The Vigilante Injustice of the Texas Abortion Law

In this episode of New Ideal Live, Ben Bayer and Agustina Vergara Cid discuss Texas’s recent anti-abortion legislation, SB8.

Among the topics covered:

• Key facts about the new Texas law;
• How the law will likely impact women;
• The actual consequences of the law to date;
• Legal challenges to the law;
• How the law encourages “vigilante justice”;
• How this law sets a dangerous precedent for evading judicial review;
• How the law undermines the rule of objective law;
• Why rights do not begin with the heartbeat (or at conception) according to Ayn Rand;
• The assault on abortion rights in many other American states;
• Ayn Rand on the importance of abortion rights and the evil of those oppose them;
• Why we shouldn’t cede to anti-abortionists the title of “pro-life”;
• Why the Texas law doesn’t respect human life or highlight the importance of sex education;
• Why abortion should be permitted until birth.

Mentioned in the discussion are the Ayn Rand Lexicon entry “Abortion,” Ayn Rand’s talk “Of Living Death,” and Ben Bayer’s articles “Abortion Allows Women to Protect What’s Sacred about Life,” “Ayn Rand’s Radical Case for Abortion Rights,” and “Science without Philosophy Can’t Resolve Abortion Debate.”

This podcast was recorded on September 22, 2021. Listen to the discussion below. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch archived podcasts here.

Podcast audio:

Marquee image: Stock photo posed by model; illustrative purposes only.