37. “Response to Wisniewski on Abortion, Round Three”
Abstract: Most people are aware of the pro-choice and the pro-life perspectives on abortion. But there is a third one, based on libertarianism called evictionism. I have written on this philosophy on numerous occasions (Block, 1977, 1978, 2004, 2008, 2010A, 2010B, 2010C, 2011, forthcoming, Block and Whitehead, 2005). Wisniewski (2010A, 2010B, 2011) has criticized this viewpoint. The present essay is a response to Wisniewski (2011).
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There is a 10-33% chance that a single act of unprotected sex could result in a pregnancy. Even if protection is used, there is still a chance of becoming pregnant. If it is common knowledge that a baby could be created by engaging in sexual intercourse, then a baby being created and growing within a woman’s womb cannot be an act of trespass. The woman entered into an implicit contract with a man, knowing that there was a chance that it could result in her pregnancy.
A pro-choice rebuttal, based upon criminal trespass, could answer that the mother has the same choice to eject the unborn child as she would to eject an adult guest from her property, even though she had previously invited the adult to visit. It may be unfortunate if deadly force is required to remove a trespasser, but any police officer would be considered fully justified in the use of such force, if that were to be the only means to remove any given trespasser who would refuse to voluntarily leave, and who indicated they would be willing to threaten deadly force in order to resist their eviction. The moral responsiblity of the abortionist and the police officer would be essentially the same in both instances. This seems like a far simplier justification of evictionism than the one Walter Block tries to give. The possible objection that an invited guest chooses to squat on their host’s property, while an unborn child makes no such choice, is the only rejoinder that can be offered. But why must such a distinction be legally binding upon the property owner/mother who invited the squatter/unborn child into her property/womb? Upon this fulcrum, the ENTIRE debate rests.
Answers to Mr. Hunt’s “fulcrum” question will vary with the philosophical anthropologies of the respondents, from which contexts this “entire debate” abstracts to the frustration of its auditors.
According to one anthropology, the mother is at least but also more than her fetus’ owner: she is also, ceteris paribus, its natural protector. It is a unique kind of ownership, and the effort to understand the fetus as homesteadable land that _becomes_ a rights-bearer (rather than is one from conception) is (in my opinion) as morally tone-deaf an enterprise as the one that purpoprts to regard it as a “trespasser.”
The Rothbardian-Blockian treatment of abortion prescinds from anthropology and ontology and, of course, theology. It therefore burkes the issue of the value of human persons apart from, indeed prior to, their status as “owners” and “owned.” It presupposes self-ownership — which it selects cafeteria-style from the Christian worldview-menu and then dresses up in secular garb — and leaves the individual free to shop around for a metaphysical home for that presupposition. A very modern gambit, one that generates problems that cannot be resolved on the terms it insists upon. For more of my assertions, which cannot, of course, be defended in a combox, see my sixteen comments appended to Wisniewski’s original critique of Block: http://libertarianpapers.org/2010/16-wisniewski-block-on-abortion/
Watch the two gentlemen debate is like watching a game of chess. Fascinating.