Three Questions Philosophers Do Not Want To Answer About Parenting

Why are most books on the ethics of parenting so boring? Family life is a topic that touches everyone, so this is one area where philosophy could engage with highly relevant moral concerns. Instead, the vast majority of books on the philosophy of the family are horribly dull.

There are many reasons for this blandness, but one reason is that the authors are engaged in strategic omission. They are skirting around a number of contentious ethical questions related to the family. When your writing is hampered by a list of things that you must avoid discussing, it makes your book boring and waffly because you (deliberately) don't get to the point. Instead, you spend a lot of time on uncontentious issues that are far less relevant to everyday life.

The topics that philosophers of the family studiously avoid discussing have two characteristics:

1. They are widely accepted parental practices.
2. They are ethically indefensible.

Here are three questions about topics that share these characteristics and so are strategically omitted by philosophers writing on the family:

1. Is corporal punishment a legitimate practice?
2. Is circumcision a legitimate practice?
3. Is abortion a legitimate practice?

Open any book that claims to be about the ethics of parenting (or any variation on this general theme) and you will probably not even find these topics discussed. Search a digital version of the book for these words and you usually find nothing. Of the three topics, abortion is sometimes mentioned briefly, but even then it is usually only to state that the ethics of this practice are outside the scope of the book.

Philosophers who have written on the topic of abortion have not addressed it from the perspective of the ethics of parenting, but rather from the perspective of the ethics of action towards a stranger who may be a trespasser or aggressor. They don't think of the topic as belonging to the philosophy of the family since they do not even view abortion as an action of a parent.

All three practices- corporal punishment, circumcision, and abortion- constitute acts of aggression by parents that violate the rights of their children. Philosophers who agree with this statement prefer to avoid having to state it openly or defend it. Philosophers who disagree with the statement are also apparently reluctant to defend their views.

In his book Corporal Punishment: A Philosophical Assessment, Patrick Lenta discusses the silence of philosophers on this topic:

with very few exceptions philosophers have not engaged in a sustained moral assessment of the corporal punishment of children. … It is reasonable to infer from what we know about the near-ubiquity of corporal punishment that most philosophers will have been subjected to it and many will have resorted to it. This in itself may explain some philosophers’ reticence about confronting the practice. … For some who have experienced it, corporal punishment may be too personally disturbing, too deeply and troublingly a constituent of their psyches, to be confronted directly. …Loyalty towards one’s care-givers and defensiveness about one’s own use of corporal punishment as a care-giver, as well as, and perhaps more importantly, the weight of historical support for it, may make the practice appear natural and not in need of moral justification.

Lenta's hypothesis could equally apply to the silence of philosophers on circumcision and, with minor differences, on abortion. Walter Block and Patrick Testa remark on the lack of ethical debate about circumcision:

The reality of the debate on neonatal circumcision is that it hardly exists at all. … Even for many of those who disdain violence and the struggle to retain archaic social norms, it is almost as if circumcision is a topic off-limits to debate—perhaps out of denial or an appealing sense of conformity. But underneath the guise of culture, neonatal circumcision is a violation of the right to bodily integrity, an overreach of religious freedom, and a coercive act on the most helpless of us all.

In avoiding discussing these issues, philosophers of the family are conforming to regnant intellectual taboos. They understand which topics are not supposed to be mentioned and they comply. This is cowardice and an abdication of the most basic responsibility of a philosopher. In The Silent Subject: Reflections on the Unborn in American Culture, Brad Stetson describes how the taboo around the topic of abortion works:

Civilized and thoughtful people are expected to step around the violent death of the unborn accomplished by every abortion. To mention it in dialogue or debate is to solicit angry glares, impatient sighs and apparently learned expressions of skepticism about knowing when "human life begins." … There is no such thing, in the agora of public opinion, as being compassionate to the unborn. Not only are they not accorded the legal status of persons, but they are not even admitted into public discourse as legitimate objects of concern.

For anyone not interested in the ethics of parenting, if is fine to choose not to engage in these topics. But if you write a book about the ethics of parent-child relationships and avoid discussing these issues, you are engaging in strategic omission. Any practice that is widely accepted yet ethically questionable is exactly what philosophers of the family should discuss. Even if such topics are not the central focus of their books, they should at least spend a couple of paragraphs explaining why they think these practices are either justified or not justified according to their understanding of the ethics of parent-child relationships.

Here are links to my posts about abortion, corporal punishment, and circumcision.

I highlighted these three topics because they are longstanding practices and therefore even books about the ethics of the family written some years ago should have addressed them. There are many other parenting practices that are widely accepted and ethically unjustifiable which have become prevalent more recently, for example:

• The use of psychotropic drugs on children
• The use of puberty blocking drugs on children
• sex-change surgeries undertaken on children.

The Theory Of Acquired Rights Violates Hoppe's Specificity Principle

Libertarians disagree about whether rights are inherent or acquired. In order to judge which theory of rights is valid, both theories must be evaluated against libertarian meta-ethical principles.

