4. “Response to Wisniewski on Abortion, Round Two”
Abstract: The two main views on the abortion controversy are pro life and pro choice. In my many previous writings on this subject (Block, 1977, 1978, 2001, 2004, 2008, 2010A, 2010B, 2010C, forthcoming; Block and Whitehead, 2005) I have offered a third alternative, evictionism. Wisniewski (2010A) has offered criticisms of this perspective. In Block (2010C) I argued against Wisniewski (2010A), claiming that evictionism was the correct libertarian analysis of this vexing question. Wisniewski (2010B) constituted a rejoinder to Block (2010C), insisting that evictionism constituted an incorrect analysis. The present paper is a response to Wisniewski (2010B), in which I again attempt to defend evictionism against his attacks on this doctrine.
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Isn’t Block making a false analogy? The property owner/mother-trespasser/fetus comparison can’t hold because the mother (save for rare and egregious circumstance) participates in an overt act which not only facilitates but actuates the residence of the fetus, who by this overt action on the part of the mother is then MADE dependent. Furthermore, a property owner who either by implicit or explicit invitation allowed or encouraged a person to take up residence on the owner’s could not then term such a trespasser. Finally, our laws have given a certain latitude to squatters, but I do not know whether those laws are consistent with a Libertarian view and would thus be considered a valid point of argument.
The consistency of the eviction theory is the way it negates the “toddler” rebuttal towards abortion. In other words, an anti-abortion argument is to replace the unborn with a five yeard old. For example, a woman who kills her five year old toddler because she doesn’t want to be a mother anymore is a murderer therefore a pregnant woman who does the same thing is a murderer in kind. However under the eviction theory a toddler can be abandoned by his parents if they longer wish to raise him. If the toddler has no one who raise in lieu of the parent and dies from exposure well tough luck.
First, society needs to decide whether or not a fetus is a human being. For abortion purposes, the laws very specifically find that a fetus is not a human being, and thus, there is no penalty on the doc or the mother to be for killing the alleged non-human.
However, criminal law finds that in the case where a man who assaults a pregnant woman and thereby kills the fetus, the man can be charged with and convicted of the murder of a human being. (This charge being over and above any criminal charge related to the assualt on the woman and any damage her body directly incurred).
I often take this to the extreme . . . Imagine this scenario:
A woman goes to the abortion clinic to obtain an abortion. The woman has signed all of the consent forms and is on the table, feet in stirrups, waiting for the doc to come in and “do the procedure”.
A nurse who has a grudge against the woman comes in and punches the woman in the stomach, thereby killing the fetus before the doctor has opportunity to do so.
Under the criminal laws of the U.S., the nurse can be preosecuted for murder of the fetus.
How is any of that consistent?
I agree with Debra – in 99% of cases in which a female who has not been raped and chooses to engage in sexual intercourse does so with the full and complete knowledge that sex with a man has a significant likelihood of resulting in a pregnancy (even with birth control, there is still a 1+/-% chance of a pregnancy). Therefore, once a woman has, by choice, assumed that risk, the resulting pregnancy and human being growing inside her is not something she can just choose to terminate.
Her choice was to engage in an activity that had a significant likelihood of resulting in a pregnancy.
I find it no different that choosing to drive drunk. I DO NOT support laws that prohibit driving drunk – if you can do it and not injure another person, have at it (and I know people that can). However, pretty much everyone knows that driving drunk DOES slow your reaction times and will increase the likelihood that you will cause an accident – even if that increase is slight.
As such, I have no problem with laws that punish people for causing accidents and injuries to people when the person who caused the accident was drunk (or looking at a pretty girl, or fiddling with the radio, or texting, or whatever else caused them to cause the accident – all of those things increase the likelihood that you will cause an accident).
Similarly, sex leads to pregnancy. Not participating in sex does NOT lead to pregnancy. If you don’t want a pregnancy and the consequent human being growing inside you, then don’t have sex.