Whatever your problems with religion are, that is your issue. All the arguments on this forum I have read have to do with Natural and Constitutional law.
That’s one of the great ironies of this ongoing debate. The Roe v. Wade decision had nothing to do specifically with whether abortion should be legal or not, but was based on a Constitutional “right to privacy” which the Court “found”. Strangely though, courts seem to apply this right only when it comes to abortion. What you do with your children after they are born (when I assume we can all agree they have full human rights) remains subject to the collective will-- education, corporal punishment, etc. This “right to privacy” also does not extend to the right not to be electronically strip searched at airports, or not having your junk fondled by TSA agents. It has failed to nullify the prerogative of State and Federal governments to seize the property of suspected terrorists and drug dealers without warrant or trial. But fear not, because your right to stick a fork in your unborn child’s head remains secure.
"Whatever your problems with religion are, that is your issue. "
I’m just stating the fact that most of the people who are against abortions are religious.
The problem with planned parenting seems to be government funding; which it may or may not be be able to pay for privately. But it is not merely an abortion clinic.
Guys I think you’re straying from the original topic. I also asked if you would only post with objections to my logic supported by some kind of citation/quote.
So regardless of our personal views, we agree that, assuming a fetus doesn’t qualify for property rights, the logic of the OP is consistent? This means abortion is legitimate on property rights grounds and that nobody can retaiate at any phase if the fetus/baby dies/is killed until we can determine that it has clearly and voluntarily—under no threat of violence by the other party—asked for defense, or until someone’s property becomes involved such that the fetus/baby being killed is a violation of property.
I’m assuming you wouldn’t buy into a natural obligations argument? Though this is more of natural power of mother to protect rights of a child.
Yet here I can bring up JJ’s example in another thread (sorry if I misrepresent his ideas):
What if you see a guy being beaten down to a pulp? Can you not help him? Or must we all stand by and watch people getting beaten up? You might argue that the guy getting beaten up will tell you to protect him, giving you the power. But what if his mouth is duct-taped shut? Is he not then like a baby?
Am I to understand the OP remains uncontested on substantial logical or factual grounds? Then I’ll respond, for sport.
Yes, I do buy into a “natural rights” view, which is my view. It is the nature of humans which our rights derive from, and they are property rights, which a fetus can’t/doesn’t have.
As for the guy being beaten to a pulp, for all I know he’s your murderer, a criminal! But the point is I don’t know, and it’s none of my business until it becomes my business. If this circumstance was likely, the markets would therefore find a solution. But it’s not my burden to provide the market’s solution in advance.
You asked if I saw a guy being beaten to a pulp wouldn’t I therefore have some kind of obligation or duty or right to defend him? I said no—not only because I don’t know the circumstances, i.e. the guy beaten up is a murderer, perhaps the baby-killer from above—but because I don’t have any right when my property isn’t involved and I have no contractual relation with anyone involved.
I guess this is where the market comes in handy. Assuming everything would be better and safer in a libertarian society, this question is laughable. But for sport…
We have to assume, like I said, that a contractual society would have logical, righteous, protections for situations like this. But you can always take a risk and jump in. If someone felt their rights were violated they would be justified in retaliating or prosecuting—though they wouldn’t be obligated to.
< What if it was your girlfriend? There’s typically no property at stake in gf/bf relationships… >
This I agree with completely, though the government does not. An unmarried man would have no claim to the child; and an unmarried woman should have no claim to the man’s paycheck. This is why all cultures established the institution of marriage. The wearing down of the rights and privileges of marriage serves only to give the State more power over us all. When you allow the breaking of the big laws, you will get neither freedom nor anarchy. Instead, you get volumes of the little laws, which are far more dangerous.
John Ess: < The problem with planned parenting seems to be government funding; which it may or may not be be able to pay for privately. But it is not merely an abortion clinic. >
I agree with the government funding statement, but the chart data is laughable. Did you happen to notice its source? Government agencies fudge numbers all the time, and government-funded private organizations have even more reason to.
In anarchy, our modern conception of marriage as distinct from any other possible pro-creative relationship will likely disappear for a couple of reasons: 1) there is no universal objective criteria for what constitutes a marriage and 2) nobody really cares about your sexual relationships.
People will learn that once they starting sticking it in or opening it up that they are bound for trouble if they do not make their expectations of possible risks clear. In our current state of affairs, people are so used to living without responsibility (or more precisely, dumping their responsibility on the state) that the fear of having to deal with an unwanted child will be more pervasive. People who do not take care of their own children will likely wither into poverty and become irrelevent actors in anarchy.
