Abortion, A Moderate Perspective

For my part, I am undecided about abortion.  The issue seems to me to hinge significantly on whether a developing fetus is to be accorded all the rights of a human being.  At the very least, it seems absurd to me that a non-human thing can become human by simply exiting a woman's uterus, but there are plenty of complications that I am either unqualified or just unable to answer at the present time.  However, the other day, a friend of mine expressed an idea about abortion that I think is worth considering.

My friend's point is simply that abortion is, ultimately, the violent and premature ending of a human life.  Without this act, a fetus will naturally grow and develop into a human being.  The mother thus has a responsibility to make decisions about the future of this human being whether she wants it or not.  While my friend did not say what he thinks the mother should ultimately decide, he strongly objected to referring to an abortion as "terminating a pregnancy," or "aborting a fetus."  It is killing a person, plain and simple.

There is a libertarian argument in favor of abortion, presented by Murray Rothbard and Walter Block.  The argument goes thus: the mother's body is her property, so if she decides that she does not want to carry the child any more, then she is within her rights to expel it.  If the only way to expel the child from her womb is to kill it, then she is justified in doing so.  This certainly seems rather harsh, but it is simply an extension of the idea that you can kick trespassers off your land and shoot them if they don't comply.  While I have to accept this by the rule of logic, I have some qualifications that make me wonder about the conclusion.

In the first place, I'm not quite sure the trespasser analogy holds.  For one thing, a fetus is an innocent in the broadest conceivable sense of the term--it has done absolutely nothing that amounts to any criminal act.  To illustrate how this is significant, suppose the following situation.  A man is kidnapped by a person with a helicopter and is then dumped out by that person's henchman, landing unceremoniously on your property and breaking enough bones that he can barely move.  Has he committed any aggression against you?  No, the people who dumped him out of a helicopter did.  Still, what may you do with respect to the man on your land?  Well for one thing, you may not simply kill him as a trespasser--he didn't trespass.  You also may not demand that he leave your property and kill him if he does not comply--he can't move and ought implies can.  You certainly may help him in various ways, and you may simply leave him be--libertarianism itself does not demand charity--but you may not take any aggressive action against him.  May you pick him up and move him off your property?  Not without his consent.  You're really just stuck with him.  This seems to vitiate the "evictionist" thesis that a mother may simply expel a fetus since the fetus is in exactly the same position as the man on your property.

Things become even more complicated when you consider the fact that pregnancy isn't something that just happens all on its own, but is the result of conscious action on the part of at least one person.  To analyze this factor, let's split they ways pregnancy can arise into three categories--rape, consensual without intent to conceive, and consensual with intent to conceive. (I'm sure one could devise more categories than these, but I'm keeping things simple and sane.)

In the case of rape, a man has forced a woman to carry a child without her consent, even for the act that brought her pregnancy about.  My earlier thought experiment still holds, but I want to start afresh with a new one to help accentuate some features of this analysis.  So, instead of a man being dropped onto your property, imagine a baby or other suitably helpless person simply popping into existence in your living room.  After overcoming the shock of this even happening, and having the circumstances somehow transmitted to you from an authoritative source, you have to figure out what to do with this child.  The situation is exactly the same as before, so you still may not expel or kill the child.  However, we can ask, "does it matter how the child appeared?"  Maybe it was created by a supervillain (who James Bond will be thwarting in an upcoming movie), who is inflicting this child upon you.  On the other hand, what if there were no such villain and the child simply appeared through a sequence of incredibly unlikely quantum processes?  Is there any difference?  Yes--in the first case, you may exact justly compensation from the supervillain.  Otherwise, the situation is exactly the same as the earlier experiment, as is the result.  You're stuck with the child, at least for now.

Moving on the the second option, consensual without intent to conceive, a man and a woman have had sex and the woman is now pregnant as a result, but they didn't intend that to happen.  To go back to our imaginary scenario, suppose you have a button somewhere in your house that will cause babies to magically appear in your living room and you accidentally push it one day (what were you thinking?!).  Are you off the hook?  No more than you would be if the child appeared without you pushing the button.  And since sex involves a bit more conscious effort than accidentally pushing a button does and the expecting parents knew that this could result before they had sex, they are if anything more responsible in this case (though their range of responsibilities doesn't increase).

The final case really addresses a common claim among pro-choice people--that the decision is the mother's alone and the father has nothing to contribute.  That claim would be reasonable in the first two situations, but in the third it fails.  The case is consensual with intent to conceive--a man and woman have sex intending to produce a child and raise it.  In our experiment, you and a friend jointly agree to push to button and deal with the consequences.  Now suppose you (the mother), wants to get rid of the child.  The problem is that you (her) have entered an implicit contract with your friend (the father), and so even if you (she) could get out of deal, you (she) need his permission to do so.  On the other hand, he can't weasel out without your (the mother's) consent either--you're both bound to your earlier decision.  Given the stipulation, this also means the parents have to raise the child to adulthood as well.  That has the potential for opening up a whole other can of worms, though, that I do not wish to explore right now.

There are, of course, other aspects of the public debate about abortion--specific types, required procedures, etc.  I'll deal with a couple more.  One, there is the idea of requiring parental permission for children to get abortions.  This seems to me like a simple extension of the parent's natural authority over their child and the "my house, my rules" principle.  I don't know if they still do this, but I remember that schools had to get parental permission for students to go on field trips.  An abortion seems like a much more important decision, and even more within the scope of parental authority than a school field trip, so parental permission should be required for a child to get an abortion.  This is, naturally, assuming that abortion is permitted, which I've argued above it shouldn't be...hmm.  Two, what about abortions to protect the health of the mother?  This is very much like the situation in which a person hands you a gun and tells that if you will not kill someone you will be killed.  The correct choice in that case is to refuse and die.  In the case of a doctor potentially performing an abortion, he is no more justified in killing the child than the mother is.  The moral choice is not always the happiest one.

