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Private property rights trump abortion "rights"

By Scott Tibbs, February 21, 2011

The IDS editorial board's position of February 14 is instructive, in that it demonstrates how some of those who claim to be "pro-choice" on abortion rights are actually pro-abortion.

The IDS is upset that a court allowed a landlord to decline to lease office space to an abortionist. The issue is not that the government is restricting access to abortion, because that is not happening. The issue is private property rights.

If a private property owner does not wish to rent space to an abortionist - or any other business for that matter - he should have the right to do so and the government should protect that right under freedom of association. After all, freedom of association necessarily includes the freedom not to associate.

But what Mila Means and her supporters at the IDS want is for the property owner's wishes to be overruled in the name of "choice." But for freedom to truly exist, both sides need to enter the arrangement of their own free will.

There is no "right" to abortion in the US Constitution, other than the one the Supreme court "found" implied in the text in 1973. Private property rights, however, are clearly protected by our founding document. The IDS editorial board should review the Fifth Amendment, which makes it illegal for government to take private property "for public use, without just compensation." If the government were to force Foliage Development to rent to means, that would be a taking.

It is a tragedy that it is legal to murder babies in their mother's wombs. We should not compound the injustice of 50 million murders since 1973 by taking away the private property rights of Foliage Development for a fraudulent "pro-choice" (actually radically pro-abortion) ideology.