Comprehensive Libertarian Pro Life Argument.

Economics Political Theory
21

If a person drives a car, he is responsible for any damage he has caused, even if he had no intention of causing said damage.
Similarly, a mother is responsible for her baby even if she did not intend to have the baby.

Um, am I responsible for damage caused right after I’m done driving? I think that’s a closer analogy.

It was intended to be funny, but the point still stands that you can’t have it both ways. Either woman have complete authority over their bodies (and therefore the non-aggression principle doesn’t apply to them.) or in fact woman do not have complete authority over their bodies.

They have complete control and the NAP still stands, because the fetus is unwanted and unexpected, and by perspective aggressing upon (or inside) the person. Just because the fetus is “innocent” does not mean it’s not aggressing, especially since it must have forced removal.

That is not an excuse for murder, nor is it an argument that abortion is not murder.

That’s if someone sees abortion as murder, I do not, so it’s not murder to myself or others with the same world view.

All humans, when they’re in the womb. The child is not an aggressor, and is incapable of aggressing. The woman must initiate aggression against the child in order to get rid of him, which goes flat against the non-aggression principle.

If the fetus cannot peacefully leave, is unwanted and unintended, and you must use force, it seems like aggression. Keep in mind this is based on perspective of the person who’s womb it is, which is the woman.

My opening post posits that libertarians either have to redefine what a human is or else to make an exception to the non-aggression principle to hold on to a pro-choice stance. As I see no scientific reason (only a political reason) to redefine a fetus and/or embryo as something other than human, I refuse to do it. I also refuse to make an exception to the non-aggression principle as I see it as a statist mentality. Statists also think that the non-aggression principle holds true… Except for the state.

A woman has control over her own body and the NAP still stands true to this.

You are either misunderstanding my post or else being dishonest. My argument posits that abortion is incompatible with the non-aggression principle. You may argue that I am wrong (Which you have not.), but not that I am not at least on the face of it arguing within the bounds of a libertarian framework.

I have proved that you are wrong, you just can’t admit and accept that.

The argument is that for an abortion to be performed, the mother must aggress against the baby. The mother is not aggressing against the babies advocate. Just as in any other case of murder, a third party must seek justice against the murdered.

The fetus is in the creation process, and is not yet a human, it’s raw material owned by the mother and in 9 months depending what health she keeps her work in creates a final product, but til then the mother owns the womb and the materials that are creating. I assume no different than a black smith owning the iron and forge used to make a final product, and can destroy whatever he wishes. 3rd party? To be honest, I think the mother is 1st, 2nd, and 3rd party.

Are you suggesting that if a person is murdered, the only people that have standing to seek justice are people inside the family? So if a person murders an entire family, no one would have standing to prosecute?

Further, you have not bothered to argue that a embryo or fetus is not a human being, nor have you argued that killing the baby does not go against the non aggression principle.

I was once an embryo, you were once an embryo. If someone attacked you or me when we were inside the womb, they would be committing an act of aggression against us, thus breaking the non-aggression principle.

Abortion is a family issue, because I’ll assume the woman may consult the man who’s seed was spilt into her vagina about his opinion on the matter (but she doesn’t have to).

I have argued about whether it is not a human, I’ll tell you right now, it’s not a human in the sense of applicable laws in this physical world.

If someone outside the creator attacked us, the mother can seek justice for someone aggressing against her work.

Prematurely ending a pregnancy in any form by anyone is murder.

Subjective perspective.

Goverment should be abolished completely, but in its place there will be private law practices. These private law practices would have the standing to prosecute the murder of any human being. Since the mother must aggress against the child in order to abort him, she is committing an act of pre-meditated murder that may be prosecuted by any human being (And therefore any private law practice.).

Who said private law practices will cater to YOUR interests? You may be surprised to find an entire society of pro-choice law practices. Wouldn’t surprise me, because there’s plenty of pro-choice individuals.

On the flip side, do you feel kicking a person in the stomache is no different than kicking a pregnant person in the stomache?

I don’t kick people in stomaches, I’m not that much of an asshole.