A fundamental principle of libertarian meta-ethics is that all property rights must be specific to individuals at definite points in time. This means that any property rule must provide a way to clearly identify the particular individual who has a property right and also provide a way to clearly identify the points in time when this right is valid. Let's call this The Specificity Principle.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe identified this principle. It is one of the meta-ethical principles of his framework of Argumentation Ethics. All the meta-ethical principles put forward by Hoppe in this framework have two key features:

1. The principle must be accepted in argument, since it is logically derived from the act of argument itself and therefore is undeniable without contradiction:
2. Any proposed property right is demonstrably unworkable a priori unless it conforms to the principle.

Hoppe showed how both these characteristics apply to the specificity principle:

Nobody can wait and suspend acting until everyone of an indeterminate class of late-comers happens to appear and agree to what one wants to do. Rather, insofar as a person finds himself alone, he must be able to act, to use, produce, consume goods straightaway, prior to any agreement with people who are simply not around yet (and perhaps never will be). And insofar as a person finds himself in the company of others and there is conflict over how to use a given scarce resource, he must be able to resolve the problem at a definite point in time with a definite number of people instead of having to wait unspecified periods of time for unspecified numbers of people. Simply in order to survive, then, which is a prerequisite to arguing in favor of or against anything, property rights cannot be conceived of as being timeless and nonspecific regarding the number of people concerned. Rather, they must necessarily be thought of as originating through acting at definite points in time for definite acting individuals.

- Hans-Hermann Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism

The theory of acquired rights is not specific about when a child becomes a self owner

According to the theory of acquired rights, humans only have rights when they possess some characteristic or ability that confers rights-worthiness. However, there is no consensus on what exactly the characteristic or capability is. This fails to comply with the specificity principle because the theory of acquired rights is not specific about when a child becomes a self owner.

The specificity principle states that one must be able to point to a specific owner of a property right at any given time. Yet the theory of acquired rights does not do this. Almost all leading proponents of the theory of acquired rights acknowledge that their theory is ambiguous about when an individual becomes a self owner.

The ambiguity is shown in the way that they defend abortion. Their argument is:

1. Some abortions are not murder (because the child is not a self owner).
2. Some abortions are murder (because the child is a self owner).
3. There is not a clear boundary between these two categories.
4. In any disputed case, someone will have to determine whether or not an abortion is justified (the theory of acquired rights does not provide an objective basis to answer this a priori).
5. Therefore abortion is justified, unless someone determines that it is not.

This vagueness is not how rights work. A valid theory of rights is supposed to be deducible by the agents on the ground who are making moral decisions. Yet advocates of the theory of acquired rights are quite content to acknowledge that they don't know when a child becomes a self owner. Here are some examples.

Tibor Machan openly admitted that he doesn't know when an individual becomes "a human being":

Finally, something more must be said about the grey area of borderline cases. The best solution to this problem is probably to provide a forum for debate. Given the seriousness of what is at stake, the courts—the judicial system—would seem to be the appropriate forum. When someone believes that a planned abortion could involve the killing of a human being—for example, at a very late stage of pregnancy—it might be appropriate to ask for a hearing on the matter.

-The Morality of Non-Interference by Tibor Machan

Judith Jarvis Thompson, author of the most influential philosophical defence of abortion, openly conceded that some abortions are unjustifiable killings but failed to identify what determined the validity of any particular case. She defended abortion but abdicated all responsibility for providing a clear moral rule by breezily saying that there is "room for much discussion":

there are some cases in which the unborn person has a right to the use of its mother’s body, and therefore some cases in which abortion is unjust killing. There is room for much discussion and argument as to precisely which, if any. At any rate the argument certainly does not establish that all abortion is unjust killing.

-A Defense of Abortion by Judith Jarvis Thomson

Stephan Kinsella simply assumes that a zygote cannot have rights but that an unborn child in late pregnancy does have rights, but gives no rule as to how to determine when rights acquisition occurs:

it seems obvious to me that a one-day old zygote has no rights yet, even though it is a potential human person, and biologically a “human life.”It also seems obvious to me that infants have rights, so that infanticide is murder. And that there is little difference between late-term abortion and infanticide

- Legal Foundations of a Free Society by Stephan Kinsella

To make a valid property rule, you have to specify which individual holds the property right and identify the points in time when he has these rights. If you don't specify these things, you've done it wrong and your property rule is invalid. This is the case with the theory of acquired rights. The property rule "children come to own themselves at some point before birth but it is unclear when" is a badly-formulated and invalid property rule.

Advocates of the theory of acquired rights sometimes resort to the defence that it is not their fault that the start of personhood or rights is unspecific, this is merely a reflection of the nature of things. They argue that fetuses become rights-bearing individuals at some point, but there is no way to provide a clear cutoff since it is a gradual process that cannot be made into a binary in a non-arbitrary way. Therefore it is impossible to be specific about when the child becomes a self owner.

This is not true. The ambiguity in this theory is not imposed by nature, it is chosen. At least for some advocates, the choice seems to be the result of motivated reasoning. Whatever the reason, such ambiguity is objectively unnecessary since there is a valid formulation of rights theory that is unambiguous. It is possible to identify an objective point at which a child becomes a self owner. The theory of inherent rights does this.

