacle: what the government giveth, the government taketh away. What they taketh away from millions of women today is access to safe and effective abortion.
The Libertarian Party could have seen this coming. When the FDA "granted" what should have been a fundamental right, the Left rejoiced. As they are taking that right away, the Right rejoices. Libertarians shake our heads in the knowledge that the entire tug-of-war could have been avoided if the government had kept its nose out of individuals' business to begin with. It is certainly not the business of the federal government to decide whether a woman carries a fetus to term, which may put her life in danger, and in any case will change her life forever; to take on that risk and/or responsibility is a matter of personal choice.
This is just one of the latest examples of violation of the Tenth Amendment: a power that should rest in the people, and not in their government. In any case, given that government power was misused to grant a right, taking it away again is doubly wrong, especially against the will of the people.
Live long and prosper - Kennita
Kennita Watson is a Libertarian Party activist who lives in Sunnyvale. She has been a candidate multiple times for Congress, the State Assembly, and the Board of Equalization.
Commentary posts are the opinions of individual authors, and do not necessarily represent a formal position of the Libertarian Party of Santa Clara County unless so noted.