22

Seraiah, no, what I said regarding people’s reaction to abortion versus murder is not a logical fallacy. It would become a logical fallacy if it were applied as a defeater of your argument. I understand what you are saying; the issue hinges on the definition of what it means to be human. That comment of mine was a tangent. It was not meant to be a demonstration that a fetus is not a human; I realize that isn’t contingent on what most people happen to believe.

23

Though you’re free to try, if you dive out of your car before it does any damage, you’re still at fault.

Yes it does. Aggression requires a voluntary act from the aggressor.

Aggression requires a willfull act on the side of the aggressor, otherwise it is not aggression. The baby is incapable of aggressing.

You could say that pregnancy is harmful to the mother, and impedes her freedom, but it’s impossible to place the blame on the child. The act of the father and/or mother along with nature is to blame.

The mother does have to actively assist the baby in order to avoid doing the baby harm (Avoiding to break the non-aggression principle.) and this situation is not exclusive to pregnancy as the examples in the OP show.

It is based on the non aggression principle and logical causality. I was a embryo, then a fetus, then a baby, then a toddler, then a pre adolescant, then an adolescant, then an adult. The entire time, I was one human.

Scientifically there is no way to divide between bio-mass and a human being because it is a smooth seamless transition of a single entity. There is no natural demarcation you can point to between one organism and another because it is one organism the entire time. This is not a subjective feeling, this is a scientific fact that can be falsified with evidence.

I would not want to live in a society in which a father could not prosecute the murderer if his child. Further, all murder cases are done as a “charity” on behalf of the deceased. It’s not about catering to the desires of the dead individual, it’s about seeking justice for breaking the Non-Aggression principle on behalf of someone that can not do it himself.

I don’t doubt that there would be pro-choice societies, but that doesn’t refute the fact that it would go against the non-aggression principle.

Fair enough. The observation in itself certainly isn’t a fallacy. However, I don’t see it as anything more than desensitization to murder, not a repressed feeling that children inside the womb are not actually children (or even human for that matter.).

24

I’m not a big fan of NAP or “agression”-based analysis. The first step is to identify the property. The next step is to identify who has rightful ownership of the property. The last step is to ask who is unilaterally reassigning property boundaries.

The property is not the baby since prenatal babies cannot argue their rights at law. Property rights emerge from verbal argument in disputes and always attach to persons who can have standing in a dispute. The property is guardianship rights over the baby, that is what is being disputed.

Until the baby is born, the mother clearly has exclusive guardianship rights over it. She can refuse to eat. She can commit suicide. Because the baby is parasitically attached to her, no one can assist the baby without exercising force against the mother herself. After the baby is born, both father and mother have equal guardianship rights from the point-of-view of relatedness to the child but law generally assigns a higher precedence to the mother’s guardianship due to the unique nurturing relationship between a mother and child.

Finally, the question of who is “aggressing”, that is, who is attempting to unilaterally reassign property boundaries. Does the mother have the right to cancel the potential guardianship rights of all other kin of the prenatal baby or, on the other hand, do the potential guardians of the prenatal baby have the right to forcibly compel the mother to undergo birth (natural or otherwise)?

I think the answer to this problem is complex. There are several cases. In the first case, the fetus is not viable outside the womb. In this case, if the mother were to have the fetus removed from her body, it would necessarily be dead or die. Hence, the potential guardians cannot possibly have any claim to right of first refusal since there is nothing for them to make claim to. In the second case, the fetus is viable but could be removed with less damage to the mother’s body if it were aborted. This is the most difficult case and would probably have to be resolved on a case-by-case basis (perhaps if the potential guardians offered a cash payment, they could provide sufficient incentive to the woman to undergo some additional damage to her body in order to receive the child alive). The third case is where the damage to the mother’s body is the same if she aborts or she delivers. In this case, there cannot possibly be any violation of her property rights in her own body to preserve the baby alive. Hence, the mother cannot object that delivering the baby alive would be a violation of her property rights in her own body which means the rights of the potential guardians in the child’s life would prevail.

Clayton -

Abortion
25

Isn’t it obvious that the unborn is by biological necessity in a physiological state whereby all of the material it needs to grow and be sustained are being provided by the mother. That is, the relation between the unborn and the mother is like that between a tumor and the mother.

