One of the more interesting discoveries I made at Cato Univeristy is that although most of the older libertarians there seemed to be strongly pro-choice, the majority of the younger libertarians were pro-life. I'm sure there's a selection factor at work, since the older attendees paid their own way to the conference and the youngsters were often there on scholarship (like me), but it was still an interesting dynamic.
For a libertarian (and, I'd argue, for everyone) the abortion question rests solely on one issue: is a fetus a human being? If so, then a libertarian must seek to protect that life on the same terms as any other. If not, then there's no reason for government to get involved with abortion at all.
That all-or-nothing mentality is part of the reason I left the L.P. years ago. Then again, if I had stayed on board, the fact that they're running a tax evader for President and a schmuck with a fake Ph.D. for Veep would give me an equally strong reason to leave now.
X: Right, plus, I'm not really talking about the party. I didn't meet anyone at the conference who was actually associated with the party.
The all-or-nothing part applies to libertarianism generally, not just to the L.P. per se. Libertarianism doesn't handle gray areas very well, as it must do in order to tackle an issue like abortion competently.
That said, if there is a libertarian view on abortion, it would have to be 100% pro-choice, abortion on demand. Why? Because no one really knows for sure whether a fetus is a human being or not. Libertarianism allows government to ban murder, but it does not require it to do so. On the flip side, it absolutely prohibits government from punishing victimless crimes. So in cases of doubt, a Real Libertarian would have to err on the side of choice.
Libertarians can handle gray areas just fine. The problem is that those who just want less government than we have today are forced by the institutional LP to either leave or to commit to both a final state of almost no government at all and a commitment to get there with breathtaking rapidity. There is no place that I can tell for the salami slicing libertarian, the guy who wants to take government and just make it a little smaller each year as long as it's practical and to hold the line on government growth when shrinking things is not going to pass.
The salami slicer is, I suspect, the largest branch of the libertarian intellectual sphere and the least represented by LP candidates and power brokers.
X: I'm not at all sure why you think a libertarian would have to err on the side of abortion rights. Libertarianism does, in fact, take the right to life (and the prohibition of murder) as a fundamental axiom ("life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...").
TML: I agree. We need to scale things back over time, and do it by convincing people that we're right. Otherwise libertarians are no better than any other despots.
Libertarianism is about limitation of government, not restriction of individual conduct. Some libertarians are anarchists, which pretty much precludes any government regulation of individual conduct whatsoever. Among those who accept government as a necessary evil, laws against "victimful" crimes are consistent with libertarian principles, but they are not compelled by them. On the flip side, laws against victimless crimes clearly violate libertarian principles. Thus, when faced a situation that may or may not have a victim, the only "safe" libertarian view is to allow the act, or concede that you are basing your decision on something other than libertarian principles ("lifearian" principles, for example).
I don't believe in gray areas. Not that i don't often encounter them, it's just that things appear gray only when they are too dimly lit, obscured by some obstruction, or are just too far away to comprehend properly. True colors will be revealed in due time.
In these cases, extreme caution -- conservatism -- is the order of the day. Err on the side of Life, because in such a "gray area" as abortion, the stakes are a matter of life and death.