I agree, my definitions…
Charity = A voluntary transaction of equal exchange where one or more individuals subjectively value the act of giving equal to the amount given.
Obligation = Voluntary or coerced action believed to achieve a specific result.
In layman’s terms, you reject an unqualified non aggression principle because it does not cohere to your pre-concieved beliefs. Which is fine I suppose.
I have been absurdly busy, and sort of lost interest when I was seeing that no one was even arguing against my thesis, only positing bizarre religious beliefs to arbitrarily weaken the non aggression principle as to make libertarianism kosher with their pre-concieved beliefs.
To help anyone out, if they actually want to argue logically, you should start with finding my thesis, then finding the underlying assumptions/premises that led to the conclusion. You should start with something like:
“Libertarianism does not adhere to the non aggression principle as one of its underlying assumptions…”
or
“The non aggression principle does not apply to a fetus or embryo because a fetus or embryo is not human. I distinguish between those organisms and a human being by…”
or
“It is not aggression for a mother to abort because…”
etc.
Note that my argument from the very beginning is that you have to redefine what a human being is or else to make some arbitrary exception to non-aggression principle in order to hold on to a pro-abortion stance.
Examples of arbitrary exceptions to the non-aggression principle:
“We may aggress against a fetus/embyro because it’s an embryo/fetus.”
“We may aggress against an embryo/fetus because the act of birth bestows ‘humanity’ on the baby, and all the rights and so forth.”
“The mother has a right to abort.”
“We may aggress against the baby because it’s younger than x.”
These are all clearly beliefs, as they lack any logical backing. They are themselves axioms, and therefore can’t be argued against. They are all very similar to statements like:
“[insert ethnicity] is better than [insert ethnicity]”
“[insert object/animal] is sacred.”
I guess I should state why the question is important. The only reason why it even matters is because of the watering down effect.
What I mean is that if we as libertarians proclaim that all aggression is wrong except in x and y it immediately begs the question “if it’s ok in x and y, then why not z?”
To water down the non-aggression principle simply so that a woman doesn’t have to be inconvenienced with pregnancy is reckless, as it clearly errodes at one of the main pillars of libertarian thought.
As for Live_Free_Or_Die, you’re being very vague. If you’re trying to argue that there are no obligations in a Libertarian society, you are wrong, and I would be happy to show it to you. However, I’m not going to bother if that’s not your argument. Feel free to expand a bit more on what you’re trying to say.
No one answered my idea (besides arguing for a qualified NAP), which is thus:
Removing the fetus without killing it is not harming it, as it was a parasite. If we assume that families have no “natural/fundamental/ultimate” obligations to children, then removing the live fetus and simply not feeding it is acceptable. If you argue that families do have such an obligation, then you are arguing against a mother being able to choose to not eat or to commit suicide (lasat part thanks to Clayton).
The purpose of sex is procreation. The creation of new life. The continuation of the species. Everyone knows this
If you do not want a child ,do not put yourself in a position to create one.
It seems that may people do not want to be responsible for, or face, the consequences of thier actions.
If you want to have sex for fun, fine, have a good time. But one must be concious of the fact that birth control is not fool proof…
If you consent to sex, you are consenting to being responsible for the potential results of that act. Because you know it may lead to the creation of a child. (despite percautions)
I am pro choice - I just belive one should make thier choice before the act of procreation, not after.
I know that the idea that one will have to deal with the consequences of thier actions may be novel - but there it is.
The purpose of sex is procreation.
There is no inherent purpose or value to sex. If we thought in sociological terms along these lines, austrian economics and any “subjective” philosophy would be false. We do not have eyes so we can see or ears so we can hear, we utilize our ears to hear and eyes to see - among other things we could do with them. In this case teleology is a nonsense model. The best you can say is “the purpose of sex is to have sex” if you want to use these terms. Do not turn the metaphor of nature or science into a concrete “thing”. There is no “mystical union” with anything, just that which the ontological self utilizes to press it’s advantage at any given moment in any given time.
And whoever asked me about the NAP, I don’t qualify it at all as it doesn’t exist. At best it is trying to discuss the mechanics of things in a very confused language.
**
This is where I stopped reading, because this essentially ends the argument.
The simple fact is that the choice and responsibility whether to have a child or not falls at the point of choosing to have sex or not. This works philosophically for all pregnancies outside rape (which I’ll exclude for now from this post).
It’s as simple as this:
Everyone knows (or should) that engaging in sex, even when using birth-control, carries a risk of pregnancy.
