For vols. 1-3 (2009-2011), cite articles as: Author, “Title,” Libertarian Papers [volume #], [article number] (year). Example: Jan Narveson, “Present Payments, Past Wrongs: Correcting Loose Talk about Nozick and Rectification,” Libertarian Papers 1, 1 (2009).
For vol. 4 (2012) onward, cite articles as: Author. Year. "Title." Libertarian Papers. Volume # (issue #): [page numbers]. Example: Michael F. Reber. 2012. "The Role of Work: A Eudaimonistic Perspective." Libertarian Papers. 4 (1): 1-26.
16. “A Critique of Block on Abortion and Child Abandonment”
by Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski
Abstract: The present paper offers a critique of Block on the issues of abortion and child abandonment. Block regards aborting a fetus or abandoning a child as an instance of exercising one’s libertarian right of expelling trespassers from one’s private property. I argue that the above reasoning is flawed due to the lack of the appreciation of the fact that if one voluntarily initiates the causal chain which leads to someone else ending up on his property, the latter person cannot be considered a trespasser. Furthermore, in the light of the above observation, any direct effects resulting from that person’s eviction should be considered the responsibility of the property’s owner. All of this follows from the simple logical fact that in all links of the causal chain under consideration the owner is the ultimate causal agent.
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Excellent article. I hope this puts an end to the libertarian debate on the issue and unites us further.
Responding to Dr. Block on this question in _The Libertarian Forum_, July-August 1978, Father James Sadowsky asked a couple of rhetorical questions: “To say that x is trespassing is to say that he is somewhere where he ought not to be. But where should a foetus be if not in its mother’s womb? This is its natural habitat. Surely people have a right to the means of life that nature gives them? If the home in which the infant grew were outside the mother’s body, we should all see that to expel him from that home would be to deprive him of the nature-given means of life.” Mr. Wiesniewski’s paper is a most welcome contribution to the literature as it supports with an argument the moral claim implicit in those questions, an argument that effectively answers Murray Rothbard’s contemporaneous reply to Sadowsky, which may be read online here: http://www.anthonyflood.com/sadowskyabortion.htm
Fetus are not human beings (yet, or will never be). So, the paper first part is invalid. The second part must take on account Rothbard’s arguments like this:
“And suppose the child is deformed and ill, scarcely human; does he still have a binding legal obligation to maintain the child? And if so, how much of his resources—his time, energy, money, capital equipment—should he be legally required to invest to keep the child alive? Where does his obligation stop, and by what criterion?
This question of resources is also directly relevant to the case of natural parents. As Evers points out:
[L]et us consider the case of poor parents who have a child who gets sick. The sickness is grave enough that the parents in order to obtain the medical care to keep the baby alive, would have to starve themselves. Do the parents have an . . .obligation to lessen the quality of their own lives even to the point of self-extinction to aid the child?[9]”
As a determinate entity, the human conceptus is continuous with the fetus, child, and adult it may later come to be, and entitatively discontinuous with the egg and sperm that ceased to be when the conceptus came to be. Rothbard generally followed Aquinas on natural law, but not with respect to the convertibility of being and goodness. His string of rhetorical questions is not an argument. Evers’ single one stimulates (mild) curiosity about his worldview and about the metaphysical status of parental love therein. Even if I lived in an anarchist territory, I would like to know who among my neighbors, if any, put his or her own welfare above that of his or her child. If the right not to be wantonly killed is not essentially part of the objective goodness of human being at every stage, then it can only be a contingent value we project onto one another — or withhold from or deny one another when economic calculations dictate. Within the human conceptus (the “clump of tissue” of abortion apologetics), what we appreciate as patently human is already latent. We therefore reasonably impute human dignity to its every stage and only fatuously withhold it from the human fetus.
Any human being, who is not utterly sociopathic, and is a parent would answer in the affirmative. Those, like myself, who have had a child know that your love and affection for your child is such that you would undertake ANY endeavor, unto your last breath, in order to save that life. That is part of the very definition of parenthood.
The aforementioned questions frame the issue of resource allocation in a context similar to treating the serious illness of a family pet.
Perhaps, Mr Rosales, take a step back and understand that we COULD VERY WELL BE talking about having taken that last breath already (if only figuratively) to save the child.
If you choose to die along with your child instead of allowing only the child to die, have you done more wrong or more right? Even that is a difficult question as the option of dying with your child might have certain benefits such as setting a high moral example that may inspire better moral behavior among your surviving family and freinds. But morals are not necessarily Laws. Libertarianism is about searching for fundemental Law, not morality.
So, it is still a fair question: Is it illegal to cause or allow the death of a child if the cost of raising it is deemed too high by the original homesteader? It turns out that it depends on the situation as to the legality, and even if it is determined to be Legal, it can still be very immoral.
Lifeboat situations are always difficult to resolve. But the question here is ultimately about whether taking actions that lead to the death of a child can ultimately be Legal or not, and why. In certain circumstances, it would be just and Legal (even morally right) to make decisions that ultimately cost the life of one’s child. Now, it should also be known that were a parent to give up the homesteading rights of a child, he must reasonably announce this to other potentially interested homesteaders. All morals aside, these are the parameters.
I don’t agree with Block 100%, but he argues that as long as the technology exists to maintain the life of the fetus, baby, child, or even adult (presumably), AND it is reasonably known to the community that there may be interested non-governmental third parties willing to take over homesteading rights for the concerned fetus, baby, child, or adult, then it is incumbant upon the original homesteader to reasonably announce to her/his community his intent to release claim to the fetus, baby, child, or adult so that these others may declare their homesteading rights to it. Government is not ethically in the right in making homesteading claims, because, by the nature of government doing so, it is coercing others to pay for the government’s homesteading interests and government can only do this by force of coercion and theft of property, unless government has some sort of ‘donation effort’ voluntarily funded by the people, which would be unusual if there was already a free market where more efficient local charities were to emerge.
