Public and Private Choices

All agree that liberty requires a private sphere free from government influence. But what exactly is a private choice?

Sexuality in all its forms has become the quintessential example of a private choice. But how private are our sexual choices?

For example, say a man and women copulate and the woman is impregnated by means of this coupling. If they stay together and raise the child as a family, the choice remains a private one. But say the woman wants to get an abortion. She has to go to an abortionist—not so private anymore.

Or say the woman keeps the child but the man does not stick around. A child raised by a single mom is more likely to require additional educational assistance, the mother and child are more likely to get food stamps and housing subsidies (for the number one cause of poverty in this country is the breaking up of families; and indeed is this not logical? It takes twice the income to support two households than one) and the child is more likely to commit violent acts and require incarceration of some type. This does not sound like too private of a choice anymore.

We do ourselves a disservice when we assume that our ancestors were idiots or fascists or religious zealots to try to regulate the family structure (regarding the religious argument, see Plato and Aristotle). There is a reason people have done things (like regulate family structure and promote man and wife as the idea) certain ways for long periods of time—it has worked! Just because we cannot see the benefits of their customs and traditions does not mean we should discard them. They learned things the hard way so that we would not have to. Yet if we mock their lessons we will find ourselves subject to repeating them.