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.
No it doesn’t murder and life are arbitrary legal terms in this case. In biology they are at best useful fictions (and that “at best” is starting to seriously be debated).
In so much as something is overpoweringly strong, be it a custom, a stronger “life form” to a weaker one - it will be so. That is what determins our facts. If (and I am not saying this is true) killing a foetus is just as convienet as killing a mosquito to some it will be done - this makes any “responsability of sex” or “expctations” a red herring. The extant culture and environment control that. This is a discussion of real actual, extant power - not turning words into some mystic thing.
On a minor note: wealth as we know it to be, seems to be highly correlated with people, custom, and civilization who realize this fact - that there really is no useful reason to care one way or the other about a few extra cells when you have the ability to exert control over them - there is nothing inherently good about trying to “create life” (whatever the hell that means). Furthermore these cultures really do tend to be good at birth control rates. What can be said is that people pursue their own ends, via their own will, no matter what they say - this is what is “good and true”. If it has become apparent within culture that breeding is not as convienent, profitable, or desirable as it was, so be it - it’s truth manifests in the fact that it is really happening. There is no division of labor here, there is nothing “mutually beneficial” that obviously manifists itself. The foetus within is simply at the mercy of the carrier - plain and simple - and in this case I think this has “self actualized” more within the consience of relevant people within society, hence it’s growing prevelance.
If you are the primary caregiver of an old person you have signed some form of contract explicitly.
Getting pregnant is an arguable implicit contract. As I said, I am split on whether nature’s laws mandate that we be caregivers. Because there are animals who do not care for their young (sea turtles). It’s a brutal fact of nature that many young sea turtles die, but we see that if we are going to be talking about “natural laws,” then we have to consider this nature too.
Though arguably the mother turtle must leave her children. But then we are saying self-ownership trumps “natural obligations.” And since many “rights” stem from self-ownership, they too may trump obligations, rendering obligations useless.
Also, I am in no way an expert of sea turtles. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Not necessarily. What if you’re just a family member and there’s no one else, no money, after your grandma has a stroke, so you go live there. You’re now the primary caregiver.
Not perfectly analogous, I know.
A better example might be what happens when you rent a house to a tenant.
If you rent a house to a tenant, you know that damage is quite possible, even likely. You’ve chosen to rent. Chances are nothing crazy will go down, and you have a contract and all that. But one day you get a call that the toilet has broken. You are obligated to fix it.
There are many such actions a person can take that have a small chance of the unintended happening, for which the actor cannot escape the consequences or responsibility. To pretend that pregnancy is special out of all of these, and to further allow murder to escape them, is disingenuous at best.
Not caregivers after birth anyway, but at the least we have a responsibility not to murder someone in our sole care. You can pass on a dependent to someone else if they’re willing, but you cannot abandon someone lawfully to the woods. If your choice is allow a baby to mooch some calories or murder it, and you invited that baby to exist by taking a risk, a risk which came out not in your favor, by what right do we murder a young human being?
There is a relationship between acting and responsibility. That relationship is causal and temporal: you are responsible for the acts you cause. This is one of the primary rationales behind owernship of what you produce and liability for any transgressions you perform, as regarded by the law.
As for obligation, it’s different from responsibility in that an obligation is an acceptance of responsibility for something before it happens. A responsibility is when you’re the cause of something that has already happened. Many people use them interchangeably but there is a difference. Accepting responsibility up front gives you an obligation.
Now, we’re here talking about sex and the consequent possibility of pregnancy. Those who get accidentally pregnant are not obligated to care for a kid–they didn’t choose to–but they are responsible and that responsibility is inescapable unless they murder a young human being.
Where is the moral room for that act to take place?
Either you attack responsibility, or you attack the notion of a human being. Proponents have done both. But neither have resulted in changing the facts of what actually happens. The murder of a young human being, inarguably so.
Wish I would have got in on this from the beginning. Oh well I’ll critique the OP because it’s loaded with problems.
It’s unimportant, but I disagree with the new definition of a child. A child is born, a fetus is unborn. The only reason for the new defintion is to sensationalize the issue. The OP even admits (IMO, wrongly) that a fetus is ‘more of a fetus’ in the “later stages of development”. Does the OP admit (IMO, wrongly) that a child can be a fetus? Then call it a fetus at that stage! No need for a new definition and a loaded word.
A fetus doesn’t have rights because:
A) it’s not an individual
B) it doesn’t act
A fetus isn’t an individual, but is LITERALLY a part of the mother’s body. If we are libertarians then there is no problem; the mother can do with her body as she pleases.
The end. Nobody has any say in the matter except the mother, especially if you accept Rothbard’s view that she cannot enslave herself (i.e. she can’t give away rights to the fetus, which is herself).
But I choose to take it further. Since nobody can have any say in the matter except the mother, than even if it WERE rude to defund the fetus, nobody has any recourse, so it is at best a nonissue.
And therefore what? A fetus is little more than a young human being. Are you claiming that age matters in conferring of rights onto a human being?
Says who, and based on what rationale? So, if a child is born alive but brain dead, you can murder it without consequences because it cannot demonstrate it has human rights? What about people in an irreversible coma, do they lose all human rights because they can no longer demonstrate them? Your argument is inconsistent if I can easily raise other situations which challenge the ethic as obviously immoral and illogical.
That’s funny, I always seem the kicking from the inside all the time. It’s clear that a fetus is living. Is this an attempt to squirm around that fact? I think so.
Beyond that, does the abiilty or lack thereof have anything to do with conferral of rights? No. Living does. Acting does not.
The question is one of life, not of thinking. You’re evading the issue.
This is completely untrue. The fetus is a separate individual, often with a different blood type from the mother and demonstrably different DNA. It is also literally NOT a part of the mother’s body, for the mother’s body is not essential to its development. It’s just that a womb contains the conditions necessary for it to gestate. If medical science created an artificial womb capable of replicating these conditions, and such is not outside the realm of possibility, then it wouldn’t know the difference. This means that the fetus has an entirely separate life support and growth system in a way that no individual organ within you does. A liver cannot survive on its own–EVER. This is not true of a fetus.
Ah, now we’re abstracting from false premises, this should be fun.
The requirement for human rights is properly contained in the phrase itself: human. All humans are individuals, so that’s immaterial. Is the fetus human, that’s the question. Yes? Okay, then it has rights.
The fetus has its own body that is not part of her body. Furthermore if she’s carrying a female child then your reasoning would apply to the female fetus’s control of its own body. Why is the rights of the mother more important than the rights of a younger human being?
Unless she’s carrying another human being, in which case we as a society can hold her responsible for its life just as we prosecute murderers for what they do with their body in their capacity as murderers.
This is a ridiculous assertion, since she chose to engage in an act that had a risk of pregnancy. How could that possibly be slavery then. Are father’s slaves when they pay child support, or do they have an obligation because of the consequences of a free act they chose to engage in?
An assertion rendered null if the fetus has its own body, which it does. This is logical failing built on logical failing.
So it’s murder to kill someone 80 years old, murder to kill someone 8 years old, murder to kill someone 8 minutes old, but not murder to kill someone 8 minutes before they’re born.
If that’s true, you have to explain why not being born interferes with a human being’s inalienable right to life.
My point boils down to
A) the requirements for rights and
B) whether anyone has recourse
A: Humans have rights not because someone recognizes us as humans, and not because someone calls us human. We have rights because we are thinking acting individuals, and we have Human Rights only insomuch as we can understand them and relate them to others (as per Hoppe, I believe, in his huge lecture series. i.e. a dog may or may not have rights, and it may or may not have Dog Rights, but if a dog can’t communicate thos rights to a human, then they are irrelevant to us) I don’t think a fetus acts (action is defined as purposeful behavior, to be distinguished from reflexive or subconscious behavior). And even if it could act, I don’t think a fetus is an individual, just look at the umbilical cord. If we purport to give nonacting unthinking beings Human Rights, then all of libertarianism is lost.
B: Nobody has any recourse, because nobody but the mother “owns” the fetus. If we accept the principle that people can have recourse even when they’re property isn’t involved, then surely all of libertarianism is lost. So it’s a nonissue, even if people decide it’s rude.
I think that your answer is not appropriate given the thoroughness of Anenome’s reponse. He went at you line be line and you just gave a general answer not referring to particular statements.
I’d like to see a line-by-line refutation of his post, as I find it quite convincing in some points (such as the different individual by ability to survive and different DNA).
Hashem, by saying the fetus is part of the mother, you suggesting that women at some point in their lives also own male genitalia.
And in my defense, I don’t think anything Anenome said undermines my view that humans have human rights not because anyone lets them, but because we’re A) acting B) individuals C) capable of communicating about them with each other and D) understanding them. Even if you accept ONLY Hoppe’s arguementation ethic as the origin of rights (in my opinion, one of the most consistent and pure cases for rights), then the fetus still has no rights which we need concern ourselves with.
Unless you purport to have a new origin of rights…
As for the 8 minutes please address my point that even if it were rude to defund a fetus, or even if it was called “murder”, that nobody who’s property isn’t involved has any say in the matter. If the fetus did have a say, it doesn’t any more.
As always, the market will find their favorite way to deal with abortionists. Ostracism works wonders. Else, people will have new ideas about what’s OK, and abortion may be considered no worse than pedophilia. In my opinion, it surely isn’t. Fortunately I have no emotional connection to pedophilia or abortions, so I can talk about them logically with a straight face instead of being emotional about it. I’m not religious and have no qualms suggesting that a fetus doesn’t have the same rights as thinking, acting, individuals. Again, it would ruin libertarianism if they did, and it would ruin libertarianism if other people who’s property wasn’t involved were allowed recourse in the matter. Please address THAT.
But then if you murder a hermit it also wouldn’t matter, because no one had a vested property interest in the hermit.
If I understand argumentation ethics, it’s that by asking for rights (having a discourse) you acquire them (please correct me, I currently have no time for a few months to read libertarian books). But to what extent does the listener have to understand that there is a discussion. What if someone speaks in a foreign language you don’t understand. Sign language?
The failing here is that this rationale has a corrolary which says that humans cease having rights when they’re not thinking and not acting. This would mean that someone in a coma has no human rights. I doubt you’re willing to accept that killing people in a coma is not murder, and certainly the rest of society is not willing to endorse that either. There’s literally no rationale difference between an unborn human being and a gestating fetus apart from age. In all other respects they are equal.
Sounds like you’re taking something out of context. Sounds like Hoppe was saying people need to know about rights, generally, in order to defend them in themselves and others. Well, we all know about the right to life; we can’t claim ignorance there.
Another corollary of this rationale is that less rationale individuals would not have human rights either–despite being human. For instance, on this basis, a newly born human does not have a right to live. 8 minutes after being born they cannot understand human rights not defend them before a court or w/e you want. Yet we do recognize murder at that point, so this point also fails the logical consistency test. To be consistent you’d also have to apply this rationale to people who don’t have a concept of rights at all, such as, say, uncontacted South American tribesman. Someone who doesn’t understand the concept of rights has none? That’s a rather huge leap.
Neither does a person in a coma.
What about it. It’s a means of providing sustenance. It’s a two part structure genetically, with part composed of the child’s flesh and part composed of the mother–a hybrid structure, designed to allow nutrient travel without intermingling blood. Why is this necessary–because, again, the parent and child often have different blood-types and require SEPARATE blood circulatory system. The mother’s blood is NOT flowing through the child’s veins. And you can still suppose it’s the same body? Can you name any other parts of your body that DO NOT have your own blood flowing through them, but rather have someone else’s blood? The bare facts of reality belie your assertion. It is a separate body.
Again, the key qualifier in the word “human rights” is the word “human.” Worrying about giving dogs human rights is silly. They are not human. Furthermore it’s perfectly clear that a fetus will grow up to be a thinking, acting human being if only left alone. After all, both you and I were once fetuses.
First you have to prove ownership. Since your ownership claim was based on a false assumption of the fetus being part of her body, this claim is void. Since the fetus is separate, individual, and owns itself, this is tantamount to an endorsement to slavery.
I think you’re just not trying to be objective here. You’re like the scientist who wants a particular theory to be true and upon discovering it is not, tries to fake the data to make it appear that he proved it.
Bad conclusion built upon false assumptions is bad.
Does this apply equally to older human beings? Slaves? Since slaves are property, murdering them is fine because property can’t have recourse?
So you’re going to meet unchecked aggression to the point of murder with ostracism? Aggression requires coercion to restrain it. That’s the very basis of a justice system. This is the weakest anarchist-style response I’ve ever seen to the crime problem. Now we’re ostracizing murderers of the helpless. Lot of good that does for the helpless. I suppose if someone owned slaves you’d ostracize them too.
uh what?
I did. By showing you that it’s a human being, and thus cannot be property, because all human beings self-own. Claims of ownership of any human being are illegitimate. If you want to make a property claim you have to prove the fetus is not a human being. That’s not likely going to be possible for you however, as all fetuses have the form of a human being at their age, the DNA of a human being, the common blood types of a human being, etc. There’s nothing about a fetus that is any different from every human being except for AGE.
Thus, you have to explain why age makes any moral or ethical difference to whether one should be considered a human being. Since the state of being human is not reliant on age, since we don’t become more or less human depending on what age we are, it’s an all or nothing proposition, you’re not going to be able to do that. So I consider it moot.
A human being is a human being, at whatever age they are, such questions are irrelevant. Therefore whether a human being has a right to life is not dependent on age or developmental period.
Listen, rights must be applied even when it is difficult, or costs you or someone else. Our best weapon against the socialists is the concept of consistently applied human rights. Be consistent about your application of them or we lose the game.
I tend to agree with your points, Anenome, though I am unsure I am pro-life (though it seems I might be leaning in that direction).
Can you name any other parts of your body that DO NOT have your own blood flowing through them, but rather have someone else’s blood?
All of your body after blood transfusion
human rights
The thing is the decision to make these rights “human” is a selfish choice we are making to fend off conclusions we do not feel comfortable making. There is no rationale to make these rights only human in your logic. In Hoppe’s idea, there is: we can communicate our desire for rights (though the claim that this itself being a requirement is unfounded).
A roadblock to your logic, Anenome, may be that you believe in these “natural rights” (as I do) which we have been granted by some overaching universal all-knowing entity, and thus to have these respected, we need some overaching universal all-knowing entity (the state) to enforce them.
I am beginning to see the argument between minarchism and AnCap as a pragmatic one:
Minarchists say the state is a necessary evil which is imperfect and we must tolerate
Hence, the state is not inherently necessary, but only a way to resolve our disputes between each other (courts, police). It is not inherently necessary because it is not the “overaching universal all-knowing entity” we’d like to oversee our affairs.
AnCap suggests that while the state is bad, the need for courts and police does exist, and that market forces provide the best courts.
After all, what gives the state more legitimacy than a private court? Nothing, especially if the private court is more effective.
Yet my question about private courts is:
You have a disagreement between two people over a contract, you need a court
There are plenty of courts, and let’s even assume they are fair, uncorrupt, and balanced
How do you decide on a court? If one of the sides knows he is in the wrong, he will not agree to any of the fair courts. Without the power of aggression, there is no way for these courts to hear the arguments, because the accused will not be present. Hence, do you try the accused without him being there?
True. At some point you really do need an institutionalized power of coercion to compel transgressors within society. If the accused will not come to court at all, that’s a pretty big problem. Your options at that point are person to person coercion at the point of a gun, a state to compel compliance, or never doing business with that person again.
Any state relying on the latter, which is what the anarchs suggest would be best, would be vulnerable to long-term con-games. As an example, take the game Eve which does function as a very open and essentially anarchistic world (I haven’t played it, but read about this incident at one point).
A particular player started a bank and proceeded to offer interest and gain a strong reputation as reliable. Because of this he gained the equivalent of many millions of dollars on deposit in game.
Then he simply cleaned out all the accounts that were in his trust and walked away with everyone’s cash.
In an anarch society, there’s no recourse apparently. He needn’t come to court. Sure, no one’s gonna do business with him anymore as a banker, but he’s already rich. Where’s the recourse, where’s justice?
In a minarch society we take him up on criminal charges, sieze his bank accounts and return as much of the money as possible to those cheated.
That is the proper use of coercion in society–to stop aggressors. A
An anarch society without an instutution designed to foil aggressors I don’t think is practical. I know it can work on the small scale because personal relationships in a small community have a function towards keeping those individuals honest. But when you get to a large society of 200+ members the ability to know everyone in the society breaks down, and the ability to shun does too.
