Libertarians promote individual liberty and seek to minimize the role of the state. The abortion debate is mainly within propertarianism/right-libertarianism between cultural liberals and social conservatives, as left-libertarians generally see it as a settled issue regarding individual rights, as they support legal access to abortion as part of what they consider to be a woman's right to control her body and its functions. Religious right and intellectual conservatives have attacked such libertarians for supporting abortion rights, especially after the demise of the Soviet Union led to a greater divide in the conservative movement between libertarians and social conservatives. Libertarian conservatives claim libertarian principles such as the non-aggression principle (NAP) apply to human beings from conception and that the universal right to life applies to fetuses in the womb. Thus, some of those individuals express opposition to legal abortion. According to a 2013 survey, 5.7/10 of American Libertarians oppose making it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion.

Russian-born American novelist and philosopher, Ayn Rand, argued that the notion of a fetus's having a right to life is "vicious nonsense" and stated: "An embryo has no rights. [...] A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born". She also wrote: "Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered".

Anarcho-capitalist philosopher and Austrian school economist Murray Rothbard wrote that "no being has a right to live, unbidden, as a parasite within or upon some person's body" and that therefore the woman is entitled to eject the fetus from her body at any time. However, explaining the right of the woman to "eject the fetus from her body", Rothbard also wrote that "every baby as soon as it is born and is therefore no longer contained within his mother's body possesses the right of self-ownership by virtue of being a separate entity and a potential adult. It must therefore be illegal and a violation of the child's rights for a parent to aggress against his person by mutilating, torturing, murdering him, etc." Rothbard also opposed all federal interference with the right of local governments to fashion their own laws, so he opposed the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision. He believed that states should be able to author their own abortion policies. He also opposed taxpayer funding for abortion clinics, writing "it is peculiarly monstrous to force those who abhor abortion as murder to pay for such murders".

19th-century individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker initially concluded that no one should interfere to prevent neglect of the child, although they could still repress a positive invasion. However, Tucker, having reconsidered his opinion, resolved that parental cruelty is of non-invasive character and therefore is not to be prohibited. Tucker's opinion is grounded on the fact that he viewed the child as the property of the mother while in the womb and until the time of their emancipation (at the age of being able to contract and provide for themselves) unless the mother had disposed of the fruit of her womb by contract. In the meantime, Tucker recognized the right of the mother to dispose of her property as she sees it fit. According to Tucker's logic, "the outsider who uses force upon the child invades, not the child, but its mother, and may be rightfully punished for doing so".

In "The Right to Abortion: A Libertarian Defense", the Association of Libertarian Feminists created what they call a "systematic philosophical defense of the moral case for abortion from a libertarian perspective". It concludes: "To sacrifice existing persons for the sake of future generations, whether in slave labor camps for the utopian nightmares of Marxists or fascists, or in unwanted pregnancies, compulsory childbearing, and furtive coat hanger abortions for the edification of fetus-worshippers, is to establish hell on earth".

Capitalism Magazine supports the abortion-rights position, writing:

thumb|260px|Libertarians at the November 12, 1989, abortion rights march in [[Washington, D.C.]]

Harry Browne, the Libertarian Party candidate for president in 1996 and 2000, rejected the terms "pro-life" and "pro-choice" and stated about abortion: "Whatever we believe abortion is, we know one thing: Government doesn't work, and it is as incapable of eliminating abortions as it is of eliminating poverty or drugs".

The Libertarian Party's 2004 presidential candidate Michael Badnarik had a similar position, writing: "I oppose government control over the abortion issue. I believe that giving the government control of this issue could lead to more abortions rather than fewer, because the left-right pendulum of power swings back and forth. This shift could place the power to set policy in the hands of those who demand strict population control. The government that can ban abortion can just as easily mandate abortion, as is currently the case in China". The party's 2012 presidential candidate Gary Johnson wanted to keep abortion legal.

Prior U.S. Libertarian Party national platform

The 2012-May 2022 political platform of the Libertarian Party stated, "Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration."

Other organizations

Other abortion rights libertarian organizations include the Association of Libertarian Feminists and Pro-Choice Libertarians.

The anti-abortion libertarian group Libertarians for Life argues that humans in the zygotic, embryonic and fetal stages of development have the same rights as humans in the neonatal stage and beyond. Doris Gordon of the group notes that the principles of both the Libertarian Party and Objectivist ethics require some obligation to children and counter with an appeal to the non-aggression principle: