We received the following email regarding the topic of abortion from Benjamin who says,
"I don''t understand how you can advocate so strongly for individual rights and freedom and then show disdain for those who will not stand for the ultimate revocation of freedom for small children - abortion (i.e. murder.) I am enthralled by Objectivist ideals, but cannot understand how anyone who is in love with liberty can approve of murder...
Our reply:
"Murder" applies only to beings with rights.
To argue that the fetus has the "right to live" would mean to argue that it should be given ownership of the mother's body. This would be a violation of the mother's rights. Further, if in the name of protecting the fetus it cost the mother her life, the fetus would be born guilty of "murder." This concept of rights creates an irreconcilble conflict between the "rights" of the fetus and the rights of the mother. This is the contradiction that you must resolve.
The resolution to the problem requires the recognition of the difference between the actual and the potential. Just as a stand of trees is potentially a house, but is not yet actually a house, so a fetus is a potential human being, but not an actual one. Rights are a recognition of a individual's freedom of action in a social context. A fetus is not an individual, but is instead a dependent entity: dependent on the mother. Once the fetus is born it becomes a separate, distinguishable human being. It is at this point that it can be said to have rights. To put the point in the strongest possible way, before a child is born it has no rights.
For more information, I refer you to the Ayn Rand Lexicon: