In “For A New Liberty,” Murray N. Rothbard founds the Libertarian defense of abortion upon self-ownership. Rothbard demonstrates how self-ownership leads to homesteading and private property rights, essentials to laissez faire. Therefore, self-ownership includes not only one’s body, but one’s labor and the land with which it is mixed. Abortion is defined as the expulsion of a parasitic child upon the body of a woman. It is an infringement upon self ownership.
Since labor is an extension of body and also falls under the category of self-ownership, any parasitism upon one’s labor may be equally expelled. Such parasitism may include child support and caretaking of born children. In these instances, parents and spouses have the sole discretion of deciding to abandon their stewardships, whether it results in the death of those dependent upon their continued financial support or not. It matters not that these children may have been bidden and, especially so, if they are unbidden.
In order to arrive at this conclusion, one must accept that there is no such thing as an implicit contract to caretake for anyone that one has taken into bondage. But Rothbard argues that it is the woman who is taken into bondage by her fetus, not vice versa. This is akin to stating that slaveholders were enslaved by their slaves or that parents and spouses are imposed upon by their children. One wonders if such an argument defies common sense since, at least in bidden cases, a woman, spouses and parents have a choice to conceive and the children have no choice but to be conceived. Rothbard marginalizes this distinction as the minutiae of morality, which he suggests has little, if any, claim on legality regardless how noble or good morality may be for society.
We are left questioning whether Rothbard is suggesting that government should not legislate morality or that morality should not be legislated at all. The former would be more consistent with the arguments of his students. If so, this provides insight into Walter Block’s argument, in “Defending the Undefendable,” that judges should deal in social justice, not merely legal justice. Under a Natural Order, social justice may have more legitimate influence than it should with government. A second of Rothbard’s students argues that a Natural Order is much more dynamic and can allow the influence of morality in law without infringing upon human rights.
In “Democracy: The God that Failed,” Hans-Herman Hoppe brings morality back to the legal system through the law of contract. The difference between Rothbard and Hoppe seems only to be that with the choice of a woman and of parents to have a child there is no contract, implicit or otherwise, and when living in a community where private property contracts are allowed to limit one’s ability to abort, the contract is explicit. Without an explicit limitation on the ability to abort through contract, no woman should be prevented from having an abortion. Hoppe goes on to suggest that no such contract exists with government but can only exist in a natural order.
Therefore, the rightful remedy to restoring morality to law is a return to a natural order.