The Theory of Inherent Rights Conforms To The Specificity Principle

According to the theory of inherent rights, individuals have rights from the moment they come into existence. Unlike the theory of acquired rights, there is no vague and unspecified transition between a parent "owning" a child and a child becoming a self owner. Every individual is a self owner from the moment he comes into existence without ambiguity.

The theory of inherent rights provides an objective and definite temporal start to rights, and therefore is in compliance with Hoppe's specificity principle. The objective start is conception. As the philosopher Richard Werner pointed out, there is a non-arbitrary difference between two gametes prior to conception and a zygote after conception:

unlike the fetus immediately prior to birth and the baby immediately afterward, there is a significant and important difference between the ovum or sperm immediately before fertilization and the zygote immediately afterward. Given the proper environment the embryo, qua itself, is a growing developing organism. All things being equal, the zygote will grow into a person. On the other hand, the ovum or sperm qua itself is neither growing nor developing no matter what sort of environment one should find it, or put it into. A gamete will not, by itself, grow into anything other than what it already is— a gamete. In this sense it is inert and, thereby, nonhuman. A necessary condition of the ovum becoming human is that it begin to grow and develop into a person, that it be fertilized by a sperm cell. Otherwise, it remains inert never developing or growing into anything whatever and, as such, is no more a human being than is one of my red blood cells. Admittedly an acorn is not an oak, nor is an ovum or sperm cell human, but an acorn germinated in the soil is indeed an oak and so is the impregnated ovum a human.

- Abortion The Moral Status of the Unborn by Richard Werner

Of the competing libertarian rights theories, only the theory of inherent rights is consistent with libertarian meta-ethical principles. Therefore rights are inherent, not acquired.

Consequentialist Arguments Against Inherent Rights

In previous articles I have addressed two arguments against inherent rights: the presumption that inherent rights must be based on religious dogma and variations on the argument from incredulity. This article addresses consequentialist arguments against inherent rights.

All consequentialist arguments against inherent rights are variations on the following core argument: If it is true that individuals have inherent rights, I/we won't be able to do certain things that I/we deem very important. Therefore individuals do not have inherent rights.

I find this argument such a shameless case of motivated reasoning that I am surprised by how many people are willing to make it. Yet it can be seen on blatant display in consequentialist arguments against inherent rights. There are two main variants:

1. Recognising inherent rights would limit population control, therefore individuals don't have inherent rights
2. Recognising inherent rights would prevent abortion, therefore individuals don't have inherent rights

The Population Control Argument

The population control argument against inherent rights is essentially this:

1. Population control is important/necessary.
2. We need to use infanticide for population control.
3. Infanticide is not possible if rights are recognised as inherent.
4. Therefore rights are not inherent.

Jan Narveson makes the argument that it is "not reasonable" to recognise the inherent rights of "all and sundry newborns" because infanticide may be required for population control:

infanticide has been a recognized social practice in many human societies, not only in much earlier times but in a few societies even now. Infanticide as a method of population control has been frequent, and as a sort of rough eugenic practice perhaps even more so… whatever one’s instinctive reaction to the contemplation of infanticide may be, it is not a reflection of a universal human feeling, even in the sense of one that has been typical in every culture and society. This suggests that the circumstances of those societies have something to do with it. And that seems to me to be as it should be. In a society of very limited resources, where life is harsh, people cannot afford to devote those resources to the sickly or lame; in a society where the food supply is just equal to the population as is, expansion of population is everyone’s enemy. It is not reasonable to grant strong positive rights to life to all and sundry newborns in such circumstances. - Jan Narveson, The Libertarian Idea

In this excerpt, Narveson is attempting to bolster his consequentialist case for infanticide with a fallacious argument from authority, suggesting that infanticide should be considered legitimate since it has been a recognized social practice in many human societies. It is an appeal to social proof.

As an advocate of the theory of acquired rights, Peter Singer makes numerous arguments against inherent rights. Among these, he includes the consequentialist argument about population control. Like Narveson, Singer is also fan of the "other people do it" argument for infanticide. He invokes the argument from authority by noting that highly-regarded ancient philosophers justified infanticide on grounds of population control:

Not to kill a deformed or sickly infant was often regarded as wrong, and infanticide was probably the first, and in several societies the only, form of population control. We might think that we are more 'civilized' than these 'primitive' peoples, but it is not easy to feel confident that we are more civilized than the best Greek and Roman moralists, nor than the highly sophisticated civilizations of China and Japan. In ancient Greece, it was not just the Spartans who exposed their infants on hillsides: both Plato and Aristotle recommended the killing of deformed infants. Romans like Seneca, whose compassionate moral sense strikes the modern reader (or me, anyway) as superior to that of the early and mediaeval Christian writers, also thought infanticide the natural and humane solution to the problem posed by sick and deformed babies. The change in Western attitudes to infanticide since Roman times is, like the doctrine of the sanctity of human life of which it is a part, a product of Christianity. Perhaps it is now possible to think about these issues without assuming the Christian moral framework that has, for so long, prevented any fundamental reassessment. - Peter Singer, Practical Ethics

Singer combines both the population control argument and the abortion argument against inherent rights. He takes it as given that population control is necessary and argues that abortion is just as valid as any other method:

to argue against abortion on the grounds that it prevents beings of high intrinsic value coming into the world is implicitly to condemn practices that reduce the future human population: contraception, whether by 'artificial' means or by 'natural' means such as abstinence on days when the woman is likely to be fertile, and also celibacy. This argument does not provide any reason for thinking abortion worse than any other means of population control. If the world is already overpopulated, the argument provides no reason at all against abortion.

