If you have a right to abortion, a baby has an obligation to die.
If you have a right to free speech, I have an obligation to tolerate the revolution that comes about because of it.
If you have a right to smooch with your gay lover in public, my children have an obligation to watch.
If you have a right to pornography, I have an obligation to live in the sewer you are making of this country.
Every assertion of a right on the one hand entails an assertion of
obligations on the other. So the notion that "more rights means more
freedom" is sheer nonsense. More rights means more particular, varied,
and complex obligations: it means fewer degrees of freedom in the phase
space of available human options, not more degrees of freedom. That may
be a good thing in many cases, depending on the particulars: human
beings often need to be confined by positive rules within a smaller
sphere of available options. But the notion that more rights implies
greater freedom is balderdash. If anything the very opposite is true.