26

From a legal stand-point, murder is a charge made against an individual, the charge being the violation of the body (private property) of the allegedly murdered individual.

Your debate, then, supposes that it is coherent to charge an individual with murder when an abortion has been performed. Further, it must follow that the aborted had their property (their body) violated. But the aborted are never fully invested in their bodies, because they are not individuals. Individuation is a process, and humans only become individuals by communicative acts in which they set themselves apart. The unborn do not express that they and they alone own their bodies. Neither can they express the opposite, that they are wholly dependent upon the mother, except for the physiological functions which they have fully developed and for which they only require nurishment (which again comes from the mother).

27

And zapping a cancerous growth is agression against a tumor.

28

All humans are the owners of their own bodies from creation to death, minor exceptions exluded, or else if they do not own their bodies, they’re bodies are implicitly protected from aggression.
In order to abort the child, the mother must claim ownership of another humans body and then discard it, or else to claim that the child is a foreign object that does not even deserve the considerations of a human being. (A distinction that I oppose for the aforementioned and forementioned reason…)

Guardianship rights are meaningless in a dispute if the baby is neither property nor a human being. If you are arguing for the protection of the parents future rights, you err in that you don’t apply the same reasoning in favor of the baby.

I also dispute the idea that a person does not have rights simply because they cannot argue them. If a sleeping person, or an otherwise momentarily unconscious person, doesn’t lose his rights then a baby doesn’t lose its rights either. Both are momentary periods where the person can not argue their rights, yet the rights are nonetheless protected.

It would be perfectly legitimate to exercise force against the mother in order to protect the baby, just as it’s perfectly legitimate to assist someone who is about to be murdered or severely harmed.

The “potential guardians” destinction is not necessary if we remain with the standard libertarian Non-Aggression Principle, and a simple definition of a human being.

We should always view an abortion as homicide, and attempt to justify it as homicide.

I am not adding any new rights to the embryo/fetus, I’m not coming up with some new destinction, I am only asking that a embryo/fetus be treated like a very young human being that has aggressed against no one. No more, no less.

Why should a persons individuality hold any bearing on whether or not a person may be murdered? A person in a libertarian society is secure in his property regardless of the manner in which his mind works. A person could be totally unaware that he is an individual and still be assured that his life is safe from aggression.

Further, this distinction is incapable of differentiating between a useless mass of flesh and bone and an infant.

If you insist that being an “individual” has some sort of bearing on this subject (I don’t believe it does.), then you would also have to insist that infants and toddlers are possessions to be discarded at will as well. (Or at least to be discarded at the will of the mother and father.)

As I pointed out before, defining a embryo or a fetus as a tumor has no scientific basis, only a political one.

Should someone that is unbiased in this issue look at the progression of a humans life I am confident they would say that a humans life starts at first cell division and then proceeds through a series of developments, IE fetus, infant, toddler, etc.

As I’ve stated before, the reason for this is there is no logical way to divide between a “tumor” in the mother and the first growing human being. Again, there is no observable demarcation between this supposed “tumor” and a growing human being.

If you can find such a demarcation, then please present it.

29

I don’t get it. If a woman owns her own body, why can’t she expel the baby inside of her? That the baby owns its own body, whether right or wrong, has no moral implications on whether or not the mother should have to take care of it or has to keep it in her body.

30

Jonathan you are exactly right, she can remove it without harming it. Induced labor anyone? and then its outside of her un harmed and if it dies she has no positive obligation to care for it. It is an intruder she invited in and is now kicking it off. if it can’t take care of itself that is no fault of hers.

31

Tell that to the innumerable slaves who have existed throughout history and exist today. Manifesto assertions are a dime a dozen.

As Catalan has pointed out, this is not true, the mother can simply expel and repudiate the child. However, I think Catalan has neglected the detail of whether the mother can be forced to remove the baby non-destructively. I’m not an expert on abortion procedures but my understanding is that in some cases abortion enables the mother to undergo less extensive damage to her body during removal of the child. I think the mother’s property rights in her body supersede the guardianship rights of the father or other potential guardians in this case but we really can’t know for sure absent a free market in law. It’s all speculation.