Singer is attacking a straw man of the argument for inherent rights. Abortion is not wrong because "it prevents beings of high intrinsic value coming into the world", it is wrong because it involves killing a rights-bearing individual who is already in the world. Individuals already exist inside the womb. When a baby is born it is changing location, not coming into existence.

Singer's consequentialist argument for infanticide via abortion comes down to this:

1. Population control is necessary
2. Everyone accepts some forms of population control as legitimate (e.g. contraception, abstinence, and celibacy).
3. Abortion is just another form of population control.
4. Therefore abortion is legitimate.
5. Abortion is incompatible with inherent rights.
6. Therefore rights cannot be inherent.

There is an obvious flaw in this argument. Just because contraception, abstinence, and celibacy prevent population growth and are morally legitimate practices, this does not imply that any practice that prevents population increase is morally legitimate. Shooting people at random prevents population growth; Singer would not apply the same logic to argue that this must also be legitimate.

Paul Ehrlich, loser of the Simon–Ehrlich wager, was responsible for an influential 1968 book The Population Bomb. Alongside its inaccurate assertions and failed predictions, the book called for "compulsory birth regulation" in pursuit of population control. Ehrlich saw abortion as a legitimate tool of population control and expressed outrage that the UN was not yet encouraging it at the time:

Abortion is a highly effective weapon in the armory of population control. It is condemned by many family planning groups, which are notorious for pussyfooting about methodology, despite their beginning 60 years ago as revolutionary social pioneers. The United Nations, for instance, does not include abortion in family planning. Quite the contrary, the U.N. justifies family planning as a method of combating abortion!

Ehrlich's consequentialist argument for abortion is that unwanted children will only lead miserable lives if allowed to live and will also contribute to the destruction of humanity, therefore it is good to kill them:

in many cases abortion is much more desirable than childbirth. Above all, biologists must take the side of the hungry billions of living human beings today and tomorrow, not the side of potential human beings. Remember, unless their numbers are limited, if those potential human beings are born, they will at best lead miserable lives and die young. We cannot permit the destruction of humanity to be abetted by a doctrine conceived in total ignorance of the biological facts of life.

Ehrlich's book was extremely influential, for example in the development of China's one child policy between 1979 and 2015. The one child policy included forced abortions.

The population control argument is based on false premises. The looming demographic problem is not population growth but population collapse. However, even if one were to accept the incorrect premise that population control is good or necessary, it simply does not follow that killing babies is ethically valid.

Infanticide is not required to prevent the creation of children. Preventing the creation of children is not something that requires action, on the contrary, it is the result of inaction. Children do not just show up, they are created by the actions of the man and woman- the mother and father- who make their gametes available for fusion. If you make your gametes available for fusion, you are responsible for the consequences of your actions. If you don't want to create children, don't make your gametes available for fusion.

When a man and woman create a child, they have put a child in a state of peril. The fact that they did not intend to create the child does not remove them from moral responsibility for the consequences of their actions. The fact that they cannot afford the consequences of their actions does not remove them from moral responsibility for the consequences of their actions. It may be unwise for some people to have children, but this fact does not justify denying rights to children who have nonetheless been created. It does not justify any form of infanticide. The population control argument against inherent rights is morally absurd.

The Abortion Argument

The use of motivated reasoning is even more blatant when it comes to arguing against inherent rights on consequentialist grounds relating to abortion. As a reminder, the basic form of all consequentialist arguments against inherent rights is this: If it is true that individuals have inherent rights, I/we won't be able to do certain things that I/we deem very important. Therefore individuals do not have inherent rights. The abortion argument tracks this format exactly. Laura Purdy set out the argument bluntly when she argued simply that unborn children cannot have rights because it would prevent abortions:

Consider the consequences for women if society grants equal rights to fetuses: most abortions would unjustifiably be prohibited. In general, then, despite the advantages of adopting more inclusive standards, we cannot be blind to the possibly overridingly bad consequences of doing so. -Laura M. Purdy, In Their Best Interest? The Case Against Equal Rights for Children

Mary Ann Warren provided a more detailed exposition of this argument against inherent rights:

we need to be careful not to burden human moral agents with obligations that they cannot possibly fulfill, except at unacceptably great cost to their own well-being and that of those they care about. Women often cannot complete unwanted pregnancies, except at intolerable mental, physical, and economic cost to themselves and their families. And heterosexual intercourse is too important a part of the social lives of most men and women to be reserved for times when pregnancy is an acceptable outcome. - Mary Anne Warren, “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion” in Ethics in Practice, ed. Hugh LaFolette

Warren's argument against inherent rights is essentially:

1. Men and women need to be able to have heterosexual sex without encountering the risk of having to raise a child as a result.
2. The removal of this risk requires abortion to be available.
3. Abortion is not compatible with inherent rights.
4. Therefore inherent rights are invalid.