Now, how the community treats this parent or homesteader will depend upon the parameters of the situation in which the parent let go of the child. This is where morals come in. If the reason was no good, then the person will be shunned. No-body has ANY problem with this. No-one should be forced to help the former unjust homesteader in any way, to include trading with him or her. This is a pretty strong punishment and is a clear message to others in the community. But did the old parent have to break any Laws to be treated thus and should he go to jail for doing so, even if the reasons were deemed insufficient? Not if he followed a reasonable rule and announced to his community that he is releasing his homesteading rights to the concerned.
We all know when such a behavior is immoral and distasteful, but is a person a sociopath for trying to understand when and why such behavior is Legal, even if morally wrong? Certainly not. Can a person believe that certain unsavory actions are Legal and unpunishable by a government, but still morally wrong? You bet.
As well: What if the original homesteader was so self-interested in saving his child that he refused to relinquish homesteading claims to the child which resulted in the child’s death, and did so even when capable third parties were declaring an interest in the same child? Is the parent more admirable for fitting into some definition of “parenthood” or has the parent rather acted immorally?
The answer (subjectively dependent upon the self-viability of the fetus, baby, child, or adult) is that the parent has indeed acted immorally, but did not break any fundemental Law. The parent would and should be subject to censure from the community, but cannot have his property (including freedom) tresspassed against for the behavior by government, groups, or individuals.
It’s not trespass if a person acts on the belief — which he or she should, of course, expect to defend in court if his or her community does not share it — that interpersonal aggression is occurring or is imminent. That is, his or intention is not to commit aggression (i.e., there is no _mens rea_), but rather to prevent aggression, or to repel or restrain and hold liable the person he or she sincerely believes to be an aggressor.
It falls to legal theory to describe an action as “aggressive” or “defensive,” but legal theory is not fundamental ontology, one of whose jobs it is to clarify the category of “person.” Legal disagreement presupposes, and therefore cannot resolve, ontological disagreement.
Either (a) persons come to be and cease to be when their bodies come to be (unified organisms) and cease to be (unified organisms); or (b) persons come to be some time _after_ their bodies come to be and cease to be sometime _before_ their bodies cease to be. Behavior will be described as an act of aggression or an act of defense depending on whether (a) or (b) is adopted. But libertarian legal theory as such cannot help one choose between (a) or (b).
Wiśniewski point — which we should not lose sight of — is that to trespass is _to undertake an action_. We bother to entertain and rebut the risible proposition that the fetus may or not be a “trespasser” — depending on (of all things!) its mother’s disposition toward it — only because of the eminence of the libertarian theorists who have subscribed to it.
The contemporary need is for rethinking the fundamentals, not just following one brilliant thinker’s idiosyncratic (and logically unstable) synthesis of pre-modern, personalist realism and modern, depersonalizing empiricism, that is, his shotgun marriage of the Catholic Aquinas and the anti-Catholic Locke. Such rethinking should not require asking (at least not without embarrassment) whether the fetus/infant/child is a species of “homesteadable land.”
Once we view a parent as “homesteading” her child, we’re already well off the deep end.
The idea of Rothbard’s questions also applies to the case where you are at fault in an automobile accident, where you caused someone else to go to the hospital and be temporarily dependent upon life support. You would have a legal obligation to repay your victim for the damages.
So what is Rothbard saying? He appears to be rhetorically rejecting the idea of unlimited liability (without argument), and then also rejecting the idea of limited liability on the grounds that any limit is arbitrary. Thus does Rothbard conclude that there is no such thing as liability at all? Thus you would have no obligation to pay your victim anything? I would have to reject that conclusion as absurd.
Rothbard is making an emotional argument. What about a case where Alice owes Bob repayment of a debt, Bob will die without receiving the payment owed to him, and Alice will have to starve herself to repay it. Then Rothbard’s question is “Does Alice have an obligation to lessen the quality of her own life even to the point of self-extinction to fulfill her legal obligation?” Or do we suspend enforcement of Alice’s obligation at the cost of Bob’s life–when the funds are rightfully Bob’s?
Or even simpler, Bob has food just enough to sustain his own life. Does Alice have the right to steal any of Bob’s food, thus killing Bob? Even if it is a matter of life and death for Alice? Or does she have the obligation to refrain from infringing upon Bob’s rights? This is what Rothbard is emotionalizing about: the compassion for Alice. Of course it is a hard (lifeboat) case, which stirs the emotions. But the logical issue still remains: if the food is rightfully Bob’s, it is rightfully Bob’s. On what possible grounds can we kill Bob by confiscating Bob’s rightful property and giving it to someone else?
Predicaments such as those Joel describes can be spun out indefinitely. The question is, where are their resolutions to be properly sought?
Rothbard’s argument was not, in my opinion, so much “emotional” as truncated. Although he rejected Mises’ utilitarianism for natural law, he resisted elaborating publicly upon the metaphysical inquiry such a commitment draws one into or revealing much about how he negotiated that philosophical business. As Rothbard stipulated in his preface to his _The Ethics of Liberty_[EL]:
“It [EL] is not, however, a work in ethics _per se_, but only in that subset of ethics devoted to political philosophy. Hence, it does not try to prove or establish the ethics or ontology of natural law, which provide the groundwork for the political theory set forth in this book. Natural law has been ably expounded and defended elsewhere by ethical philosophers. And so Part I simply explains the outlines of natural law which animates this work, without attempting a full-scale defense of that theory.”
Fair enough, it an author’s prerogative to limit the scope of his book. In this case, however, the consequence has been that his readers have been “simply” left to figure out exactly where “elsewhere” is and what to do with what they find there. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, for example, has suggested one direction; James Sadowsky, S.J., another.