Persons engaging in sex, even when using birth-control, have chosen to accept that risk, even if they don’t want that eventuality to happen, they know and accept that it might by going through with the act.
Therefore, if a child results from sex, both parents have accepted the obligation of having that child.
Arguments that the unborn child is not human or not alive or not conscious are easily destroyed evasions of the obvious medical truth. End of story.
Its DNA proves it’s human. It’s biological processes are operative meaning it’s alive. And we convict people of murder who kill unconscious human beings all the time. Furthermore age is not a factor in determining whether someone has murdered a human being or not. You’re equally guilty killing a one year old as killing an 80 year old.
I’m still mystified why Ayn Rand was pro-abortion…
That puts the parent(s) in a custodial position. A custodial position does not allow one to murder the human being held in custody. Next argument.
So you accede that the baby has rights. How then can you justify the mother aggressing unto murder against it? Would you say that a mother has the same “right to murder” over a postnatal baby, and if not why does mere age or development period make a moral/ethical difference at all?
In a society where abortion is legal this is the only debate left, sure. But we’re talking principle here, basic human rights, and you’ve completely evaded the argument.
Never forget, it’s this same kind of thinking you’re doing that allowed the Germans to rationalize the Jews as nonpeople and thus to murder them en masse.
Not if you’ve already accepted the obligation to care for them.
I’m sure technology will eventually allow this to be done, and that will be a great day. I would say, at that point, that no, the mother is not responsible to continue providing care for the child as long as she can find someone to take it off her hands–otherwise she’d be responsible for murder via neglect the same way some parents neglect unto death their infants. This is the same way adoption / giving-up-a-child works today.
We also prosecute those who seek to hire hitmen to kill another person. So yes, banning a practice that is morally equivalent to murder would be a good thing and consistent intellectually.
We’re talking about banning an unethical practice. It’s also unethical to simply give patients an overdose because you think they’re too old. Is this another practice you think is wrong to ban?
Are you incapable of thinking in a principle, contextual manner? Honestly?
You say you don’t view abortion as murder, but offer no principled reason why. We’re left to conclude it’s an arbitrary decision on your part. Your statement amounts to “Neener neener neener!!! I can’t hear you!!! My ears are covered!!!” or “If I close my eyes they can’t see me.”
Again, a choice to have sex carries with it acceptance of the risk of pregnancy. What freely chosen act CAUSED the conception of the child? Sex by its parents. Therefore, if pregnancy resulted they are responsible for the child and obligated to at least birth it, certainly to not murder another human being. When you accept risk that act A might cause consequence B, you accept that if consequence B happens then you are responsible for it and obligated to it. Numerous examples can be found, from the car accident example to simple things like gambling.
This is mere assertion. We all know what you think, the question is why. There is no principle here on which we can understand how you arrive at the conclusion the abortion is consistent with NAP. Presumably you equivocate on whether the child is human, but you’d need to prove that as well (and it’s a losing argument).
It’s clear then that you’re not forming an argument because you don’t have a cogent one to put forth except blustering statements of conclusions without supporting details.
LOL
How did you determine this? Every dividing line between two people that makes them separate and human that you can cite pertains to the mother and unborn child at the point of conception. Does it have it’s own body separate from the mother. Yes. Is it alive. Yes. It has DNA different from the mother. Etc. etc. There’s not one rationale you can give the divides two people from each other that doesn’t also pertain to baby and mother.
Prove it. Raw material would mean something like raw proteins and other nutrients not yet put into a living matrix. A baby is a living matrix, in fact it’s a human being, and a human being owns itself. Thus, it is not raw material. In fact, the only people who call human beings ‘raw material’ are statists that like to treat entire societies of human capital as little more than raw material.
Unless there’s another human being in there. For your point to stand there would have to be some change at the final point of birth which confers personhood on the child. Is it birth? Can’t be. Birth can happen at many various times, and has no ethical interaction with personhood.
Except that iron is not alive and cannot be murdered.
Equivocating on the word ‘human’. You might as well say that we only have the rights that governments give us. No, my friend, rights are inalienable, and whether a government recognizes them or not, you still have them. Nor could murder be made ethical by passing a law making murder legal–which, hey, is kind of exactly what we’re talking about.
A baby’s body is actually physically constructed by itself, not by the mother’s body.
One simple fact stands, a human being cannot own another human being.
A newborn can own property, even without the ability to argue it before the law. This argument is specious. Furthermore the most basic property we all own is ourselves by nature of being human. Surely each individual has standing over their own life.