There is an utter contempt for the lives of children behind all consequentialist arguments against inherent rights. This contempt is often somewhat disguised, but in some cases it is stated openly. Sharon Presley and Robert Cooke argued that a pregnant woman has the right to insist not merely on removal of the unborn child but also on the killing of it, because letting the child live would have "psychological significance" for the woman. These "libertarians" make an extraordinarily aggressive and bloodthirsty argument:

If the fetus is removed and raised independently, as Block suggests, the woman is still the biological mother with all the psychological significance that implies… But, we maintain, a woman's right to self-determination includes the right to refuse to bear a child as long as that choice is still physically open to her… If a woman has a right to abort a fetus at any point prior to birth, this also implies the right to terminate the life of the fetus as well. Abortion is not a discrete act; it is an ongoing process that begins within the woman's body and continues outside it. If she has a right to the procedure of abortion, she has a right to the entire procedure otherwise the so-called right is meaningless. Since the purpose of abortion is not just to terminate the pregnancy but to avoid bearing the child, what is necessary is not just the removal of the fetus (otherwise she could just bring it to term and give it up for adoption), but its death.  - Sharon Presley & Robert Cooke, The Right To Abortion: A Libertarian Defence

Presley and Cooke are asserting that unwanted children must die to satisfy the psychological needs of their mothers. The reprehensible contempt for the lives of children necessary to make such an argument is clear when it is stated so openly. However, the same contempt underlies all consequentialist arguments against inherent rights.

Motivated Reasoning

Underlying all consequentialist arguments about which rights to recognise is the positivist assumption that rights are essentially arbitrary. This is the belief that we may choose to recognise whichever rights we all agree to recognise. Consequentialists think they can choose which rights to recognise on the basis of which outcome they want (and think they will achieve). This is to misconceive the very purpose of ethics, which is to provide a means for the peaceful resolution of all potential conflict. In order to resolve conflicts without aggression one must appeal to objective rules grounded in incontrovertible arguments. Valid rights are not merely chosen arbitrarily, they are discovered through reasoned argument.

The whole line of argument- that children do not have inherent rights because that would prevent us from doing things we deem important- makes this positivist assumption that rights should be allocated arbitrarily on the basis of desired outcome. The approach starts with a desired outcome in mind and then arbitrarily retrofits the ethical rules that will create that outcome. When the desired outcome is infanticide for population control, the arguer works backwards to the conclusion that children do not have rights. Similarly, when the desired outcome is exterminating unwanted children with abortion, the arguer works backwards to the conclusion that unborn children do not have rights.

This is blatant motivated reasoning. The utility of a claim does not make it valid. Whether you desire a particular outcome has no bearing on whether you are justified to deny an individual's rights in order to create that outcome. Whether rights are valid or not depends on whether they are argumentatively indisputable without contradiction, not whether they lead to what you want.

Opponents of Parental Responsibility Cannot Help Conceding The Argument

Any author who writes about the philosophy of the family long enough ends up conceding the principle that parents have causal responsibility for their children. This principle is so undeniable that even those who oppose it cannot help eventually making the argument for it in spite of themselves. Here are some examples.

Judith Jarvis Thomson

Judith Jarvis Thomson's highly influential Defense of Abortion was based on the argument that parents have no causal positive obligations, they may only have voluntarily accepted obligations:

Surely we do not have any such "special responsibility" for a person unless we have assumed it, explicitly or implicitly. If a set of parents do not try to prevent pregnancy, do not obtain an abortion, but rather take it home with them, then they have assumed responsibility for it, they have given it rights, and they cannot now withdraw support from it at the cost of its life because they now find it difficult to go on providing for it. But if they have taken all reasonable precautions against having a child, they do not simply by virtue of their biological relationship to the child who comes into existence have a special responsibility for it.

This argument by Thomson was highly influential on Rothbard, Brake, and many other opponents of causal parental obligation. Yet in the very same article, Thomson concedes the principle that parents have causal responsibility for the children that they create (at least in some cases):

Suppose a woman voluntarily indulges in intercourse, knowing of the chance it will issue in pregnancy, and she does become pregnant; is she not in part responsible for the presence of the unborn person inside her? No doubt she did not invite it in. But doesn’t her partial responsibility for its being there itself give it a right to the use of her body? … there are some cases in which the unborn person has a right to the use of its mother’s body, and therefore some cases in which abortion is unjust killing. There is room for much discussion and argument as to precisely which, if any. At any rate the argument certainly does not establish that all abortion is unjust killing.

Having conceded the principle of causal parental obligation, Thomson's fallback objection is that it does not apply in all cases. Not only does she completely avoid the most essential question (what determines the exceptions?) but she tries to reverse the burden of proof by arguing that since abortion may not be unjust killing in all cases, therefore abortion is justified. On the contrary, since she has conceded that any given abortion may be unjust killing, it must therefore be considered prima facie illegitimate unless proven otherwise. Mary Meehan's hunter analogy illustrates the fallacy of Thomson's line of argument:

Hunters notice movement in a thicket, but don’t know whether it is caused by a deer or another human being. If they shoot without determining the facts, and kill a human, they are guilty of homicide. Many abortion supporters say they cannot find out, yet they are willing to shoot anyway.

