Ayn Rand on Abortion

Today's anti-abortion campaign is so obscenely evil a phenomenon that I find it difficult to understand or to believe it. One might ascribe this campaign to the psychology of medieval gargoyles but in the 20th century, in the United States... There is only one essential question in this issue. Since the woman is not an animal and, if she is conscientious, cannot abandon her young, the matter of childbirth means the surrender of her entire life to the drudgery of rearing a child and the surrender of her man's life as well if he, too, is conscientious. By what infernal privilege do some females assume the right to dispose of the rights of others in this manner? Don't tell me about an eight-month old fetus. What is involved here is an embryo who is a piece of protoplasm to which a human lifetime is to be sacrificed. Don't tell me about that protoplasm's rights - it hasn't any. And don't tell me that that abominable movement, which seeks to immolate the lives of countless human beings, is called a pro-life movement. That is merely an instance of the Big Lie if you ever saw one. (...) Half of their motive is hatred - a frightened kind of hatred of the good for being the good - specifically, hatred of happiness. That hatred comes from tribalist conformity, from the brain of a rotten person thinking "since I obeyed my tribe and bore children, let every woman do the same, let no woman have a happy, successful or significant life." Or, sure, some mothers can have significant lives but those are mothers by choice and they do not join the anti-abortion movement. It is truly shameful that this particular violation of rights is perpetrated by today's conservatives. It is one more proof of the fact that, whatever the conservatives want to conserve, it is not capitalism nor freedom nor individual rights.