Hello friendos. I’m studying chinese language and history at the University of Copenhagen and has been assigned to write a short paper on the one-child policy in China. I, off course, have shredded the topic down to something like “the one-child policy and its incompatibility with the natural right for individuals to reproduce”.
I need some material on the subject of the right ro reproduce. I have searched and looked around but without luck. Does anyone have a lead or concrete literature?
Thanks.
I would not go into the concept of a right to reproduce as being a natural right, I would argue the more Austrian concept that the “Right to Reproduce” is simply an extension of the right of private property. That is the right of one human over their body in combination with a contract with another human other their body. This is similar to the Rothbardian arguments that all civil and human rights are extensions of the right of an individual to private property. I would also point out that historically the right to reproduce was really a combination of one of these two things:
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The right of a female to reproduce by accepting or contracting a male to provide sperm.
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The right of a male to reproduce by contracting a female to accept sperm and gestate a human.
Under current technologies of invitro-fertilization and cloning, any human has the right to reproduce as they have the right to contract with others to provide sperm or DNA and/or gestate the human.
There is plenty of data on this website for private property and freedom of contract arguments.
You could also argue that the without private property and the rights of contract that the right to reproduction is in fact worthless.
Thanks for the post Bogart. A great help. I’ll look into it.
I’d say the subject is easy to paraphrase in terms of tariffs and ceilings and is completely crushed under basic libertarian look.
I think this problem is more complicated. Libertarians only agree you have the right to do something if it doesn’t infringe on the rights of others without their consent. They don’t explicit say anything about your right to create another human life even if you have the rights to do all the things that would.
So I would say that a woman can own her uterus, but I do not believe that she owns the child within her as that would mean she has ownership over another human being. Maybe babies do not qualify as humans, nonfunctional as they are, though it does not therefore follow that a baby is a woman’s property.
Alternatively, in the same way you don’t have the power to end someone’s life for them, you don’t have the moral right to start someone’s life without consent. This is of course impossible, but I believe it is the logical conclusion of libertarian law.
I think we all have an emotional gut reaction to the one-child policy. Maybe you should develop the validity of this impulse or discuss what needs to happen (if anything) before that sort of law can be imposed.
The moral arguments seem to be covered here. Have you tried any of the utilitarian arguments, such as an artificial contraction of the labor pool?