To tie these various strands together: let’s say Bob is a fetus and Alice is his mother and therefore Alice naturally and continuously provides Bob with food. Is that food rightfully Bob’s? The answer does not lie in political-ethical theory.
I think the point is been missed. The big question is not whether the parent should or should not use his/her resources to keep the child alive; but if the parent has the right to keep third parties away from feeding the child when he is failing to. I think it’s obvious that if someone tries to feed a starving kid and someone gets in the way it is certainly an act of violence. That conclusion PROVES that Bozydar is right and Rothbard is wrong when the latter claims the child to be the parent’s property; because, if the child was truly the parent’s property, then he should be able to prevent third parties from feeding his baby as he would his dog.
The fact is that babies have the same rights than any other human being, because they are human beings. I don’t know if fetuses are people or not. I don’t care really, because what is definite is that fetuses and people share the same “nature”, (it would be absurd to say the fetus is like a cow or an ant for the first two or whatever months of pregnancy and then suddenly transforms its nature into that of a human being). Since natural rights come from the “nature” of the subject and not from its hability to talk, walk or think, then there is no point in triying to say thet the fetus has diferent rights than those of a grown up (Rothbard actually gets it perfect up to this point). Regrettably Rothbad fails to identify the trespass issue which Bozydar so elocuently demonstrates; that is, that the owner cannot claim trespass if he, himself, is directly liable for the intrusion. This argument is very very powerful against abortion, because it is NOT an AD HOC rule that applies only to abortion, just as the positive right solution proposed by Dr. Block, but is a general and simmetrical rule perfectly coherent with the negative right libertarian theory. You can not punch an “intruder” in the face if he was your house guest just seconds before he looked your wife in the “wrong way”; eventhough you COULD punch him if he was never invited. You can’t throw a baby out of a womb claiming trespass if you were at least responsible (maybe didnt want him) for it to be there.
The no-trespass argument is settling in all but one case of abortion; that is rape victim pregnancy; because in that unique case the mother is not liable for the pregnancy. I don’t have an answer for that one yet, but i really think that the answer is somewhere around because I have a lot of trouble accepting “unique exceptions” on libertarian theory. The answer is lurking somewere around.
Keep looking, but consider expanding the search beyond the area of the dark street upon which the lamp post of libertarian theory happens to cast its circle of light. The “lost” key is further down the road in natural law theory, which has been around a bit longer.
Like babies, fetuses and embryos have the rights of persons because they are complete (if immature) human beings. Rights pertain to persons (substances of a rational nature), not to their immediately exercisable capacities.
The costs associated with pregnancy and labor are considerable, and if they are the consequences of rape, they can be all but unbearable. I do not make light of them. They are, however, temporary, whereas the proposed “offset” — the killing of the rape’s issue, an innocent person — is permanent. Death is a worse harm, in degree and in kind, for the unborn child than the difficulties are for his or her mother. The former might be emotionally understandable as a “solution” to the difficulties, but not rationally justifiable.
I usually stay in the bleachers when this argument is featured — the emotions fog up the microscope. Also, I’m dropping in in the middle of a thread that I just happened upon which is always dicey.
But I must comment on this no-trespass argument because it has much further reaching implications. An individual has the right to change his/her mind every minute of the day until the point of no return. And a guest in your home is a guest only by your conditional consent.
“You can not punch an “intruder” in the face if he was your house guest just seconds before he looked your wife in the “wrong way”; eventhough you COULD punch him if he was never invited. You can’t throw a baby out of a womb claiming trespass if you were at least responsible (maybe didnt want him) for it to be there.”
The difference between a house guest and an intruder could be a wrong look, a wrong word or anything that changes the homeowners attitude toward the guest. You don’t owe the guest anything but a “Leave my property!” warning that his status has changed.
The worst atrocity in U.S. history was perpetrated under this fiction that people cannot change their mind or withdraw consent.
I wouldn’t try to prop up this analogy.
I would like to say one thing, the countries with the most oppressive laws against women are usually one in the same where abortion is illegal. A woman may not conceive of her own free will, birth control fails, rape exists, and the rights of a fetus cannot supersede the rights of it’s mother. Her body is not it’s property. What she chooses to do with it is her own decision, she does not cease to be a human being and instead become nothing more than an incubator.
There is a serious implication in the idea that a fetus has rights, if a woman miscarries due to a mistake she makes while pregnant, ie she falls off a bicycle, do you prosecute her for negligent homicide then? A fetus is not yet a person in the legal, or philosophical, sense since it can not support itself, it cannot direct itself, and by acting as though it is a moral actor you are putting women in the position of being nothing more than a walking womb.
Ms. Pandora has the rights accruing to a person because a person is what she substantially _is_. She didn’t acquire personhood the way she acquired, say, the ability to express the person-body dualism implicit in her comment. She has been a person since she came to be, which is when her body came to be, i.e., at conception.
Answers to her concerns (exressed at length and with greater care by philosophers on her side of the controversy) may be found in Lee and George, _Body-Self Dualism in Contemporary Ethics and Politics_ (Cambridge, 2008). This is not the place to review that book, of course, but had Ms. Pandora been aware of its arguments, she would have formulated her case differently (or not at all).
In Utah there has already been an attempt to pass legislation that would hold women criminally liable for miscarriage. It isn’t hyperbole, and it is a real concern.
There is a person body dualism in this case because there are two bodies being discussed, the body of the mother and the body of the fetus. One is fully formed and a functional human being the other is a potential human being. I say the rights of the already adult female outweigh the rights of the potential human she carries.
Had my mother aborted me, I would have no memory of ever existing. A person is more than a body, a person is their mind. Without a mind we are no more than animals or pieces of meat. A fetus has no developed consciousness, no sense of itself, it cannot and does not support it’s own life.