Neither are you viable if placed without protection into, say, the arctic ocean. Yet, if someone forced you off a boat and into the arctic and you died as a result it would be murder.
Not necessarily. Science may eventually create viable artificial wombs which replicate the needed living environment of a fetus from conception on up. The fetus needs only a suitable growth environment, not specifically the mother’s womb. Such a futuristic abortion would allow women to adopt out even the unborn and will probably eventually be the solution to the abortion problem, as it allows a woman to terminate a pregnancy without murdering a goddamn human being. But the fact that this doesn’t exist yet does not change the fact that abortion is murder.
A human body is physical property and is owned by the life inside it by right, by nature of being a human being.
This sort of argument would obtain only if children really were parasites and “infected” people at random with pregnancies. Because women freely choose to have sex knowing it can result in pregnancy and choosing to go ahead anyway, they have accepted the risk of pregnancy and cannot murder to get out of it. The real freedom of choice and control over one’s body is whether to have sex or not in the first place.
A tumor is not an independently living human being. It has no claim to personhood. It is clearly the property of the person in which is grows, free to have cut out at will.
By contrast a human being owns themselves inalienably, from the moment they come into existence. the argument that the mother provides it with all physical needs to therefore she can kill it does not work in other circumstances–which it would need to for your point to be consistent. After a child is born the mother still provides it with all physical needs. But if she stops feeding it, throws it outside in the cold to die, or cuts it to pieces with an abortion-machine she’s still guilty of murder.
With you so far.
Incorrect. Individuation does not rely on communication, it is instead a physical reality rooted in the fact that we have separate bodies that we control. A child may well be born alive but disabled and unconscious–never to communicate with the world, and it would still be murder to kill them.
Because inside of her is another body owned by another person which also has an innate right to life.
As for whether the mother should have to take care of it, she accepted that responsibility by engaging in sex.
I’m pretty much on the ropes on this abortion business (leaning pro-life but I don’t think there is a simple answer here.)
One question to the pro-choice people:
Does a parent even have an obligation to care for the child after it is born?
It just seems if they can let the fetus die a person can let their kid die too. It’s not aggression right NAP-ers?
I think that would be an indirect aggresion, ie: creating conditions in which you know another would not survive.
Correction, the biological function of sex is procreation. The purpose many adults have in choosing to have sex is simply pleasure and other emotional rewards. Thereby comes the feeling that procreation as a result of sex is somehow an imposition–but it’s actually a reality, pregnancy a risk any time two engage in sex.
Correct. This is the only consistent way to approach the issue. Many engage in studpendous evasions to avoid this conclusion.
Thanke Anemone, very well put. IMHO you are fully right.
I’m pretty much on the ropes on this abortion business (leaning pro-life but I don’t think there is a simple answer here.)
One question to the pro-choice people:
Does a parent even have an obligation to care for the child after it is born?
It just seems if they can let the fetus die a person can let their kid die too. It’s not aggression right NAP-ers?
This is in dispute. Some people say yes, some no.
The problem with “natural obligations” as this might be called is that they are near impossible to define well. For example, a child needs food to survive, but does not need “care” or mental well-being. You might as well lock the baby in a room with a pile of food.
Furthermore, what constitutes “trying” to keep the baby healthy? Nowadays one would argue against my ^ room assumption by saying “but what if it gets sick, you would need to give it antibiotics.” Well, that is only a modern advantage. Did people 300 years ago have to do this? The obligations are time-dependent. 300 years ago putting wet rags on the forehead was considered taking care of the sick. But if a doctor does this today, he would be sued.
I do find some rationality to the sex = consent to birth argument, because conception is simply a natural law. The problem is that the consent to have birth then might confer other obligations, which are, again, difficult to define.
I think that would be an indirect aggresion, ie: creating conditions in which you know another would not survive.
Not giving people food also results in this. But it’s not illegal.
It is illegal if you’re the sole caregiver. Remember this was in the context of guardianship. If you have an obligation to take care of someone, say you’re the primary caregiver of an elderly person who cannot feed themself, if you stop giving them food you’re criminally liable if they die / injured.
If you don’t give food to strangers you’re not obligated to, of course there’s nothing wrong with that. You’re not creating that condition, it’s a condition created by factors outside you if a stranger doesn’t have enough to eat, meaning you’re not responsible nor obligated. Still most would choose to help someone in dire need out of simple human charity.