I often say that I’m a libertarian. This is because I find their explanations of markets to be the only adequate understandings that eliminate the need for theft. I often modify it to state that I’m a ‘Christian’ libertarian. If God owns everything, then he has the right over us to command us according to his will. If God demands we pay a tax, then that is sufficient for us to know the tax is just. We own things within his ownership of the world. 

Recently, some coward released the information regarding the Supreme court and its possibility of overturning Roe vs Wade. This led to the internet blowing up about the news. There are some libertarians I follow for their analysis on topics regarding economic and other related issues. I saw the retweet from the Ayn Rand institute a defense of abortion up until birth. I wish to comment on this issue:

In the oral arguments, defenders of the Mississippi law argued that Roe’s viability standard was arbitrary. But even if they’re right, supporters of abortion rights should realize that it doesn’t follow that the line of permissibility should be pushed earlier into pregnancy, let alone erased with a complete abortion ban. The radical alternative is that abortion rights should extend until the very line of birth itself.

“My body, my choice” has long been the rallying cry for abortion rights. But a woman’s body and choice remain hers even when the fetus is viable. Indeed her life is at stake right up until the point of birth.

The irony here is that the problem with both positions is arbitrariness. For example, why suppose that an infant after birth obligates a mother to take care of it? Suppose she doesn’t wish for it to live and doesn’t wish to strain adoption centers. Given the mother’s freedom, she could take the baby and dispose of it in her garbage can because of the freedom she has to move her body and evict the infant from her property. If one supposes infanticide is wrong, then it comes to question why a viable infant isn’t as equally valuable as that of a born infant. The only difference is the mother has taken it captive whether by force or coercion she has stolen another human (via her making it). 

The true issue with both the hard leftist and this libertarian is they can’t explain why we can’t terminate any human being because it can’t explain why humans are valuable. 

Abortion critics complain that the rallying cry ignores the rights of the fetus. But understanding why a woman has sovereignty over her own body should clarify why neither an embryo nor a late-stage fetus can have rights.

This assumes infants don’t have human rights even though they can’t explain why any agent has rights. Ayn Rand surely couldn’t do it and her followers have followed with that arbitrariness. 

A woman’s right to control her body flows from her right as a human being to her own life and the pursuit of her own happiness. Individual rights designate the spheres in which each person needs to be politically and legally free to exercise his or her own independent judgment about what happiness requires.

We often have conflicts of individual freedoms. This is why we have principles to adjudicate these issues such as the Non-aggression principle (NAP). The real question is whether an infant has the right access to their mother’s womb. Why suppose an infant doesn’t? Secondly, it doesn’t follow if he didn’t that he should be merely executed. Suppose you owned 10,000 acres of land and suppose some hunters get lost on your land while hunting on state land. You are in your helicopter and spot them. You tell them that they have no right to be on your land and they must leave. Since you can’t land because of the tree coverage, you decide to shoot them for trespassing. Was that just? I doubt that one would think so, but by the logic of these libertarians, it would be. 

A closer example would be that of a Casey Anthony kind of mother. Suppose a parent drives hundreds of miles and leaves their toddler in the woods. Why suppose they are obligated to bring their child to an orphanage rather than ditching them in the woods? They own the means of transportation and the child does not. 

If a business arrangement isn’t profitable or a relationship isn’t fulfilling, a human being needs to be able to part ways with others rather than being pressed into service like a beast of burden. Because she is a human being and not a brood mare, a woman needs the freedom to decide whether giving birth will contribute to her health and happiness.  

Human beings, unlike other living organisms, need individual rights precisely because they are individuals who can freely choose to collaborate with others or not.

Apes live and collaborate with other creatures, but most don’t think they possess rights. The entire point of most Pro-life advocates is whether these rights are intrinsic or extrinsic, namely them being intrinsic to human agents. 

Neither a fetus nor an embryo is an individual in any relevant sense. Neither is physically or physiologically individuated from the pregnant woman. A fetus has the genetic potential to become an individual human being, but it is not one until birth. It can’t even act with the autonomy of a cat or a dog, let alone as a human being who makes choices about how to pursue happiness. The fetus doesn’t need protection for its ability to act independently — it has no such ability.

Firstly, this assumes a view of human persons that isn’t obviously true. There are many individuals that are dependent and cannot act autonomously. Mental illnesses, sicknesses, etc can leave many without the ability to act on their own.  Given this view, mentally disabled people can often behave with less moral status than dogs and cats. 

Secondly, it refutes itself because it states a physical difference that would imply it is a different person regarding them possessing different DNA, distinct limbs from parents, etc. These are oblivious tell-tale signs that they might not be the same being. 

Lastly, notice that it has the genetic potential to become a person, but this means at birth something becomes actualized that gives it rights. What at birth from its genetic make-up gives it value from post-birth, rather than during, or moments prior to birth? This is just as arbitrary as the viability criterion earlier mentioned. 