I will look into that book. And Anthony if you insist on replying to my comment, at least have the courtesy to address me directly, or don’t mention me at all!
Eris, my comment was directed at yours, not at you. Comments pages tend to degenerate into shouting matches; , one way to prevent that is to depersonalize the exchange of ideas. This thread is not (or should not be) a free-for-all on abortion, but comments on Wiśniewski’s paper. I have tried to adhere to that in my previous comments on this thread.
Self-body (or person-body) dualism is a modernist presupposition. It needs to be made explicit and argued for and against. (I think it needs to be retired.) Much of what you wrote in your most recent message is either irrelevant to the philosophical questions at issue or begs them. If I were to demonstrate that, sentence by sentence, the feared degeneration would inevitably ensue. This is not the place. If you visit my eponymous site, you’ll find my e-mail address; if you use it, we can continue the exchange without the limitations imposed by someone else’s site. — Tony
Honestly, this paper is the best treatment of the subject that I have ever seen to date.
The conclusion makes perfect sense if we are asking ourselves the question of how market-based law would deal with such a difficult question. Since it was the mother’s responsibility for bringing the child into existence, then they should be forced to pay restitution to the child if they decide to abandon them. Private legal systems would have an incentive to enforce this law just as they would have an incentive to prosecute and enforce against theft – part of the restitution payment paid by the mother would easily be their profit.
I reply to an objection similar to the one raised in the above paper in this paper http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1668528 (still a working paper).
I argue that Eric Mack’s Self-ownership proviso allows us to distinguish between the abortion case and the case of (say) kicking someone off a boat (who will then drown).
It is Mr. Shah’s burden, not the reader’s, to spell out how his paper affects Wiśniewski’s, not Mack’s, argument, the focus of this thread.
Despite the availability of my August 5th comment above, which Mr. Shah may not have read, he assumes the coherence of the notion that the fetus can _trespass_, not by acting, but merely by being unwanted by the mother.
When Mr. Shah’s paper has transcended its “working” status, perhaps it will appear on Libertarian Papers.
I was merely flagging it up should anyone be interested.
I had not read your August 5th comment. I have now. I would reject your notion that trespass requires a mens rea (this is a separate question as to whether criminal penalties should be imposed an a trespasser lacking mens rea). The idea that trespass has to consist of an action is an interesting one which is worthy of more consideration.
However whether or not the foetus is a trespasser does not affect my argument. My claim is that, by self-ownership, the woman has the right to evict anyone (or anything) from her body unless that person (or thing) has the right to remain there.
Regarding how my paper affects Wiśniewski’s. First I must state my thesis (it is similar but not the same as Block’s). The woman has the right at any time during her unintended pregnancy to remove the foetus from the womb. She however does not have the right to directly kill the foetus (which is what almost all abortions do) but if after having removed the foetus it dies (which will happen if the removal is pre-viability) then she would not have wronged the foetus.
(part of the reasoning is that by removing the foetus we are not depriving it of anything that it is entitled to)
Now an objection to this (which is similar to what Wiśniewski raises) is that in the following case:
A is kidnapped and thrown in B’s plane without his consent. B discovers A when he is at 30,000ft. He then proceeds to evict A claiming that he is not depriving A of anything A is entitled to (after all B has full ownership of the plane).
Now clearly kicking A out of the plane at 30,000ft is murder. But my reasoning in the abortion case seems to allow this to happen. If I bite the bullet then my thesis should rightly be rejected as implausible. So I must find a way to distinguish the two.
One possible grounds on which we could distinguish it is by appealing to a proviso on acquisition of external property like Nozick’s Lockean proviso. I suspect that most people here do not belief in the proviso.
The other ground is to use Mack’s self-ownership proviso. The proviso states that an agent cannot make use of his entitlements in a way that nulifies or severely disables the world interactive of another agent. The paper is available here http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=4566556, Unfortunately a subscription is required but Ed Feser has an article in which he summarises it and which is freely available http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=275184
My argument is that exercising one’s property rights to kick the guy off the plane is a violation of the Lockean proviso and of the self-ownership proviso.
However in the abortion case there is no violation of the Lockean proviso (since it only applies to external stuff). However the SOP applies to external stuff and to one’s body so it is applicable in the abortion case. And clearly the world-interactive powers of the foetus have been nullified. Indeed Ed Feser in a 2004 article for the Journal of Libertarian Studies makes exactly this argument.
Briefly, I argue that Feser is wrong since his case would sanction the use of some people as a means to the end of others. However both Mack and Nozick (and I am sure many others) identify not being used as means (without one’s consent) as a core component of self-ownership. So Feser’s interpretation of the SOP violates self-ownership itself. So Feser’s interpretation is wrong (or Feser could reject self-ownership, which he has done; he is no longer a libertarian). So there is no violation of the SOP (properly understood) in the abortion case (but there is one in the plane case).
I hope this helps.
It does, Mr. Shah, because it highlights the area of dispute, namely, whether the fetus, who naturally comes to be from inside of the womb, has the right not only to “remain” there until birth or spontaneous abortion, but also to passively enjoy its dependent status by deriving sustenance from the mother’s body.
If the mother may procure the eviction and fatal exposure of the fetus, it is hard to see how “natural right,” including the natural right of self-ownership, has any application: the mother, whose self-ownership is appealed to, is no more of a person, no more of a self-owner, no more “interactive with the world”—the mother’s body being the immediate sphere of the fetus’s world—than is the fetus. (See my June 28 comment above.)