Well, when I wrote above that I'm uncertain about abortion, I meant it.  In writing this post, I've walked myself through the arguments as much as I've tried simply to express them, so I now seem to be driven by the inescapable laws of logic to the strong pro-life position--no abortion, no exceptions.  All of this still depends, however, on the notion that a fetus has the rights of a human being, which to me is still uncertain.  In theory, I guess I'll leave it an open question, but in practice, I have to go with the pro-life position.  In my fondness for Plato, I'll use one of his arguments to illustrate this point.  In the Laws, Plato argues that drinking parties can be useful in allowing a person to relax their unconscious inhibitions and so teach them better conscious self-control.  However, he says that he has never seen any party held in this manner, and so if such conditions cannot be assured, he argues that prohibition of alcohol is the second-best option.  I'm taking a similar approach--technically, it's still an open question as to whether a fetus has the same rights as a human being, but if they do have those rights, supporting abortion would be tantamount to countenancing mass murder, something I do not support.  Furthermore, there is my friend's sagely point that abortion does involve the premature and forcible ending of a human life, which strikes an indecisive blow on the theoretical side against abortion.  If you ought to treat a fetus as a human life, then you ought not to take it without just cause, which I have painstakingly explained is never so.  This is a strong argument, even if it doesn't prove the case.

Even after all this, I still think that my chose title of "Abortion, A Moderate Perspective" is applicable.  I've given my reasons here, and they're very careful, non-emotional, and even non-theological reasons.  I'm also open to critiques, if you think I've gone wrong somewhere in my analysis.  However, if your problem is with Rothbardian libertarianism, which informs all my arguments, I suggest you find another occasion to comment.

Anti-Statism and Nothing Else

It's been a while since my last post, but I've had an idea that has dramatically expanded my understanding of political philosophy.  It is as though I can now see the totality of political philosophy: where every idea comes from, how it makes sense, and where it goes wrong.  It's really quite amazing.  This article is an attempt to articulate part of that enlightenment to my libertarian friends.

Basically, the origin of my idea is in a fairly simple question: what if we win?  Suppose we could somehow tear down the current statist system and reinstitute a natural order (to use Hoppe's phrase)--how do libertarians fit in to this new system?  For one thing, we would go from being radical revolutionaries to being defenders of the status quo, and the status quo involves something interesting.

Since today we live under the rule of states, libertarians can bring to bear all of our arguments about aggression being illegitimate to combat just about everything the state does.  However, we do not object if a business sets up office rules, if a homeowners association builds and maintains streets, if a fraternal organization collects dues, if a fairgrounds charges vendors for selling there, if a church forbids is members to smoke marijuana, or if a parent grounds their child, at least not qua libertarians.  Notice, that these things are exactly what we object to the state doing--regulation, building projects, taxation, trade barriers, issuing moral injunctions, or denying freedom of speech/association/etc.--but have a crucial difference.  The difference is that these organizations and agents have a voluntary and property-based justification.  And it is these organizations and agencies that we want to provide all of these services.  Libertarianism today is fundamentally little more than anti-statism.

But if the state were abolished, what would we have to say?  Of course, we would object to things like slavery contracts, fractional-reserve banking, and other particular issues, but we would by and large be out of a job.  Nonetheless, we can see a place where libertarians might fit in.  All of the organizations would have a contractual basis, each would have its own constitution, and we libertarians would be strict constitutionalists, raging against every violation of the contract and demanding that any changes be incorporated into the contract according to the predefined procedures.  We would also insist on the parties to these contracts upholding their end of the agreement, obeying the strictures passed according to the constitutional procedures.  We would be law-and-order conservatives par excellence.

However, as Plato observed long ago, the law is rigid and cruel, not taking into consideration all important factors in human life.  We would join with Plato in saying that having no laws would be ideal, but since we don't live in an ideal world, the rule of law is second-best.  Furthermore, we should not read the Laws with trembling and loathing, but rather with respect for the wisdom contained therein.

The rigidity of the law can become problematic, causing situations that are not what the parties subject to the law intend or desire.  For example, a starving child who steals food to survive at the very least deserves our pity, and punishing them as a vicious thief may be downright cruel.  Thus, exceptions to the law must be permitted.  The libertarian response to this fact is twofold: (1) since what the law forbids is probably something we don't want, the law itself should not be changed except without careful and lengthy deliberation, and (2) exceptions to the law should never become the norm--if children are starving, then people should help feed them, not just let them off whenever they steal food.

If the libertarian program were to be reformulated for a stateless society, it would look very similar to what is generally thought of (among thinking people, anyway) as conservatism.  Libertarian organizations should maintain order, enforce contracts, protect property, and not be changed willy-nilly.  We would be in favor of restricted "immigration," legislating morality, and regulating business practices.  We would even support things that would look eerily like socialism, but that have a voluntary basis, if they were genuinely advantageous--for example, a homeowner's association or group of such associations owning and operating roads.  The important fact is that all such associations must be voluntary and based on private property.

For now, however, we are still mere anti-statists.  I think there is room for more in a libertarian worldview--for example, the definition of a household has to be prior to and independent of any state--and I may go into some of these in later posts if I can find the time.