"In an anarch society, there’s no recourse apparently. He needn’t come to court. Sure, no one’s gonna do business with him anymore as a banker, but he’s already rich. Where’s the recourse, where’s justice?
In a minarch society we take him up on criminal charges, sieze his bank accounts and return as much of the money as possible to those cheated."
Removing a parasite from its host is by definition harmful to a parasite. The question then is whether or not it is justified. As this “parasite” is the early stages of an innocent human being, and as the mother must initiate force against the child in order to expel him, and as the initiation of force is aggression, and as libertarianism holds that all aggression is illegitimate, it follows that abortion is illegitimate in principle under libertarian assumptions.
The Non-Aggression principle is a simple way of rationally arbitrating disputes between many different arbitrary belief systems. One of the underlying assumptions of Libertarianism is that a libertarian society can only work because the vaste majority of human beings can accept the non-aggression principle without being violently coherced. The rest will be coherced, carefully and corresponding to their level of rebellion against the non-aggression principle.
It only exists to clarify a muddled series of belief systems.
Saying that certain descriptions of reality “don’t exist” is a pet peeve of mine. People often say it like they’re saying something remotely interesting or profound, when in fact they often have very little knowledge of what it is they’re talking about. Much like the “gold has no value” fallacy.
This is not my position. Even if the mother did not consent, she has an obligation to avoid doing harm to the child. Any other position is not consistent with the non-aggression principle.
Yes, parents have an obligation to the child even after he is born. Birth does not convey or destroy any rights of the human being.
Or put another way, the mother doesn’t gain the right to put the child in harms way simply because the child is born.
If it is wrong to put a person in harms way in principle, it seems perfectly reasonable to me to let societies decide what constitutes “harm” and how it can be punished and remedied given the resources of that society.
Not giving food to a stranger is instrinsically different than not giving food to your child. The former is a third party completely independent of you, the latter is dependent on you for his life, from his creation. Not giving food to the former is leaving the former to its own condition, not giving food to the latter is putting the child in a position of harm.
I completely agree. It was both to sensationalize, and to point out the corrosion of existing words today that has come into being solely for the purpose of defending the murder of the unborn.
Someone else stated this before. What’s the relevance of this? When we look at a murder case do we really ask “Was the victim an individual?”
No, we don’t, because it’s irrelevant.
I have also refuted this by pointing out the fact that we routinely prosecute for murder whether the victim was sleeping at the time of the murder or not. It also doesn’t matter if the victim’s mind is in a state of inebration or any other transitionary state of mental incapacity.
The child, even at the moment of conception, has entirely unique dna apart from the mother and is easily distinguishable as a seperate organism.
Because it is a seperate organism, and because that organism is the early stages of an innocent human being, the mother can not legitimately aggress against him.
Then you must concede that libertarianism is lost, for even in a libertarian society, it would be legitmate to prosecute a murderer even if the murderer only murders the victims in their sleep.
Then all of libertarianism is lost, for all murders are prosecuted by those that are not the victim.
I feel like you guys will say anything to seem correct. You have refused to address the fundamental libertarian point: property rights.
The fetus has no property right in the mother or her resources.
Nobody (if not the mother) has any property right in the fetus. It follows that nobody’s (if not the mother’s) property was violated, and therefore nobody has any say in the matter, whatsoever.
Is the mother allowed to defund her fetus? Yes, it doesn’t have a property in itself or in the mother, nor could we concieve of it having such property rights without first acting to obtain them (homestead principle) AND so long as it isn’t even a self yet. The fetus is not a self-owner, as it doesn’t meet either requirement (A) being a self, and B) owning—which requires action)
The fetus has no right to the mother or her resources. In any event, it has no property rights whatsoever anyways.
Someone else stated this before. What’s the relevance of this? Argument from ignorance. Learn the arguments for the relevance of it, and then dispute the relevance when you are qualified to.
When we look at a murder case do we really ask “Was the victim an individual?”
No, because the fact that he isn’t plural is a given. The fact that you overlook such a basic fact does not make it unimportant. Usually, the most basic facts are where the principles stem from, and you must be principled lest you be inconsistent.
the fact that we routinely prosecute for murder whether the victim was sleeping at the time of the murder or not.
