Property Rights and Abortion: What If Women Laid Eggs?

Economics Political Theory
1

Suppose that instead of carrying children in their wombs, women laid eggs. Once a fertilized egg is laid, it develops entirely on its own, with no costs to its parents whatsoever. The property regime is such that guardianship rights over the egg and later the child are still assigned to the parents. Now suppose that after a serious discussion, the parents decide that they do not want the responsibility of caring for the child (again, the egg requires no care at all). Can they “abort,” i.e., destroy the egg on demand for convenience’s sake?

Of course, the egg could potentially be sold and adopted, but let’s worry about ethics here. Is it still the unconditional right of parents to destroy the egg?

Remember that Rothbard argued that the parents ought not to be required to care for the child but can by libertarian law let it die. Block has improved on this by saying that a baby that’s not being cared for has the status of “abandoned” and the parents have the legal duty to notify authorities and institutions like adoption agencies that the guardianship rights over the baby have been relinquished and are up for grabs. This relieves the absurd consequence of Rothbard’s theory that the parents can take a child to a dark forest and leave it there to be devoured by wild beasts.

Given that, are we prepared to argue that the parents are not allowed to destroy the egg, but when the child hatches and suddenly becomes dependent on them, they can let it die through negligence?

2

There are other (imho more-)valid reasons to support abortion. For example, the fact that the fetus is not sentient.

3

In other words, Rothbard has seized upon an important but accidental feature of human procreation, namely, that the child is attached to the mother.

One consequence is that a proper Rothbardian abortion would proceed as follows: (1) the child is carefully extracted from the womb, alive and well, placed near the mother, and then slowly dies from exposure and lack of nutrients, if no one is willing to pick it up.

But don’t actual abortions occur in a different way, viz., (2) the child is killed inside the womb, and the remains are sucked out? Rothbard himself writes that “a parent does not have the right to aggress against his children,” but do not abortions that take place in the second way described do exactly that?

Praxeologically, (1) and (2) constitute a distinction without a difference. The child dies either way, and the parents go home happy either way. A non-philosopher may well ask what the big deal is in this hair-splitting.

Thus, the question of whether unborn children have rights does not become irrelevant even if we use Rothbard’s approach.

4

Here’s the formal argument.

[2] According to a non-philosopher, EITHER both (1) and (2) are permissible OR neither (1) nor (2) is permissible.

[3] If both are permissible, then a parent has the right to “aggress” against the fetus.

Therefore,
[4] (from 1) A fetus is not a “child.”

Is it really the case that a fetus is not an (unborn) child? What is it then?

5

Wheylous wrote:

So, would you argue that it is ok to kill a newborn (or recently born) baby or an Alzheimer’s patient? How about someone under general anesthesia or merely sleeping?

Re: question in the topic:

It seems that you have to ask first whether the egg is a human being. If it is not, there is no problem.

If it is, then I don’t see justification for killing the egg. At least when the baby is attached to the mother, someone can claim that the mother is evicting the baby (i.e., the mother is upholding her rights to her property even though it will kill the baby). But when there is no conflict, what’s the justification fort the killing?

6

dchernik wrote:

I have argued in a parallel post that Rothbard may be wrong in that the parents are breaking the implicit contract they made with the child by not providing for it. (The implicit contract was to provide the child with what was considered to be by the society reasonable care until the child is old enough to provide for himself.)

I don’t understand Walter Block’s position at all:

  1. How is not caring for something equal to abandoning it? If I don’t change oil in my car, can you come and seize it from me? If I don’t visit my country house for a few years, can you just settle in?

  2. Why should the parents notify the authorities? Whose rights (and which rights) are they breaking by not doing it? How is that an answer to Rothbard?

7

Killing the fetus inside the womb and sucking out the ramains is not necessary for abortion qua abortion. That a particular method for removing an intruder may be agression in no way implies that the removal of an intruder is in itself agression.

8

Here’s another illustration. Let Smith be trespassing on Jones’ property. (1) = Jones’ bouncers escort Smith out. (2) = Jones kills Smith and dumps his corpse on a public road.

Clearly, these are very different. (1) is obviously OK, (2) is obviously not.

