There is only one libertarian position on gender-affirming health care, and that's to let it be a private decision of doctors, patients, and parents if a minor is involved. Worries that some people might regret it are no more a case for criminalization than the fact that lots of people regret taking drugs is a case against drug decriminalization. And if your worry is that we need to protect kids from bad choices, you need *much* weightier evidence of harm than anti-trans people can point to.

@arossp How many libs does that own?

Also that seems classic libertarian. Current Libertarian Party thought seems to be you have a God-given right for the government to protect you from disfavored groups they don't like.

@Popehat @arossp "Libertarian" is a euphemism for "white men should get everything they want while the rest of you chumps pay for building roads and bridges."

@junecasagrande @Popehat No, it's not. That's a comfortable caricature that makes it easy to dismiss arguments against one's policy preferences without having to critically engage them, but we should always strive to resist such traps and instead cultivate an informed and robust understanding of the range of political thought.

@arossp @Popehat Hard not to caricature when I've never seen a self-described libertarian stand up for women's reproductive freedom yet I've seen many oppose it.

@junecasagrande @Popehat You haven't been looking very hard. The majority of self-described libertarians are pro-choice. There is a contingent that is anti-abortion, typically on grounds of believing that a fetus has a full set of rights which disallow its killing, but that view is in the minority, with most libertarians arguing either that a fetus is not the kind of thing with such rights, or a Judith Thomson-style "the mother's bodily autonomy trumps any fetus rights" position.

@arossp @Popehat Perhaps I'm not looking very hard. Perhaps there's a reason that the pro-choice majority of libertarians you describe aren't outspoken enough about it to even get their message out, choosing instead of focus on policy positions that benefit mostly rich white men.

@arossp @junecasagrande @Popehat my best guess is that you’re in an echo chamber and only see “libertarian” content when one of the paleos tweets something so horrifyingly bad that it gets noticed and dragged by “Occupy Democrats” or whatever vanilla progressive meme pages you follow. Do you know anything about Cato Institute or Institute for Justice?

@elfprince13 @junecasagrande @Popehat Post-Dobbs, I'd actually, and sadly, place Cato in the category June posits of "the pro-choice majority of libertarians [who] aren't outspoken enough." I know for a fact that the majority of Cato scholars are pro-choice, but the institution has taken only a "libertarians can disagree on this issue" stance publicly, letting the minority dictate policy in a way that, I would argue, runs counter to the correct libertarian position on reproductive rights.