Murray Rothbard

Murray Rothbard argued that parents have no enforceable obligations to their children, on the grounds that the combination of creating someone and them being helpless does not generate obligation. Yet he clearly set out the case for parental obligation based on responsibility for creating a child who is (as a result of being created) placed in a state of helplessness:

The moral duty or responsibility of the parents to their children stems also from their act of voluntary creation, from their responsibility for bringing helpless babies into the world. Their moral responsibility is to raise these children, to bring them from their natural state of infant dependency to the status of rational, self-owning, independent adults. Their moral responsibility is to rear the children to the status of independence. What, then, does this imply? It implies caring, provision of food, shelter, education, etc., to the best of the parents' love and ability.

When Rothbard used the words "moral" duty, he meant by this that the obligation is not enforcible. By this he means that it is a matter of personal virtue only. Why should this be only a moral duty and not an enforcible one? Rothbard does not explain. If you remove the word moral, Rothbard has set out the case for enforcible parental obligations.

Elizabeth Brake

Elizabeth Brake is one of the main advocates for the theory that parental obligations arise only as a result of voluntary acceptance, and not as a result of actions taken by the parents. Yet in setting out her case, Brake concedes the causal argument. She accepts that procreation creates obligations (she calls these "procreative costs"). She argues that since what she calls "procreative costs" may not be identical to the parental obligations that are socially accepted by modern American culture, this proves that parental obligations are not created by the causal actions of the parent. It proves nothing of the sort.

Brake thinks the decisive argument is whether or not causal responsibility would give rise to the same conventional obligations as those in any particular culture. On the contrary, the point is that the causal responsibility of parents gives rise to an objective standard for obligations. It doesn't matter what the particular fashions are for parental behaviour towards children. Cultural conventions can include all sorts of acts by parents that are philosophically unjustifiable, for example circumcising infants. What matters is the objective requirement of the child to be removed from peril by being raised to self-sufficiency in adulthood. Parental obligations are as extensive as necessary to meet that objective requirement, including a child's psychological needs such as love, affection, attention, safe boundaries, encouragement etc. Yet they would also exclude all local conventions that cannot be objectively justified.

Since Brake's objection that causal parental obligations might not map exactly onto local conventions is irrelevant, what is left is her admission that the principle of causal obligations itself is valid. Brake accepts parental "obligations entailed by moral responsibility for a child's existence". She concedes that "parental obligations arise… for having placed the child in a needy situation in which its right to a minimally decent life is threatened". The fact that she chooses her own terminology of "procreative costs" is immaterial. She has accepted the basic principle that parents do have responsibility for the consequences of their actions, regardless of their intentions.

Having accepted this causal principle, Brake's own logic should compel her to reject the validity of abortion, since abortion is incompatible with such obligations. Yet she accepts both parental obligations and abortion. Such a clear contradiction can only be maintained if one is to take the position that parents have not yet caused a child to exist until they decide not to abort the child. This is to pursue motivated reasoning into the realm of absurdity.

Roderick Long

Roderick Long is another opponent of the causal responsibility of parents. Like Brake, Long argues that parental obligations can only be voluntary. Yet he also sets out the causal argument. In creating a child, the parents have put him in mortal danger and this is why parenting is a positive obligation resulting from causal action. Long concedes the principle that if someone puts another in danger and fails to act, that would be a homicide, so he concedes the existence of an obligation created in this way:

If S voluntarily places O in a situation where S’s failure to take positive action on O’s behalf will result in O’s death, then such a failure on S’s part is a killing, not merely a letting-die.”

He acknowledges that one may acquire positive obligations as a result of the consequences of one's actions, even if those consequences were unintended:

negative rights generate derivative positive rights. If you (intentionally or accidentally) take my umbrella, you acquire an enforceable obligation to take positive steps to return it to me

He also sets out the case for how enforceable positive obligations can arise by the creation of peril:

suppose Frieda is careening around the corner in her Lamborghini and suddenly sees Roscoe ambling across the road a short distance ahead. At her current speed, she has only two choices: (a) she can run over Roscoe, or (b) she can swerve around him. Running over Roscoe would be a violation of his negative rights; so Frieda has an enforceable obligation not to run over him. In the circumstances, what that amounts to is an enforceable obligation to swerve around him. But that obligation is not an obligation to sit back and do nothing; it is an obligation to take positive action, and a very specific positive action at that: she must turn the steering wheel in order to avoid running over Roscoe. Here we have a case, then, in which Frieda has an enforceable obligation to take positive action on Roscoe’s behalf – but only because that is the only way she can avoid violating her negative obligation not to treat Roscoe as a mere means. Roscoe’s right against Frieda not to be run over has generated, in the circumstances, a further right against her that she turn the wheel in a certain way.

This logic applies directly to parents. If a man and a woman engage in consensual sex and create a child, whether they intended to or not they have changed the state of the universe from one in which no child was in mortal peril to one in which a child is in mortal peril. They are thereby just as obliged to remove the child from peril as Long's Lamborghini driver is obliged to avoid hitting the pedestrian.

