Argentine economist, lawmaker, and current presidential frontrunner Javier Milei said “abortion is murder” in a conversation with Tucker Carlson published online on Thursday.
Carlson traveled to Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital, for an extended conversation on several issues with Milei ahead of Argentina’s presidential election on October 22. Speaking to Carlson on his Twitter broadcast, Milei explained that his stance on abortion is derived philosophically from his belief in the “right to life.”
“Because as a liberal – well, libertarian liberal because in English liberal is different – I’ll say ‘libertarian,’ we believe that liberalism is the unrestricted respect for the project of life [pursuit of happiness] of others, based on the non-aggression principle, and in defense of the right to life, liberty, and property,” Milei said. “Therefore, clinging to these ideas of liberty, basically, one of the fundamental ideas is to defend the right to life. So philosophically I am in defense of the right to life. Then there is a justification from the point of view of science, of natural science, which is the fact that life begins in the moment of fertilization, and in that moment a new being, in evolution, is generated, with a different DNA.”
He also addressed the common “my body, my choice” pro-abortion argument by pointing out that a child’s body is its own separate body, despite being in a mother’s womb.
“It is true that the woman has a right over her body, but that child in her womb is not her body. The child is not her body,” he explained. “Therefore, abortion is murder, aggravated by the relationship and the difference in strength – that he [the child] has no way of defending himself . And not just that but there is also a mathematical question. Life is a continuum with two discrete leaps, birth and death, and any interruption in between is murder.”
Ep. 24 Argentina’s next president could be Javier Milei. Who is he? We traveled to Buenos Aires to speak with him and find out. pic.twitter.com/4WwTZYoWHs
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) September 14, 2023
Milei’s Liberty Advances coalition dramatically outperformed polls to win the nation’s primaries in August – a process called “Simultaneous and Mandatory Open Primaries” (PASO) that determines which presidential candidates appear on the final ballot in October. Candidates need to obtain at least 1.5 percent of the vote to be on the ballot; Milei was the most popular candidate with 30 percent of the votes.
In October, Milei will face off against establishment “center-right” candidate Patricia Bullrich (who obtained 16.98 percent of the vote in the PASO election) and socialist current economic minister Sergio Massa (who received 21.4 percent in the PASO vote). As of this week, nationwide polling shows Milei as the frontrunner in October’s race. The most recent nationwide polling – a survey by the firm Analogía published on Wednesday and taken between September 3 and 5, shows Milei receiving 31.1 percent support, with Massa a close second at 28 percent. If no candidate receives 50 percent of the vote, the top two vote-getters will move on to a runoff election.
Milei identifies as a Latin American “liberal,” a term which in the region refers to right-wing classical liberalism, libertarianism, and religious conservatism.
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Frances Martel contributed to this report.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Twitter @thekat_hamilton.