The Rights of Man: Libertarians’ concern for men’s, but not women’s, reproductive autonomy (A summary and recontextualization of existing research)

Abstract

Libertarians claim individual autonomy as their central political principle, but historical and current evidence suggests this principle has been applied selectively. Reproductive decisions such as abortion can uniquely stress the concept of individual autonomy by placing into conflict the claimed rights of each biological parent to choose. We conducted two identical studies demonstrating that among US participants, libertarianism is associated with opposition to women’s reproductive autonomy but support for men’s. Self-identified libertarians tended to oppose women’s abortion rights, and support men’s right to both prevent women from having abortions (male veto), and withdraw financial support for a child when women refuse to terminate the pregnancy (financial abortion), and hostile sexism may account for libertarians’ selective support for men’s and not women’s reproductive autonomy. These results are discussed in the context of the recent reversal of the Roe vs. Wade supreme court ruling in the United States, imperiling a woman’s constitutional right to abortion.