After the circus show of the Planned Parenthood “hearing” is over, let’s continue to hold “hearings” with every business, every corporation, every school, every organization of any kind that receives any kind of government subsidy, whether directly or indirectly.

Because the principle at the core of each instance is the same: SOME who happen to be a voting majority deciding to take from OTHERS what does not belong to the some in order to pay for what the some think YET SOME others need or want or deserve. It is morally indefensible when distilled down to its essentials. It is the opposite of freedom. And it destroys the very conditions that incentivized the production of all the wonderful goods we see around us today and enjoy.

The current problem surrounding Planned Parenthood is easily fixed: Let us ask who among Americans finds the services offered by Planned Parenthood to be important and worthy of support. This might include women who utilize those services. It might include other women who do not utilize PP as well as non-women who simply think PP is important and valuable. Fine. Let them work and earn and save and prioritize in their OWN spending…funding for Planned Parenthood…because they are the ones who think it is valuable.

If the laws change regarding abortion, then perhaps PP will be unable to perform legal abortions or refer patients to abortion clinics. But whether PP is or is not performing legalized abortions, those who find value in PP are those who should fund it. Even if the United States government in all its wisdom thinks abortion should be legalized, it is nowhere within the proper purpose of government to get involved with paying and subsidizing it. Many things are legal, yet no one would argue that everything legal ought to be subsidized with other people’s property.

The quip about “health” is a ruse. The argument that cancer screenings and mammograms improve health and THEREFORE every tax payer should subsidize cancer screenings and mammograms…is a complete non sequitur. Modern plumbing, reliable indoor heating and air conditioning, pasteurization, window and door screens that keep out insects carrying horrible diseases, have saved far more lives and kept people healthier and extended life spans more than all the cancer screenings and mammograms combined. Does anyone want to suggest or argue that every and all modern technologies that keep us safer and healthier ought to be subsidized by “others?” Must we now subsidize, say, every manufacturer of screens? Of course not. Lots of new inventions can be helpful for people in all kinds of ways. But just because one person invents something helpful does not instantly grant a right or an entitlement for others to have it.

The current PP fiasco has turned the attention of almost all who are paying attention to the subject of abortion. Yet the legal status of abortion is a subject independent of PP. PP might grow in resources, or its resources might diminish, depending on how the people at PP manage their business, the levels of demand for their services, and how much people value their services. But the legal fate of abortion will not and cannot be decided by PP. That is a separate subject.

But the current PP fiasco ALSO ought to turn out attention to another subject: Why does a mere voting majority get to decide what property will be taken from whom, and how it will be used? There are many businesses and corporations that many Americans don’t care about, yet we seem to be under the delusion that if a majority of voters elect a majority of politicians, those politicians somehow are morally authorized to take much away from some in order to subsidize the businesses and corporations they like or from whom they get favors.

Yet in that whole process of some people voting and some politicians taking from some citizens what DOES NOT BELONG to the politicians OR the voters, and giving it to select businesses that politicians want to subsidize, WHERE IS THERE ANY CREATION OF MORAL AUTHORITY? Theft backed up by tens of millions of voters is still theft. Theft never becomes right, ever, no matter how many people vote in favor of it. Further, We The People never authorized our government to take from some in order to give to the businesses and organizations favored by government. Never, ever did we do that.

So let us build upon the Planned Parenthood hearings. Let us focus our attention on what it means to “own” something, let us be reminded of what “property” means, and why it is always and everywhere wrong to steal from others no matter how worthy YOU happen to think is the cause you intend to support with stolen property.

If we could at least come to some kind of consensus that property is real, property is right, property is inviolable as a principle, then maybe someday we might be willing as a nation to consider what property rights the youngest, weakest, and most vulnerable among us have.