Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. 'Abortion Laws: Pro and Con'

Source:Firing Line With William B. Buckley- discussing abortion in 1972.

"July 25, 1972 

The most visible abortion battleground was New York State, where the legislature had voted to repeal the extremely permissive law it had passed two years before, and Governor Rockefeller had vetoed the repeal. But the case challenging that veto would probably never make it to the Supreme Court, Mr. Lucas explains, for there were others ahead of it in line; in retrospect, we know that one of those, Roe v. Wade, was decided in January of 1973. This show covers familiar ground, but often from angles that are still fresh thirty years later. RL: "Would you favor legislation requiring a woman to submit to strong medical treatment to stop spontaneous abortion and penalizing her accordingly if she didn't? ..." JTN: "No, I think you're again committing what I would say was a fault in moral reasoning. Because you're bound to avoid doing some injury to a person does not mean that you're bound to do everything possible in the world to help him." 

From the Hoover Institution 

"Guests: John Thomas Noonan, Roy Lucas

For more information about this program, see:Hoover Institution." 

From Firing Line With William F. Buckley 

"Taped on July 25, 1972 The most visible abortion battleground was New York State, where the legislature had voted to repeal the extremely permissive law it had passed two years before and where Governor Nelson Rockefeller had vetoed the repeal. But the case challenging that veto would probably never make it to the Supreme Court, Lucas explains, for there were others ahead of it in line; in retrospect, we know that one of those, Roe v. Wade, was decided in January 1973. This show covers familiar ground but often from angles that are still fresh thirty years later. Lucas: "Would you favor legislation requiring a woman to submit to strong medical treatment to stop spontaneous abortion and penalizing her accordingly if she didn't?" Noonan: "No, I think you're again committing what I would say was a fault in moral reasoning. Because you're bound to avoid doing some injury to a person does not mean that you're bound to do everything possible in the world to help him." Summary by Firing Line staff." 

From Amazon

I'm not sure: "Abortion: Pro and Con" is the right question. I think the real questions here should be who gets to decide when a woman has to have a baby or not and what she can do with her own body. The other question being when does a fetus become a baby with the same constitutional and United States individual rights as Americans who are already born. 

For me depending on how you answer the first two questions that I pose, will determine on whether you believe in Rose V. Wade the U.S. Supreme Court case that made abortion legal everywhere in America, should remain the law of the land where every women has the right to make this choice herself on whether to carry a pregnancy to it's full-term, or not. 

Roe V. Wade which was decided about a year after this Firing Line episode first went on the air, gives American women the right to make their own choice on whether they can abort their fetuses or not. But it doesn't say that abortion can't be regulated. We don't have absolute rights in America, including the right to life. If you put someone's else life in danger, especially if you do that intentionally, you are also putting your own life in danger as well. And American women do have the right to decide whether to can get an abortion or not, but that right is not absolute. States do have some leeway and are able to regulate abortion themselves. 

As I said, no individual right in America is absolute. I believe life starts at the late term of all pregnancies, which is why I'm not in favor of late term abortions, other than to save the life or health of the mother. And I do believe in freedom of choice, just as long the choices that individuals make don't hurt innocent people. But freedom of choice becomes too expensive when it doesn't come with personal responsibility. So I'm not in favor of taxpayer funding of abortions, other than to save the life and health of the mother, or when the pregnancy was conceived because of rape or incest. 

Now, if you believe that life starts at conception, which is the position of the Christian-Right in America (Protestants and Catholics) then of course you are going to take the opposite position that I've taken and perhaps even see abortion as murder. And this is where the debate on abortion starts in America: when does life start and who gets to decide, the government or the individual.