32. “Rejoinder to Wisniewski on Abortion”
Abstract: I have published more than just a few papers on the abortion issue. Instead of taking either the pro choice or the pro life position, I offer a third alternative: evictionism. I claim that this perspective, which, as it happens is a principled compromise between the other two positions, is the only one compatible with libertarianism. Wisniewski (2010) offers several not unreasonable challenges to my thesis. The present paper is my attempt to refute each and every one of them.
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Great response.
From the Conclusion: Merely inviting someone in to one’s property, whether womb or home, does not give the invitee the right to stay there for one second longer than the property owner in question, the household or the pregnant woman, wishes to entertain the guest. It certainly does not justify a nine month stay, or a visit for ten years, or, responsibility for the entire remainder of one’s life, and more.
I can’t agree that having unprotected sex equals invitation (like invitation to stay at ones home). Instead this is an action of different class and can’t be compared to invitation.
Pregnancy has a known definite cause and known definite duration. So if one has unprotected voluntary sex one has to be ready to bear the consequences (which are known in advance).
I can’t put my finger on it, but there is something wrong with Prof. Block’s argument. It looks like the equation of invitation and unprotected sex (impregnation) is the key to see it fallaciousness.
Today I read Mr. Wisniewski’s article, and I decided to turn around and read Dr. Block’s rejoinder.
As I began to read this article, I was quickly preparing for a disappointment. Being fond of Block’s writings, I was dumbfounded when he began by mocking the words Wisniewski used in his opening sentence.
Yes, he probably meant “may” rather than “can”. But the way Block pointed this out gave me (and it could just be me) the distinct impression he was trying to intellectually belittle his opponent. It was like he was attacking Wisniewski’s words, not Wisniewski’s arguments (argumentum ad verbum?).
I do not consider intellectual belittlement appropriate for a scholarly debate. I wouldn’t consider it appropriate if Dr. Murphy got his debate with Paul Krugman, whom I enjoy reading insults of.
This seems the sort of nit-pick that could be easily relegated to a minor note by getting clarification from the author. What is instead relegated to the footnote is Block’s admission of being snarky in this regard.
I further got confused as Block refuted the corrected quote, “[According to Block's Theory], a fetus may be aborted only if it is not killed as a result.” I didn’t recall a statement to that effect in Wisniewski’s article.
That’s because Block left out Wisniewski’s qualification to that statement: “(provided that it is a genuine medical possibility)”.
Perhaps Wisniewski should have omitted the parentheses to emphasize the statement’s counterfactual quality- but I digress.
It is not NOW a medical possibility, to the best of my knowledge, and Block’s statements on that point seem to agree.
However, if (or when) it is possible to abort a fetus without it necessarily dying, Block’s theory would, it seems to me, advocate a ‘no fetus death’ procedure over a ‘fetus death’ procedure.
(Incidentally, if the costs of these two procedures were substantially different, what would happen, I wonder? But this is not at issue at the moment.)
Now that Block’s done with this quote, his next point falls on Wisniewski’s poor description of the axiom of non-aggression. Again, Block seems to attack the words Wisniewski uses, rather than the argument Wisniewski makes.
Wisniewski could have said the axiom “prohibits aggressing against other human beings,” and it would not have affected his argument.
Block could have, again, corresponded with Wisniewski, gotten clarification, and turned this into a minor note, maybe with an admonition to pick his words more carefully.
With this as his beginning, I was not excited. Block was nitpicking and passing it off as answering the critique, it seemed.
But he did turn this around. He mentions out the surrogate mother contract as a (non-semantic) valid mistake in Wisniewski’s characterization of his abortion theory (and also something I’d never heard of, so I Googled it).
Then Block enters into the real meat of the argument, Wisniewski’s impression that his theory asserts or implies that “[an evictor] should not be thought of as responsible for what happens to the trespasser after he is evicted”, and Wisniewski’s airplane analogy (well, not so much part of the argument as merely a demonstrative story), and Wisniewski’s preferred conclusion that “the libertarian principle of the non-initiation of force trumps the right to evict trespassers from our property if it is [we] who are responsible for making someone a “trespasser” in the first place.”
He does a very good job of his refutation, characteristically. I highly recommend those who are considering it to read it themselves.
I am anxious about Block’s statement that an aborting mother “improves her fetus’ position” by getting pregnant, then aborting, as versus not getting pregnant at all. If the type of person who believes in welfare maximization (through that bizarre, though seemingly undying, fiction that the welfare of one person can be meaningfully added to the welfare of another) reads that, they would throw a hissy-fit that “According to Block, abortions are better than other birth control because the fetuses’ welfare is improved!” I don’t really know what to recommend to answer this, but I think it deserves some thought.
I’m also intrigued that “the proper abandonment procedure” contains a criterion that seems dangerously close to proving a negative (it can be done by exhaustion, given there are a finite number of humans). I’ll need to look up that theory, too.
I’d like to close by offering my thanks to Dr. Block for writing this article. I’ll say again that most of his article is great. What I’m saying here may give the opposite impression because I’m focusing on the negatives I perceived, but I want to emphasize that this article contains an excellent argument that I feel fully refutes Wisniewski’s critique.
why their’s many crimed about abortion in the philippines?