Consider Murray Rothbard’s definition of “right,” which he borrowed from his friend (and one-time sparring partner on abortion: see my June 3 comment above), James Sadowsky, as it appears in Rothbard’s _The Ethics of Liberty_:
“When we say that one has the right to do certain things we mean this and only this, that it would be immoral for another, alone or in combination, to stop him from doing this by the use of physical force or the threat thereof. We do _not_ mean that any use a man makes of his property within the limits set forth is necessarily a _moral_ use.” http://anthonyflood.com/sadowskyprivateproperty.htm)
This implies that initiating force may not be the only kind of immoral action. It logically draws the reader’s attention to the meaning of “moral” and the possible role of force in upholding morality.
According to one interpretation of this rule, for example, if my friend is about to commit suicide, _I_ may not forcefully prevent _him_, but _others_ may forcefully prevent _me_ from forcibly preventing him. For natural law theorists, for whom good life-seeking is the matrix of moral reasoning, if such reasoning is justifiable, it is not obviously so (except perhaps to libertarians whose borrowings from the natural law tradition maybe characterized as eclectic). What we have here is not a conflict of rights, but rather a hierarchy of goods of which liberty is one. In my opinion, Rothbard’s deliberately restricted focus in _The Ethics of Liberty_ reveals its weakness here. (See my August 10 comment.)
To refer to one of your concerns: the “unwanted” fetus is not “using” his or her mother in the sense that animates discussions of Kant’s ethics. The fetus naturally depends upon, but does not exploit, his or her mother. As with trespassing, there is no exploitation without an action that can be described as exploitative, but action requires ordering a means to an end, which a fetus cannot do.
“To refer to one of your concerns: the “unwanted” fetus is not “using” his or her mother in the sense that animates discussions of Kant’s ethics. The fetus naturally depends upon, but does not exploit, his or her mother. As with trespassing, there is no exploitation without an action that can be described as exploitative, but action requires ordering a means to an end, which a fetus cannot do.”
My claim is that coercing the woman not to evict the foetus would be treating her manipulatively unlike the coercion in Mack’s hypotheticals which are eliminative. This was an appeal to the eliminative/manipulative distinction and more generally to a patient centred deontological ethics http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/#PatCenDeoThe
Note that I am not claiming that the foetus is using or exploiting the woman only that if the State (or anyone else) coerces her then this would violate her rights.
This was not an appeal to CI2 or to Kant (though Kant certainly inspired the E/M distinction).
“My claim is that coercing the woman not to evict the fetus would be treating her manipulatively . . . [I]f the State (or anyone else) coerces her then this would violate her rights.”
“. . . coercing . . . not to evict”: may I infer that, in your view, if removing the fetus requires the cooperation of others, but there are no willing cooperators, then non-eviction would not entail a violation of her rights? That is, only the coercion, not the frustration of desire _per se_, would make it a violation of rights?
Not quite. I claim that the foetus is violating her rights. However given what you said I am prepared to concede (if only for the sake of argument) that the foetus is not violating her rights.
This concession does not really affect my case since her SO gives her the right to evict anything which present in her body even if these are not violating her rights (the only requirement is that she must not have an enforceable positive obligation to either the foetus or anyone else to keep the foetus).
(This concession does however negate my claim she may have an abortion if her life is danger and if an eviction is not possible.)
Now with regards to third parties your inference is right. They have no positive obligation to assist so their refusal to do so cannot amount to a violation of the rights of the woman. However they have negative obligations and violating these (by say threatening her with imprisonment if she evicts the foetus) would amount to a violation of her rights.
If for example all the doctors in the world feel that pre-viability evictions are wrong (or that they would be acting against their conscience if they performed one) and decide to refuse to do any then it would be impossible for women to have pre-viability evictions but there would be no violation of their rights (by the doctors).
I make no claim about whether evictions are right or wrong only that they should not be prohibited (and also that abortions should in normal circumstances be prohibited). However I do think that there is something like a CI imperfect duty not to evict.
I hope this helps.
Yes, Mr. Shah, thanks for your clarification. (The system does not seem to let me append this comment to our thread.)
If I understand you correctly, the fetus can violate rights without (yet) having the immediately exercisable capacity to act (to choose an end and devise a means thereto). Although I understand how a substance that cannot (ever or yet) perform a human action can frustrate desires or even damage property (e.g. , a hurricane-uprooted tree that crashes through a roof; a unexpected pregnancy revises career plans), I cannot see how one can sensibly regard that substance as a violator of property rights.
I think we’re divided over the question of whether one may confidently draw inferences from self-ownership apart from the logical guidance of a philosophical anthropology. The natural law tradition provided one, but Rothbard prescinded rather eclectically from it. Others have followed him in this respect (unfortunately, in my view). I referred to this problem in my June 28, August 5, and August 10 comments above.
In my opinion, we cannot decide the truth-value of “[self ownership] gives her the right to evict anything which present in her body” by analogizing the unborn human person to the hapless victim of other philosophically excogitated predicaments. We must, as the tradition has done, take into account the unique union that forms between a mother and her unborn child, for the latter (in my view) is the counter-example that falsifies the general statement.
Can I read your last paragraph as accepting that SO gives her the right to evict anything which is present in her body and which does not have the right to remain there. But that you believe that the biological relationship gives the foetus the right to be there and so the principle does not allow her to evict the foetus?
I’m not sure “self-ownership” survives the scrutiny of the older tradition. If a person owns himself/herself in morally different way from how that same person _acquires_ ownership in something else, then we _might_ be equivocating when use “ownership” to refer to both. I’m undecided about that. For now I would say that her non-acquired moral self-ownership gives her the right to evict any substance unless she has a moral obligation to protect that substance (and therefore not expose the latter to the risks attending even abortion-as-eviction-and-relocation).
