Ayn Rand Lexicon

After reading Ayn Rands opinion of the very controversial topic of abortion, I realize her views have some relation to one another. Abortion is a huge debate presently, constantly focused in politics and special interest groups. The discussion between pro-life (babies right to live) and pro-choice (mothers choice to terminate the pregnancy) is constantly a heated topic faced everyday. Conservative, liberal, and religious views all play into this dicussion between how to enforce this touchy issue.
Ayn Rand discusses on her website how the embryo has no rights, that a child cannot acquire rights until it is born. Rand feels that abortion is a moral right to a woman, whom should be able to make choices of what to do with her own body. The lifelong responsibility of having a child, she feels should be under the mothers control for an unwanted pregnancy and difficult circumstances could hurt the situation even more for not only the mother but the child as well. It is obviously displayed that Ayn Rand is a pro-choice supporter.
Comparing the views presented in Ayn Rand's Anthem and her views on abortion, I feel these views without a doubt connect. A reoccurring theme constantly presented throughout Anthem is individuality. This novel depicts a world of the future, a society so collectivized that even the word “I” has vanished from the language. Numbers to identify individuals, phrasing every sentence with the use of "we", and the bland society of no choice and no creation of identity, overwhelms the main character of this novelette, Equality 72521. This journey that this individual makes throughout the course of the book formulates a discovery of who he is and a creation of his own identity. When fleeing this society with his loved one, the Golden One, he discovers the meaning of "I" promising himself to establish a world of individuality and the supremacy of the ego. "I am. I think. I will." presented in chapter 11, starts the beginning of a world of individualism for the two of them.
This theme of individuality relates to Ayn Rand's view on abortion. The idea of discovering your unique self and formulating your own ideas and choices relates to the pro-choice view that Rand supports for a woman to be able to choose whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, with control over her own body. The idea of doing things for yourself and not for a group as a whole, presented in Anthem, supports these views on abortion.