I’m replying to a your similar post in another thread, so I have a bit more quoted. I hope you don’t mind.
The fetus is an individual. By all biological standards, the fetus is a separate organism living inside of a woman. Whether this individual has any more rights than a tape worm also living inside of the woman is the topic of this debate. You tacitly acknowledge this when you question the existence of said rights. That is, there is no question, as far as I know, about the rights of the appendix, or the rights of the tonsils. These are clearly not individuals separate from the woman. The fetus, however, is a demonstrably separate, genetically different, individual.
The rest of your assertions, true or not, are examples of the version of the origin of rights in which you personally believe, which is not necessarily held by other libertarians, and your own subjective time preference in the recognition of rights of others.
First and foremost, when we speak of someone, “having rights,” even when referring to negative rights, we are speaking in positivist terms. That is, the core principle of libertarianism, the Non-aggression principle, tells us not what rights we have, but rather the rights we don’t have.
Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics is one of several ways libertarians derive the principle. Utilitarians Mises and Hayak believed respect of the NAP would lead to the greatest utility. John Locke and Murray Rothbard appealed to natural rights. Talk of, “the very foundations of the concepts of property, rights, and property rights,” especially from a libertarian perspective, without mentioning any of these, or at least how these ideas contributed, seems, at the very least, incomplete.
You talk about the fetus not needing property, but ignore self-ownership. If a fetus owns itself, any violence initiated against it necessary is inconsistent with the Non-aggression principle, and is therefore non-libertarian. The question then becomes, Is a fetus a self-owner? You clearly answer in the negative and ground your answer firmly in the present. “…[I]t can’t be proved to be rational, it can’t communicate about abstract concepts with us, it can’t act in the economic sense—purposeful behavior towards scarce resources—nor does it need to…”
I agree, a fetus can do none of these things, but it has the potential to do all of them in the future. Likewise, a drunk passed out in an alley also cannot presently do any of these, nor can the high school girl who was drugged at a party. Why then, do we treat the theft of the drunk man’s wallet, or sex with the unconscious girl, as violations of their rights? It’s not because they were capable of doing everything you listed before they passed out, but because we assume they will be able to sometime in the future, once the effects of the intoxicants wear off. If we consider the prior assertion of rights at all, there can be no rational reason corpses should not also be afforded rights. The only difference between an unconscious man and a dead man is that the unconscious man will potentially wake up. On the other hand, if we assume the unconscious drunk and the drugged girl as self-owners because they will be able assert this ownership in the future, then the only difference between them, a baby, and a fetus, regarding the right of self-ownership, is one of time.
Potential rational agents are ethically rational agents. For how long, then, must one be unable to assert one’s rights for one to be considered not a self-owner? A few hours of sleeping off a bottle of booze? A few days for the strong drugs to pass? A few years to learn how to express the concept of mine? The eternity after death? It seems to me that picking any time before death is arbitrary and inconsistent.
If it’s self-evident, why have you made attempts to justify it? Why have you predicated each of those attempts with, “If?”
In any event, biology and genetics demonstrate that the fetus is indeed a separate entity from the mother, and not in any way, “part of [her],” so your first, “If,” is negated.
Many libertarian philosophers have written about the ownership of children, likening such ownership to a trustee or custodianship, and not at all the actual ownership of the children themselves. So your second, “If,” is negated.
Since I do not grant your premise that a fetus and its mother are not a separate beings, nor that parents own their children outright, I’ll take issue with your claim that no one has standing to ask for legal recourse. Restitution claims have value, and there for the titles to them are transferable and therefore homestead-able.
In the case of a child being murdered by his parents, it’s arguable that with the murder, the title to the restitution claim has been abandoned by the parents, and another may homestead that abandoned claim.
All of this has been addressed above, particularly the idea of homesteading abandoned restitution claims. Of course, your also ignoring the next-of-kin’s right to seek restitution. Do you really need quotes and sources to demonstrate that it is a common libertarian belief that the families of murder victims have standing to seek restitution?
no more an individual, than a dog or cat is “individual”. The owners of these individuals are humans. In former case - it is woman… and maybe partly a man (undecided yet).
No less of one either. Biologically speaking, a zygote is a spearate organism, and continues to be so as it grows. This nothing to do with ownership, as that was addressed later in my post. It was only to point out one of the flaws in hashem’s argument – the claim that the unborn is somehow part of the parent, rather than being a separate organism living inside of the partent.