In answer to your second question: in itself, the biological relationship (exemplified throughout the animal kingdom) does not confer rights, but we may reasonably infer rights from the obligation (moral _ligamentum_ if you will) binding the human mother and her child to each other. The defense of that proposition involves setting it within a teleological (i.e., non-materialist) anthropology in which the _telos_ of good life-seeking orders the moral life of substances constituted by an over-arching imperative to seek a good life (which imperative may dictate the foregoing of particular satisfactions, the aim of other imperatives). Modern libertarian self-ownership apologetics seems to have been largely a deontological exercise, i.e., SO is undergirded by an absolute “ought” unrelated to a transcendent _telos_. That is ironic, given the general antipathy to anything redolent of Kantianism in some libertarian circles.
Anthony Flood,
You said on September 8th that “the mother, whose self-ownership is appealed to, is no more of a person, no more of a self-owner, no more “interactive with the world”—the mother’s body being the immediate sphere of the fetus’s world—than is the fetus.”
Subsequently you said that you “cannot see how one can sensibly regard that substance (a foetus) as a violator of property rights.” since it “cannot (yet) perform a human action”.
In that case you have determined that an entity capable of acting (the mother) is no more “interactive” than an entity which is not capable of acting (the foetus). I find this claim questionable at best, and without it your case fails.
Your finding rests on an equivocation for which you are not entirely to blame.
When I used wrote “interactive with the world,” I rendered Mr. Shah’s “world-interactive.” He had written that “clearly the world-interactive powers of the foetus have been nullified” by an abortion. Since that term, or the phrase it summarized, possibly equivocates on the word “action” (the root of “interaction”) there is a need for clarification.
We may use “action” as shorthand for “human action,” but in the case of human ontogenesis, we should, I think, view the latter (“human action”) as a species of the former genus (“action”). (Molecules don’t conceive of alternative ends, choose one of them, and employ resources to attain it, but there is such a thing as chemical action.)
An abortion brings to an abrupt end several vital processes (digestion, respiration, circulation, excretion, etc.) that constitute a human fetus’ gestational interaction with its maternal environment; _a fortiori_ an abortion also interrupts the fetus maturation to the point where it can act in a specifically human (rather than generally mammalian) way. The fetus does not differ from its mother with respect to those vital processes. That is, it is no more biologically interactive than its mother.
That is _not_, however, why its mother is no more of a self-owner than it is, and if in patterning my sentence after Mr. Shah’s I created that impression, I apologize. She is no more of a self-owner than it is because she does not, as a human substance, have anything that it also does not have. It doesn’t need to acquire anything to be complete as a human being. It is immature, but complete. It differs from its mother by not being able to exercise immediately its distinctively human potential. That is, it lacks a certain _immediately exercisable capacity_ (IEC). That lack, however, describes many human beings from whom we would not withhold the status of person or self-owner. They remain self-owners even though they lack that IEC. That a certain IEC is a necessary condition of self-ownership or personhood is a proposition in need of an argument.
When I later wrote that “I cannot see how one can sensibly regard that substance [i.e., the fetus] as a violator of property rights” because it does not “(yet) hav[e] the IEC to act (to choose an end and devise a means thereto),” I meant that that IEC is a precondition of violating rights and therefore of trespassing. In short, a fetus’ mother can violate its rights, but it cannot violate hers.
It may not convince, but I hope it clarifies.
“She has been a person since she came to be, which is when her body came to be, i.e., at conception.” To say the least, this is a highly questionable assertion.
The prerequisite for considering something to be a person is that it be a thing in and of itself. Until the point of birth, however, the fetus is not a separate entity; The fetus is a biological aspect of the woman who is pregnant. Only at birth is the fetus biologically separate as an actual self-owner who has individual rights.
As long as the fetus is in the woman’s body (sustained by the food she consumes and the air she breathes- while absoultely in a state of dependence with respect to the mother’s respiratory system) it cannot claim individual rights (because it is not a individual). It is a part of the woman’s body and subject to her discretion.
Side note: Libertarians who argue against abortion rights are in actuality arguing for a kind of totalitarian system to replace our existing statist totalitarian system; and this is all in order to “defend” the rights of entities that are non-persons. (potential persons – but nevertheless not persons).
For someone who says he finds my statement “questionable,” you ask no questions but instead make gratuitous assertions that beg the question. I may gratuitously deny them, but I prefer to give reasons.
Rather than engage my many previous comments (which address your points), you insinuate that I am a closet totalitarian who will rely on coercion rather than on the force of argument. You then try to excuse your insult by declaring it a “side note.”
Unlike some others on this page (e.g., Mr. Shah), you need counseling in the ethics of charitably construing your opponent’s position. I wonder (but not too much) whether you know that. That was not a side note.
Some women would be surprised to learn that the “fetus is a biological aspect of the woman who is pregnant,” for that would mean that when she is not pregnant, she is missing a “biological aspect” of herself, that she is incomplete. Those words are about as illuminating as “a thing in and of itself.”
They also express embryological nonsense. You may wish to pull the rabbit of a mereological relationship out of the hat of biological dependency, but wishing does not make it so. From the moment of conception the zygote-embryo-fetus-infant has a DNA different from that of either its biological mother or its biological father. Is that _prima facie_ basis insufficient for a claim of individuality? If so, why?
To belabor the obvious (perhaps in vain):
* A person does not have to be able to claim rights to have them.
* The being that will, if all goes well, no longer be physically dependent upon it mother is physically individuated well before that point. The only non-arbitrary point is conception.
Ok, first I’m a little confused. How is the right to life a positive right. If I own myself, I own my life and not someone else. Only I have the right to determine if I will live or die, so long as I have not acted against someone else’s rights.
Let’s go a little further and bring God into the equation, and please note, at this point I’m not arguing for government involvement.
When we say we own ourselves, I take that to be in regard to other people, in that they do not own us and we have the right of conscience to determine for ourselves how to conduct our lives. We also have the right to own property and work that property without any obligation to give of our property or the results of our working that property.
This begs the question though, for it assumes that we really do own ourselves and the land we work, rather than it being lent and our being accountable to God for what we have done with our loan. Frankly libertarianism deals only with earthly governments and other people, but refuses to address whether or not there is a God, and include that factor into libertarian thought.
