How can civil libertarians deny others a right they fight for?
ONE of the great truths of life is that everyone loves rights. We love them when we have them. But we particularly love them when we can loftily confer them on somebody else. So satisfying. The problem is that being a rights-giver carries its own challenges. Anyone will defend a right they like or a minority of which they approve. But the real test is whether you are prepared to stick up for the uncongenial rights of groups you just do not care for. This is the test set by proposed abortion legislation for various members of the Victorian Parliament and assorted civil liberties glee clubs such as Liberty Victoria. So far, they are failing it like a fencepost sitting VCE physics. Oddly enough, the immediate issue here is not the vexed one of abortion, which admittedly raises vastly different reactions in different sections of the community. Rather, the issue is freedom of conscience. This centrality of conscience in rights discourse hardly is surprising. Of all the rich and varied freed