These authors all oppose the principle of causal parental obligations even though they also inadvertently set out the argument for it. They oppose it because they are engaged in motivated reasoning. All four authors understand that accepting the principle of parental obligations is incompatible with abortion. They consider a defence of abortion to be a core principle, so they refuse to accept the principle of causal parental obligations. Even when they make the argument for it despite themselves.

The Argument From Incredulity Against Inherent Rights

Libertarians argue that individuals have rights but disagree over whether rights are inherent or acquired. As I have argued elsewhere, the theory of acquired rights is not logically defensible. Only the theory of inherent rights provides libertarianism with a coherent rights theory. However, this is not the majority view among libertarians, many of whom apparently cannot believe the implications of the theory of inherent rights.

The claim that a human embryo or fetus has rights seems to be astoundingly counter-intuitive to many libertarians. Some libertarians find this idea so unimaginable that they forget to actually make an argument and merely state their own incredulity as their refutation. The result is that one of the most common objections to the theory of inherent rights made by libertarians is the argument from incredulity. This article provides some examples.

Benjamin Tucker thought that children do not have rights because they are the property of their parents. He seemed to think it persuasive that if this were not the case then a pregnant woman could not commit suicide at will:

Certainly the mother’s title to the child while it remains in her womb will not be denied by any Anarchist. To deny this would be to deny the right of the mother to commit suicide during pregnancy, and I never knew an Anarchist to deny the right of suicide.

Walter Block made almost exactly the same argument. He considers the very idea that a pregnant woman may not ethically commit suicide so preposterous as to make his case with it:

Consider the case where the mother dies while pregnant, through suicide. Wisniewski would have to consider her a murderer as well, since she had invited in the fetus, and now leaves it in the lurch, unjustifiably killing it, too. In contrast, I am not logically forced into that conclusion.

Elsewhere, Block reiterates his disbelief that anyone could hold such an argument:

no one else would make this sort of legal judgment. More important, it is simply incorrect to regard the pregnant woman who commits suicide as a murderer

Neither Tucker nor Block could conceive that there are circumstances under which it is immoral for a parent to immediately kill themselves. One wonders if they would also be incredulous of anyone who thinks that it is immoral for someone driving a vehicle at high speed on a busy street to shoot himself at the wheel, or for the pilot of a passenger aircraft to commit suicide mid flight. Would they argue that the rights of the driver and the pilot to immediate suicide override the rights of innocent bystanders not to be killed by their actions?

Wendy McElroy demonstrated her incredulity when she pointed to the implications of inherent rights for pregnant mothers who want to take drugs or go parachute jumping:

if you admit the idea that the fetus is a human being for whom the woman is legally responsible, then the woman cannot take any action to imperil the life and well-being of the fetus. Almost everything she puts into her system is automatically introduced into the system of the fetus and, if the substance is harmful, it constitutes assault upon the fetus on the same level as strapping me down and forcing drugs into my body. Moreover, life-endangering acts, such as parachute jumping, would place the unconsenting fetus in unreasonable danger. If the woman has no right to kill the fetus, she can have no right to jeopardize its life and well-being.

Amazing though it seems to McElroy, yes, the principle of parental obligations combined with the inherent rights of children implies that it is not ethical to take heroin or go BASE jumping as a pregnant woman. McElroy provided another argument from incredulity at the idea that certain types of birth control may not be morally legitimate:

Since an individual with full human rights is said to exist at the moment of fertilization and since IUDs work by disrupting fertilized eggs, women who use these devices must be guilty of attempted murder, if not murder itself. Other forms of birth control which work not by preventing fertilization but by destroying the zygote would be murder weapons and doctors who supplied them would be accessories. As absurd as this sounds, it is the logical implication of considering a zygote to be a human being.

What exactly does McElroy find absurd? Some forms of birth control work by killing unborn children and other forms work by preventing pregnancy. If unborn children have rights, then those forms of birth control that work by killing unborn children are not morally defensible. Although she does not accept this argument, I don't think McElroy could say that the argument is logically absurd. Perhaps what she finds absurd is the enormity of the implications if she were to accept the theory as valid. This is to deny an argument on the basis that it cannot possibly be true because if it were, then the implications would be shocking. That itself is another form of the argument from incredulity.

Stephan Kinsella provided a very succinct argument from incredulity regarding inherent rights:

it seems obvious to me that a one-day old zygote has no rights yet, even though it is a potential human person, and biologically a “human life.” It also seems obvious to me that infants have rights, so that infanticide is murder.

He made a similar argument back in the 1990s, where he simply assumes the conclusion:

In the case of abortion we know the endpoints: zygotes have no rights; adult humans do. Somewhere in between we develop rights.

Conclusion

Since the argument from incredulity is a logical fallacy, it is self-refuting. It is remarkably fatuous of libertarians to resort to this argument. Edward Feser's comments on the shallowness of the argument are well made:

Appealing, as is often done, to what a fetus, embryo, or zygote “looks like” is unhelpful, and even philosophically frivolous: one might claim that a table “doesn’t look like” a collection of atoms swirling about, but that’s what a table is. And in fact, a table does look like that: that is exactly what a collection of atoms swirling about looks like when it is in the form of a table. Similarly, to the charge that a fetus, at whatever stage of development, “doesn’t look like” a person or a human being, one ought to reply, “Of course it does; that’s exactly what a human being or a person looks like at one month (or one week, or whatever) of development.”