Again I am not attempting to address the role of earthly governments in what are spiritual matters, such as sexual immorality, using drugs or what not, for these are not actions depriving others of the exercise of their rights, and indeed the scriptures tell Christians such matters are none of their concern. BUT!, but until libertarianism can address spiritual matters it will be rejected, and be left only as an intellectual hobby.
First off, I meant no offense by my choice of words. However, an argument (such as the one you are attempting to make), when taken to its logical conclusion, can lead to totalitarian methods of fulfilling it.
“Some women would be surprised to learn that the “fetus is a biological aspect of the woman who is pregnant,” for that would mean that when she is not pregnant, she is missing a “biological aspect” of herself, that she is incomplete. ” Really? Are you sure about that? Millions upon millions of women experience the pain and discomfort – approximately every 30 days – as a result of not being pregnant.
“The zygote-embryo-fetus-infant has a DNA different from that of either its biological mother or its biological father. ” True. Nevertheless, the being inside her is still undeniably dependent (completely) on her. The mentioned DNA difference does nothing to strengthen your argument. Thus, the potential human being has no rights until it is born.
Peace
Your reply (which should have been appended to mine for ease of reference) is a string of _non sequiturs_ and question-begging expressed in flabby sentences. Taking at face value your expression of interest in communicating non-offensively, I recommend that you consider the possibility that your rhetoric serves that interest rather poorly.
I will address your paragraphs serially.
1. You had written (November 28): “Libertarians who argue against abortion rights are in actuality arguing for a kind of totalitarian system to replace our existing statist totalitarian system,” but now you prefer to say only that “an argument (such as the one you are attempting to make), when taken to its logical conclusion, can lead to totalitarian methods of fulfilling it.”
First, in this long thread I’ve made many arguments, but you did not specify the one that, you claim, “can lead” to a certain “method of fulfilling it.”
Second, an argument leads neither to (nor away from) a method of “fulfilling” it, for the simple reason that arguments are not “fulfillable” things. It’s ironic how a statement about taking something to “its logical conclusion” can be so bereft of logic.
Third, an inference from “S believes p” to “S is inclined toward act in a certain way,” if the one inferring knows nothing else about S, would be fallacious. I cannot say you have made that inference, however, because you have not written precisely enough to decide the question.
Fourth, even if it was not your intention, your words tend to create the impression (uncharitably in a libertarian forum) that a libertarian cannot be trusted to be faithful to the non-aggression principle if he believes personhood begins at conception. Such an atmosphere of suspicion serves only a rhetorical purpose. If you believe that such a libertarian is significantly more likely to use non-libertarian means to achieve his ends than is a libertarian with other thick commitments, then say so and give your reasons. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, however, a libertarian should charitably assume consistency on the part of his libertarian interlocutor and keep his suspicions to himself unless he is prepared to spell them out and defend them.
2. As for my certitude, I am rather sure that your generalization about the experience of “millions and millions” of women commits _ignoratio elenchi_, for the topic is ontological and your remark is gynecological/psychological.
You had asserted that a “fetus is a biological aspect of the woman who is pregnant,” and I countered with “that would mean that when she is not pregnant, she is missing a ‘biological aspect’ of herself, that she is incomplete.” Now, “biological aspect” is _your_ undefined term. That is, you didn’t specify whether by “aspect” you meant “physical part,” “mental state” or something else.
If you meant “physical part,” then if a woman is missing one of her physical parts, then she is physically incomplete. But no woman is missing a part just because she is not pregnant. She is complete regardless of her obstetric history (i.e., her gravida/para/abortus status).
If, however, you meant “mental state” as the effect of a fetus’ _non_-existence on a woman who is _not_ pregnant, then you have banished from our forum the very entity we were discussing, namely, the “fetus [that allegedly] is a biological aspect of the woman who _is_ pregnant” (and its possible status as a rights-bearer). To suggest, as your words seem to, that a never-conceived zygote-embryo-fetus is analogous to a “phantom limb” that is felt but _no longer_ there is suggest gynecological nonsense.
3. You wrote: “Nevertheless, the being inside her is still undeniably dependent (completely) on her. The mentioned DNA difference does nothing to strengthen your argument. Thus, the potential human being has no rights until it is born.”
This is (a) _ignoratio elenchi_, (b) _petitio principii_, and (c) _non sequitur_ all rolled into one.
(a) What follows your “nevertheless” reasserts complete dependency without showing how that undeniable fact undermines entitative discontinuity between the zygote and its parental egg and sperm. As I said in my previous post, while you may pull a mereological rabbit out of the hat of biological dependency _rhetorically_, you caannot _logically_. Or, in other words, “A depends on B” does _not_ imply “A is part of B.”
(b) Rather than “doing nothing to strengthen my argument,” the zygote’s distinctive DNA is _prima facie_ non-arbitrary evidence for numerical demarcation from the mother, no less than from the father. Unless you overcome the force of that _prima facie_ evidence, it stands. Your denial merely implicitly reasserts the very proposition you are failing both to articulate and defend.
(c) “_Thus_”? Wherefrom? Out of the blue come the word “born” and all sorts of unargued-for presuppositions between location and moral status, that is, between exiting the womb and acquiring rights. A gratuitous assertion, which I gratuitously deny.
I hurried the last comment.. My apology…I am using a friend’s computer/email..so time is not always on my side…:)
I do appreciate this dialogue. Thank you.
Let’s go back to this quote:
“She has been a person since she came to be, which is when her body came to be, i.e., at conception.” To say the least, this is a highly questionable assertion.” I was challenging your concept of “person.”
A fetus has only a rudimentary awareness of its environment – and lacks self consciousness entirely.