Jack I appreciate your response. Let me remind from the start that my case is 4 parts:
• The mother has a property right to abort
• Nobody has a property right to stop her
• Nobody has a property right to do anything about it, before or after (except ostracism and so forth)
• Anyone can murder the born baby (ex-fetus), and nobody has a property right to retaliate
In the let me see…
The fetus is an individual
The fetus is such a part of the mother’s body that it literally cannot be separated from her without severing live tissue. And yet the fact that it must be separated is enough. The absurdities that would arise if we considered every distinct body part its own “individual”…
As for rights, my theory is consistent with Stephen Kinsella’s and Hans Hoppe’s, as put forth in What Libertarianism Is. In my understanding, this theory simply combines all the logical parts of past theories, and trashes all the inconsistent illogical parts.
I agree, a fetus can do none of these things, but it has the potential to do all of them in the future.
Then at once we agree, it has the potential for property rights, at some point in the future. And even this is a stretch. At first we must note that the fetus does not become anything on it’s own. Obviously, the fetus is literally dependent on the mother in the most full sense. Even the born baby has no potential except if it is aided for several years. This is not a case for rights, but a case against the supposed rights of fetuses/babies. Potential is not the foundation of rights. Especially not “potential” which requires the efforts and actions of others. Rights are property rights, for rational individuals in an environment of scarce resources and competition. The entire concept of property rights, as I have shown, is utterly innapplicable to fetuses.
Among many other differences, a notable one between a drugged person and a fetus is that the fetus didn’t become temporarily incapacitated after becoming a self-owner and aquiring property rights. The fetus’ condition is natural, the drugged condition is imposed.
I don’t believe this to be contrary to Rothbard, though I suppose it may be. But then it wouldn’t be the my first time disagreeing with him (i.e. copyright).
Potential rational agents are ethically rational agents.
Again, potential isn’t the foundation of property rights. A rock could potentially be god.
You responded after these two sentences, but I don’t believe you addressed them:
If the fetus isn’t considered an individual, there is no concern for whom it belongs to; the fetus is a part of the mother. If the fetus can be considered property, certainly it is nobody’s if not the mother’s, so if she murders it, nobody has any legal recourse.
The fetus is a separate individual.
No. It is not. They are connected by live tissue in an environment of full-time dedicated support apparati where the fetus remains continually dependent on the mother’s body parts—and dependent on someone’s body parts, time, and energy, even for years after it is born.
In the case of a child being murdered by his parents…restitution claim…
If the child had voluntarily acquired debt with anyone other than his parents, yes.
I largely agree with your colclusions, but disagree with many of your premises.
You’re not looking objectively at the fact that the unborn, at whatever stage, in an individual. This is a biological fact. The unborn, from zygote on, is a disticnt organism, parasitically living off of the mother. It is not part of the mother, any more than a tapeworm living in a woman’s body is part of her body. It has different DNA, separate cell structure, possibly even a different blood type. Parasites are not part of the host, no matter how much they need the host to live.
Every quote I sent regarding the self-ownership of children, from Rothbard to Hoppe, states that either children either “naturally” have this right, or do so because they are potential adults. This is a widely held belief by a variety of different libertarians. The concept is, strictly speaking is, potential rational agents have the same rights as actual rational agents. All I have done is extend this to include the unborn, who are also potential adults. This position does not lead to absurdities, as it does not claim that anyone, unborn, child or adult, has the right to live parasitically off of another without that other’s consent.
If you disagree that is a common libertarian belief that potential rational agents are selfowners, I’d like to see your quotes and sources.
Rational action is the foundation of property rights. The potantial for an unconscious drunk to rationally act and a zygote to rationally act is a matter of time and nothing more. This should not be taken as an implication that the unborn or children have special positive rights. They have the right to be free from aggression, and nothing more. If they are not cared for, that is not a violation of their rights. So while, it does take more than just leaving them alone for them to reach the point of rational action. violence agianst them still goes against the NAP.
I did respond to those two sentenses. First, the unborn is an individual, separate from the parent. This is a biological fact. Your disgreements on this are strictly emotional pleas. Second, I belive I provided at least 4 or 5 quotes on the nature of parental ownership of children, quotes which completely contradict you. Parents do not own their children, and children, being potential rational actors, are self-owners.
The child acquiring debt has nothing to do with restitution claims. If you murdered my father, I, as an heir, have the right to seek restitution. That is, I have a property claim on that restitution. Since that claim has value, it can be transeferred, and if that claim is abandoned (becomes unowned) it can be homesteaded by another. In the case of the murder of a child by his parents, it can be argued that by killing their child, the parents have abandoned the claim to restitution, and so anyone may homestead the claim.