We do lots of wrong things, red herring.
Because it is a seperate organism
No. They are joined, this is an empirical fact.
In any event, if it were a separate organism, then it would have no property right to the mother or her resources and your argument would defeate itself.
even in a libertarian society, it would be legitmate to prosecute a murderer
Under no circumstances would it ever be legitimate to violate a persons property unless your property was violated first. Your property isn’t violated in an abortion. How can you ignore the non-aggression principle while discussing a libertarian society?!
for all murders are prosecuted by those that are not the victim.
Again, if person A aggresses against person B, then it must be because person A’s property was violated (or else C’s property, C having permitted A to act on his behalf). In an abortion, nobody’s property (if not the mother’s) is violated, so nobody has any occassion to violate the mother.
The mother brought the fetus into existence by her free choice to engage in sex which carries a risk of pregnancy. Therefore she must accept responsibility for her act and not kill a human being in the process.
As a human being, a fetus owns itself. If as a human being you assert it does not own itself, please explain how you think self-ownership can be denied it and why you’re in favor of allowing human beings to be treated as property (along with the corollary of justifying slaver).
I don’t even know what you’re talking about prior to this one, or why you’re quoting. But here, are you really saying that prosecuting those who kill sleeping people is wrong? Or, are you excusing an evil on the basis of “we do lots of wrong things”? o_O
“Joined” implies separate entities. Singular would mean they are same organism. You seem unable to be consistent on this one.
If you feed the mother water and food she will live just fine by herself. If you feed the baby water and food it will survive just fine by itself. This is not true of individual organs within you which are just part of a living system and do not constitute a complete living system by themselves. A fetus does constitute such a system–it’s clearly a separate body. As has been pointed out, if you continue to believe that the mother and fetus are literally the same body you have to accept that the mother can be both male and female at the same time should she be carrying a male child, that she can have two sets of DNA, and that she has four arms / legs, two heads, etc. Then you have the even tougher problem of explaining how one body suddenly becomes two on the point of birth. Clearly the fetus is inside the mother, but that doesn’t mean that its body is her body.
Incorrect. The fetus has a claim on the mother’s resources BECAUSE the mother brought it about by her choice to engage in sex, and can therefore be held responsible for that choice, whether it was intentional or not. Just as a careperson is responsible for the health and life of an invalid elderly person should they accept sole care.
Incorrect. It is legitimate to stop any person initiating aggressing against another person, whether you’re involved or not. This is why if you see a criminal point a gun at a third party, you can shoot the criminal to prevent him from shooting the innocent third party and this is considered an ethical, moral act. In fact, all law enforcement is predicated on this point or else all law enforcement would be little more than an unethical aggression, and clearly it is not.
The fetus’s right to life and liberty is violated. The mother killing a fetus can be prosecuted for murder just as if she had killed a newborn.
Your ridiculous assertion that only the wronged can complain about being wronged would lead to murder being unprosecutable, as the wrong party is dead in every case.
You seem not to understand it yourself. The principle is not that all coercion is wrong, but only that the initiation of coercion, known as aggression, is wrong.
You must show a point where the fetus has aggressed its mother in order to show a violation of her property rights. The fact is, in the case of pregnancy there is no aggressive act on the part of the fetus. The circumstances of its coming to exist in the female womb are not like that of a parasite which DOES aggress in order to obtain its goal. Rather, all mothers who willingly engage in sex engage in an act known to cause pregnancy and can thereby be accepted to accept the consequences of that risk. This is a principle we apply widely throughout society in many, many other contexts.
Reasoning based on false premises is not persuasive. You haven’t dealt with the basics yet. The most important point of all is that you need to prove a young human being is not human, apparently because only birth, somehow, can confer “humanness” as illogical as that seems and is, and you must deny the basic right of self-ownership that each person has over their own body.
Again, you’re obviously not interested in being consistent and applying the principles of NAP, self-ownership, and personal responsibility. You’re dead set on driving towards your pre-judged conclusion, and thrashing against the principles outlined against the practice.
You will not be able to escape that:
A human fetus is simply a young human and thereby has all the rights and powers of a human of any other age, since age is not a factor in determinations of rights.
The fetus, by virtue of possessing human rights owns itself and therefore cannot be killed unjustly.