This radical approach to abortion rights arises from an equally radical view of individual rights. Because she saw that rights protect an actual individual’s pursuit of happiness, Ayn Rand maintained that “a child cannot acquire any rights until it is born.” She argued that “by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living: the right of young people to set the course of their own lives.” Hence, she favored “the total repeal of the law forbidding abortion.”

Even a viable fetus is no more of an individual than an unviable fetus is. To be “viable” is merely to have another non-actualized potential: it could survive outside the womb (usually only by intensive medical intervention). But only outside the womb does it become actually individuated and acquire the right to life.

The fact that certain agents are dependent on life-saving equipment doesn’t explain whether they have rights or moral worth. This is obvious that certain people are dependent on pacemakers, artificial breathing and feeding tubes, etc. Even after birth, a baby can be dependent on incubators. The appeal to Ayn Rand’s opinions isn’t an argument. 

The fact of birth makes an enormous difference. It’s the point at which a child first exists: a new being, physically independent of the mother. A child is no longer a necessary physical burden on or potential threat to the mother’s life. Only then can she have no right to destroy it, and its right to live begins.

The fetus continues to pose a threat to the woman’s life and happiness right up until the point of birth itself. Of course, only about 1.3 percent of abortions are elected after twenty-one weeks, usually because there’s evidence of severe fetal abnormality that the child may not even survive, or because the woman’s life is immediately at risk.

We showed that given the criterion, a mother still has the right to let a child die via neglect or other means given the principles mentioned. It also seems obvious that physical dependence isn’t sufficient to explain why some genetic code potential becomes actual giving someone rights. 

Children of all ages, whether a matter to higher or lesser extents are risks to parents’ lives. Your child could start a fire, shoot you, stab you, leave a door unlocked, etc. The fact some object stands in some relation to causing you potential harm doesn’t make it a morally relevant agent. A meteorite may give you no serious risk nor is it physically dependent upon you, but it doesn’t have any rights.

After this, Ben Bayer linked me to a thread in which he discusses this issue with someone else.

 

Weiss states:

There is no bright line of “individuation”. Gestation is a continuous accretive process. Birth is as arbitrary a point as any other in this process.

Ben states:

You’re right there’s no bright line drawn by God. There’s no God to draw it. All lines are drawn by men. We do it when and where the observable difference is biggest, and where it makes the biggest difference. I argue why the line of birth does that in the article.

Weiss states:

Agreed on the no god. But you’re applying a sort of post hoc magical thinking to the moment of birth. Any baby could have been born say two days earlier than it was and been just as healthy and viable.

Ben states:

The magical thinking is in thinking that rights are entities bestowed by nature at an instantaneous moment. All processes in nature, including fertilization, are continuous. If that disqualifies rights from being applied, there are no rights.

Weiss states:

My whole point is that the relevant rights here aren’t bestowed by nature at an an instantaneous moment, while your assertion is that birth is that instantaneous moment. Meanwhile the moment of birth is often chosen by another human, the obgyn, when it’s convenient for him/her.

Ben states:

No. All I’m saying is that birth is the most objective range of time for human beings to draw the line. Legislatures will have to work out how that’s to be defined legally. Different legislatures could have equally legitimate proposals. What’s the alternative?

Weiss states:

The moment of birth is surely objective, but ethically meaningless compared to viability. The alternative is to live with the subjective gray–something around 26 weeks.

This is where the conversation ended. The issue is both men are arbitrary. Why think either one is when humans gain rights or value? The truth is obvious before anyone’s eyes from this conversation is that nature alone isn’t sufficient to tell us. Dr. John Frame gives the example:

 

1. It is wrong to take the life of an innocent human person.
2. Abortion takes the life of an innocent human person.
Therefore, abortion is wrong.  

But how do we establish from natural law alone the personhood of the unborn child presupposed in premise 2? Usually the argument is that the unborn child is genetically different from his parents and therefore not a “part of his mother’s body.” But there is a logical jump between genetic uniqueness and personhood. Genetic uniqueness is a physical property, personhood a moral one, implying moral rights. How can it be shown that genetic uniqueness conveys a right to life?

John M. Frame. The Doctrine of the Christian Life (Kindle Locations 5114-5119). P & R Pub.. Kindle Edition.

The issue is how do we bridge this Is-Ought gap between our notions about facts about human beings to that of moral facts about human beings. I would just state that we do have a God’s eye perspective, given that God has drawn the line. To abandon that leaves us in arbitrariness and an inability to distinguish people’s moral principles from that of human fabrication. You seem to speak about the gaining of rights as gradual, but what does it mean to have a right, gradually? What is a partial right to life (or whatever right you think can come in gradations)? How does a biological process such as growth have to do with rights rather than digestion? 

 

Recommendation:

https://spirited-tech.com/2019/05/25/the-pro-life-catalogue/