I think you’re missing my point completely. The baby cannot speak on its own behalf. So, someone must speak on its behalf. That someone could be the mother, the father, the King or someone else. The legal question is “which one person has the right to speak for the child, that is, to be its guardian?” The right to speak for the child is dispositive of its fate since a person who is free to speak on his own behalf has the right to commit suicide. That is, the guardian only doesn’t have the right to kill the child because there are others who have a right of first refusal in care of the child and to kill the child would be a violation of the property rights of those other individuals. I speculate that this is the framework under which a free market in law would treat any homicide. The relatives (including legal relatives such as husband and wife) would seek damages on the basis that the homicide violated their rights in the continued life of the now dead individual. Sure, if you kill my wife, you have violated her rights but how does that matter at this point? She’s dead. No amount of arguing her rights is going to bring her back to life. What matters is that I had a legitimate interest in her continued life and you violated my property rights when you violated her property rights in her body. That’s why you owe me damages as opposed to the guy down the street.

This is the crucial distinction between a human and an animal. No one other than the owner has a property right in the continued life of an animal. Hence, if the owner wants to kill the animal, he or she may. There are no other legitimate claimants who may rightfully interfere in the owner’s disposition of the animal.

You’re assuming your own conclusion.

Clayton -

32

I think in this situation it is a case where the means are very important. I would be ok for the suction machine to be outlawed as it violates the child’s property beyond the extent of the harm to the mother’s property. Proportionality to the crime is important and rothbard agrees with this. Obvi under free market law it would be up to the individuals to voluntarily decide. Induced birth or pills that remove/ prevent the egg from implantation are then allowed.

33

No human being comes out of a womb self sufficient.
No human being is obligated to provide charity.

I stand in opposition to using violence against any pregnant woman who enforced the trespass of an unwanted guest within her own body.
I am for any pregnant woman enforcing the trespass of unborn persons on her property.
I am for pregnant women extending a duty of care to any trespasser, in that the trespasser ought to leave her property alive.
Like any other trespasser, once a non-threatening/aggressive trespasser has safely left your property they are no longer your concern.

34

I think the trespass/eviction analogy of pregnancy/abortion is significantly mistaken and would not be of use to legal disputes in a free market law society.

Clayton -

35

If we are making non-arguments and something is mistaken, perhaps you could account for several centuries of evolution in common law on the concepts of trespass/notice/eviction…

36

Has the common law of trespass and eviction ever been applied in real law to an abortion dispute?

Clayton -

37

Perhaps we can dive into the differences of liability based on whether birth occurs in a residence or hospital. Or the liability differences between the duty of care of an attending unskilled father assisting birth on the side of the road versus a licensed physician. Duty of care is an important concept at common law.

The short answer to your question is… I don’t know and don’t have a white paper ready to throw at the question. I am of the belief a link can be made in liability law regarding birth. The underpinning of the United States legal system has always been common law.

38

Common law is not identically equal to trespass law. I object to your treatment of abortion as subject to trespass law, or even meaningfully informed by it. The treatment of abortion under common law, however, is precisely what I’m trying to speculate about.

Clayton -

39

I am a pacifist. I will not condone the killing of a child. It is a child and there is no word of God about it. It is an opinion, that’s it. So I’m not for it.

40

I think it’s easy a child has the right to live, the mother has a right to live also. But if she consented to sexual intercourse and get pregnant, she must comply to the right of the child to live. She and he could have though before. Contraception is not undo able. If she does not want the child, well so be it, let it get adopted. What’s the trouble with it?

I once though differently about it, but I was wrong. Women are not harmed by bearing a child, they are “build” for that. And in this case she has to wait till the baby is born to “be the only owner of her body.”

Anyway there will be no to suppress an abortion, and how will you judge if a woman is pregnant at the start of the pregnancy. Should women be forces to make a test every day? That can’t be done, and guess what if the mother goes outside the country she’s living in who ever will know what she does abroad?

No we’re here in an area, where nothing can stop a woman to get rid of the child during her earlier or maybe even later pregnancy. What we can do is not paying anything for here doing this abortion. If she does it she has to bear the consequences and we should not feel sorry for anything which comes form it. What should you do to a mother which has aborted children? Kill her?