ANNALS OF LIBERTARIANISM, PART 499,010. David Harsanyi has an article at Reason -- which, surely you know, is the nation's preeminent libertarian magazine -- about abortion. Synopsis: That guy who killed those babies in Philadelphia was just doing what all abortionists do, there are more late-term abortions than you think, "Does life really begin on the say-so of a single person—even the mother?" Nat Hentoff, Ron Paul, "41 percent of pregnancies in New York City were terminated with the destruction of the nascent human being," etc.

Since this is a libertarian magazine, Harsanyi drops little notes here and there to indicate he's not being pro-life exactly (those people are "folks I generally don't hang with," dude), he's just asking questions, such as "How many Americans instinctively turn to the pro-choice camp because pro-life proponents aggravate their secular sensibilities?" If you're inclined to answer, "Dunno -- how many people turn to the pro-life camp because Jesus told them to?" you're obviously beyond Harsanyi's reach. And that's too bad, because he's just trying to be reasonable:

It's unfortunate that abortion is a social issue, because it is science and reason that can turn the debate...

I'm certainly not under the delusion that every problem has an answer. But if the pro-life movement is going to win the hearts and minds of the rest of the nation, it's not going to need more God. It's going to need more reason.

Reexamine your premises, baby-killers -- like those global warming alarmists, you're the ones flying the face of science!

Reaching to clasp hands from the other side of the conservative-libertarian divide, National Review's chief theocon Kathryn J. Lopez talks about "Abortion as a Tea Party Issue":

Has our financial mess brought us to the brink of getting beyond the culture wars?

It’s a question that we might see play out on Capitol Hill in the coming months as the new majority seeks to make the late pro-life congressman Henry Hyde proud, by defunding Planned Parenthood and prohibiting taxpayer funding of abortion.

Lopez brings in an expert to explain that "forced payment for abortions is not just or even primarily about abortion but about experts in Washington instructing us about how we make decisions about sensitive matters." Yeah yeah, to-may-to, to-mah-to, so long as they can save those fetuses. Later on, there'll be another angle they can apply to abortions that, though privately funded, can still be shown to contradict the wishes of the Founding Fathers -- maybe because they were foisted on an unwilling America by activist judges or the "elites" or "ruling class" or whatever.

Remember all that "Tea Party Avoids Divisive Social Issues" stuff? Psych! All they had to do was remove abortion from the category of "social issues." The effect's still the same, though.