It is true that each fetus is potentially a person. But this is an argument against abortion only if it is better to have that particular future being walking around than it is to respect a here-and-now woman’s autonomy.
“From the moment of conception the zygote-embryo-fetus-infant has a DNA different from that of either its biological mother or its biological father.” True. But this potential being (which lacks self consciousness entirely), is not a person. Yes, your claim of DNA difference is not nearly enough “evidence” to enable you to declare “victory” in this discussion. Thanks for listening.
I share your appreciation of dialog, and wish I could reciprocate gratitude for listening.
The fifteen messages (before this one) I’ve contributed to this page aimed at rebutting objections to Wiśniewski’s paper, objections inspired by opposition to the conclusion he arrived at. I’m not playing a game of “Gotcha!”: I never declared “victory,” nor do I intend to, so your assessment of my evidence is inadequate. More on that presently.
A related purpose has been to question the presupposition, widespread in libertarian circles, that abortion is a morally licit option for an adherent to the non-aggression principle. I’ve pursued that goal by offering insights from a philosophical tradition that readers familiar with the writings of Murray Rothbard will recognize as kindred to his. Rothbard was a genius, so when I say he handled that tradition eclectically, as I did on September 8 and 10, I’m not implicitly claiming intellectual superiority. I claim that his marriage of traditional substance theory (Aristotle and Thomas) and modern substance theory (Locke) was fundamentally unstable, and therefore that we have to examine this legacy critically, make our own judgments, and offer them for the consideration of others.
One such insight–which I do not smugly hand down as a putative drop-dead refutation, followed by a declaration of “victory”—is that a person is an entity, a trans-temporal unity-identity-whole, that has a determinate starting point, namely, conception. Conception inaugurates the career of a unified organism with a unique DNA. The genetic material of the fertilized egg contains all the information it needs to mature to the point where it can exercise all the capacities characteristic of a member of its species.
A person is not a quality or modification of the unified organism, but is identical with it. When the organism acts, the person acts and vice versa. By all means, “question” this “assertion,” but please do not write as though I have not been referring to a recognizable philosophical context for it. The responses I’ve seen on this page show little cognizance of that context. They repeat the same strategies whose weaknesses that context lays bare. When I set my criticism in that context, they merely rinse, lather, and repeat.
For example: “She has been a person since she came to be” is from my August 17 to another critic, the “she” of this snippet. I had argued that she did not _acquire_ personhood, as you seem to think, because a person is what she substantially _is_. (I then recommended to her, as I also do to you, the book by Lee and George.)
In an earlier post (August 5), I had posed an exhaustive alternative: “Either (a) persons come to be and cease to be when their bodies come to be (unified organisms) and cease to be (unified organisms); or (b) persons come to be some time _after_ their bodies come to be and cease to be sometime _before_ their bodies cease to be.” One rational consideration for deciding for (a) and against (b) is that (b) presupposes that persons are accidents that happen to substances. When I reflect on personhood, my own, for example, I do not recognize it to be something that “happens” to what I am. I cannot “acquire” what I am. That leaves the reflectively sound and more economical alternative (a).
Now, do I think _that_ is the “last word”? Of course not, and it would be disingenuous to impute that attitude to me. There are no “last words” in philosophical controversy. (Some reader, thinking that sounded like a last word, may confirm my point by disputing it.) Despite appearances to the contrary, I am not going to write the equivalent of a book on a comments page. I have already suggested a book to interested readers. What I’ve done, and continue to do, is to outline an argumentative strategy that complements Wiśniewski’s effort in his paper. I have submitted arguments for propositions, but of course, the premises of those arguments are also subject to scrutiny. But perhaps this is not the best forum for that.
Rinse, lather, repeat: “It is true that each fetus is potentially a person.” That’s your position, not mine. The actual fetus is not a “future being,” but an immature actual being in the present. Each fetus is an actual substance with capacities not all of which it can immediately exercise, such as consciousness and self-consciousness, linguistic competency, etc. What we can come to do, if allowed to mature by our natural protectors (I suppose that is another controversial idea), is exercise capacities that we already possess _ab initio_. After becoming able to exercise them at will, we may lose that ability, but we do not consequently become another substance, another entity. The disabled are not transubstantiated.
You suggest that it is not “better to have that particular future being walking around than it is to respect a here-and-now woman’s autonomy.” This is an example of the “rinse, lather, and repeat” gambit aggravated by flabby sentence construction (Feb. 24). The pregnant woman and the being that will “walk around” in the future (if she doesn’t have it killed) are equally complete human beings, _actually_, not “potentially,” persons. Here and now.
There are some adults, in and out of government, who think their autonomy is crimped by the “walking around” of certain other adults, so the former kill the latter or cause them to be killed. The first step is to rationalize the depersonalization of their victims. Those rationalizing killers are murderers.
The “auto” in “autonomy” means “self.” According to my libertarian philosophy, one’s autonomy — the range of one’s moral exercise of choice — ends where another’s begins (unless the other freely permits otherwise). Personal autonomy is a barrier, not a license, to murder.
If persons are unified organisms, then organisms are non-arbitrary, mutually recognizable moral boundary lines for guiding interpersonal action. The zygote-embryo-fetus-neonate qualifies as a unified organism.
Unfortunately, some libertarians, even those who align themselves with the natural law tradition, have succumbed to the lure of the _Zeitgeist_, who whispers in their mind’s ear that the zygote-embryo-fetus is but a “product of conception,” and therefore either the most cherished thing in the world to its mother, or so much inconvenient garbage to be punctured, scraped out, and disposed of. It’s all up to her supreme will. After all, she’s autonomous. Rinse, lather, repeat.
Those thinkers cannot integrally evade the reality that, in the nature of things, persons come to be inside other persons who are then their natural protectors. But evade they must when they undertake the attempt to justify the unjustifiable.