Social Welfare Programs, Abortion And Government Interference In America: Implications for Korea

There are three Tiers of Rights: natural, individual quality of life, and group identity. Natural Rights are preeminent among these. Quality of Life Rights is of a progressive type that would enhance and/or displace Natural Rights. Identity Group Rights are growing in victim-affirming efforts to address past wrongs according to whims of various Group memberships at the expense of Natural Rights. The purpose of government is to protect and nurture natural rights - life, liberty, and property. All else is left to the holders of those natural rights to respond to the needs of the people around them (the needy). The advantage of such a conservative government-populace relationship is that the people will find support for such social action as the populace believes to be moral and right. Although natural rights primarily concern life, liberty and property, they do encompass principles of anti-discrimination. However, these anti-discrimination principles being twisted from their original, natural rights, meaning and used to justify government action in support of lesser rights of the governed. While American government was conceived as the protector of Natural Rights through limited interaction with the governed, second and third tier rights demand more government interference with the governed in order to placate the needy: this is what may be called “big government.” Central to second and third tier rights is the concept of immutable characteristics. Immutability is a legal concept in U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence that says that only groups identified by unchangeable characteristics need protection against the violation of rights. Progressives seek to expand the definition of “immutable” so that identity groups that are not linked by immutable characteristics may lay claims against the natural rights of outgroup members. The purpose of government is simply to protect and nurture natural rights. All else is left to the holders of those natural rights to respond to the needs of the people around them (those in need). A governments’ primary purpose should be to protect natural rights, leaving it to the holders of those right to address the problems of those in need. As such, public (private) support for social “needs” that are deemed “unworthy” will naturally wane. No intrusion upon the natural rights that exist above all others in fellow members of the population need be made. Private social action, then, is most effective, autonomous (from government intrusion), and responsive to the ebb and flow of social mores. Regarding abortion, the government which governs the least need proclaim only a prohibition against murder (illicit homicide). When it presumes to be more precise than such a general prohibition, it falls prey to the machinations of various interest groups that would seek to define “life” in a manner most responsive to their cause, requiring government to cater to an ever-expanding number of interest groups regarding their private definitions. Static religious definitions of “life” may conflict with interest group definitions, but those differences are not for the government to settle fully and finally. Regarding its pending legislation on abortion, due for resolution at the end of 2020, Korea should rely upon its general criminal homicide legislation to include prohibitions of abortions, and not endeavor to address the matter separately.