But in the case of abortion, (1) and (2) are almost indistinguishable. What is OK and what is not OK is no longer “obvious.”

A clue toward a Rothbardian reply can be found here:

“Jim Sadowsky is worried about ejecting a stowaway on an airplane. Yes, I suppose that would be ‘overkill,’ to coin a pun. But the point here is that, just as an assault on someone’s body is a more heinous crime than the theft of his property, so the trespassing on or within a person’s body is a far more heinous trespass that merely strolling on his land or stowing away on an aircraft. For the crime of trespassing within a person’s body, any means necessary to evict the trespasser should be legitimate.”

Any means, including (2). So, (2) is legitimate, if it is the only way to abort. Hence, the argument fails at [1]. What Rothbard is, in fact, saying is something like this:

[1] “A parent does not have the right to aggress against his children, unless she is protecting herself from the child’s own aggression.” If Smith, instead of walking on Jones’ land, was a demon who tried to possess Jones’ body, then surely, Jones would be justified in killing the demon.

On this reasoning, abortion, in both (1) and (2) types, is simply self-defense against a deadly enemy and is OK for that reason.

9

Block’s suggestion seems like a very reasonable “procedural” law, useful to all concerned for proper disposal of property rights and for children’s welfare.

10

QFT.

11

When did the fetus become an intruder?

12

Do expand if you have more on this.

13

This laying eggs scenario is equivalent to when Block talks about how “50 years ago, the evictionist theory was ‘pro-choice’; 500 or 100 years from now we’ll be ‘pro-life’; right now we’re ‘moderates’.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNTAmwUHcLM

If women laid eggs, evictionist theory would be pro-life; a mother could not destroy her laid egg or leave it in the dark forest, except in the extremely unlikely scenario that NO ONE else wants to take care of the egg and the child that hatches from it, and this is why she has to notify other people that she has an unwanted egg/child.

14

If sentience is defined as the ability to feel sensations. Then yes a fetus has sentience. Feeling sensations doesn’t even have to be a pre-requisite to be alive either. The fetus certainly isn’t an intruder - seeing as the body is designed to create a fetus- its not in the same category as a foreign parasite.

15

The fetus was created by the woman’s body. Its not a foreign deadly enemy that decided to invade the woman’s body on its own. What you’re talking about would certainly apply to the creatures from “Alien”.

16

Graham, nice post, thanks.

auctionguy10, that’s a useful observation. My point is that abortion of type (1), i.e., a Proper Rothbardian Abortion, is permissible for the less controversial (in libertarian circles) reason of the rights of the mother to her body, i.e., on the grounds of evictionism.

But if you read the Sadowsky discussion, you’ll notice that Rothbard argues that abortion of type (2) is also permissible, though for perhaps somewhat more dubious reason of self-defense: the mother is defending herself against a dangerous parasite who is preying on her, and if she has to kill it to get it out, then so be it.

17

Stated differently, since most abortions are not Proper Rothbardian and of type (2) (or praxeologically very similar to type (2)), evictionism is a pleasant theory – one which I like a lot – but it’s inapplicable to real-world situations.

The theory that is actually used to justify abortions – by none other than Rothbard himself – i.e., the self-defense theory, is one which reasonable libertarians can disagree about. Statements like “an assault on someone’s body is a more heinous crime than the theft of his property” already entail that the difference is not in kind but in degree, and we can immediately ask whether the killing of the fetus is proportional to the woman’s injury, etc.

18

The fetus becomes an intruder the moment the mother decides it is, in the same way a house guest becomes an intruder the moment his host decides he’s overstayed his welcome.

19

So, if you take your friend for a sail in your yacht and then decide in the open ocean that you’ve grown tired of his company, you can just throw him overboard?

Or, let’s say, both of you got drunk and woke up on your yacht in the middle of the sea. You tell your friend: “It was only by accident that you ended up here. I never planned for this. Now please get out.” You don’t think it would be murder to throw him overboard just like that?

20

Also, who is to say that we can shoot someone who has invaded our property if it is clear that he is not endangering our life? (For instance, it’s our close relative.) We can certainly use force to evict him or take our stuff back (we can also defend our life if he threatens it in the process), but his right to his life trumps our right to our property.