Abortion is Incompatible With Parental Obligations

The causal principle of parental obligations has radical implications. As outlined in an earlier post, this principle had first been expressed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but early proponents did not identify any of the far-reaching implications of the idea. In the twentieth century, these implications started to be expressed.

The first radical implication of the causal principle to be identified is that it refutes any justification of abortion in cases of consensual sex. This implication was implicit in the arguments of philosopher Richard Werner's 1974 article Abortion: The Moral Status of the Unborn. Werner did not reference any of the previous authors who discussed the causal principle of parental obligations and it is not clear if he was influenced by them or had deduced the principle independently. However, even if not discussed explicitly, many of his arguments were directly based on this principle.

Werner's article contains a critique of Judith Jarvis Thomson's influential 1971 article A Defence of Abortion. Werner refuted Thomson's analogy between a fetus and a burglar. He pointed out that the salient principle in both cases is that the individual who acts has moral responsibility for the consequences of their actions. In the case of burglary it is the burglar who acts and is responsible, but in the case of pregnancy it is the parents who act (and not the fetus):

In Thomson's case, the burglar is acting immorally by entering the window whether it be opened or closed, locked or unlocked, barred or unbarred. It is this fact which makes us decide that the burglar, rather than the window opener who has every right to open his window, is responsible for his own wrongdoing. On the other hand, the embryo cannot be held responsible for its conception nor is it under any moral obligation not to be conceived. Whether or not it is conceived is entirely dependent on the actions of its parents. It is this fact which should make us conclude that the parents are responsible for the conception and existence of the embryo.

Werner argued that a standard of strict liability tort applies to parental obligations by analogising with firing a gun:

Even if the two take the best possible precautions against pregnancy, they still know or are accountable for knowing that these precautions are not 100% effective and that the foreseeable and natural consequences of their actions may still be an unwanted pregnancy. So, by engaging in intercourse, they are responsible for and obligated to accept the consequences of their actions. This situation is analogous to that of a man who derives great satisfaction from taking target practice with his gun. Unfortunately, he lives in a very crowded community: so he builds the most elaborately protective shooting range possible in the basement of his home. He is. nevertheless, aware that it is only 99% effective in stopping bullets and that use of the range could eventually result in the death of some innocent human. But, because of the great satisfaction he derives, he begins firing his gun in the basement anyway. Now if this man eventually kills someone, surely he is still morally responsible for their death. In firing the gun he knew that one of the foreseeable and natural consequences of his actions may be the killing of an innocent human. Like the two engaging in intercourse, this man has created a special obligation through his actions: they by engaging in intercourse, he by firing his gun in a crowded community.

Doris Gordon was the first advocate of the causal principle of parental obligations both to explicitly identify the principle and to show how it refutes the justification for abortion. Gordon had been greatly influenced by Ayn Rand and the Objectivist movement. Following Rand's staunch defence of abortion, Gordon assumed that being pro-choice was a logical outcome of Objectivist ideas. But she began to question how this could be reconciled with parental obligations.

One of the most influential Objectivists, Nathaniel Branden, had put forward a short statement on parental obligations in the Objectivist Newsletter of 1962. Although he did not express the key role that creation of peril plays in the causal principle, Branden did argue that parents have positive obligations as a result of their actions:

The key to understanding the nature of parental obligation lies in the moral principle that human beings must assume responsibility for the consequences of their actions. A child is the responsibility of his parents, because (a) they brought him into existence, and (b) a child, by nature, cannot survive independently. (The fact that the parents might not have desired the child, in a given case, is irrelevant in this context; he is nevertheless the consequence of their chosen actions– a consequence that, as a possibility, was foreseeable.) The essence of parental responsibility is: to equip the child for independent survival as an adult. This means, to provide for the child's physical and mental development and well-being: to feed, clothe and protect him; to raise him in a stable, intelligible, rational home environment, to equip him intellectually, training him to live as a rational being; to educate him to earn his livelihood (teaching him to hunt, for instance, in a primitive society; sending him to college, perhaps, in an advanced civilization).

On reading Branden's article, Doris Gordon realised that the principle of parental obligations stated by Branden cannot be reconciled with a defence of abortion. The two positions are contradictory. Yet Branden was pro-choice, as all Objectivists were. When Gordon confronted Branden with this problem he refused to discuss it or to accept the contradiction.

Gordon became an anti-abortion advocate. She saw abortion as incompatible with libertarianism in numerous ways, but the central argument she used against abortion was that it violated the principle of parental obligations. She stated this argument in her 1979 article How I Became Pro-Life: Remarks on Abortion, Parental Obligation, and the Draft:

There is no conflict of rights between mother (or father) and child because parents have an obligation to care for their children and, therefore, children have a right to that care. … If children are children before as well as after birth, then parents have the obligation to care for them, also. This means women have no right to choose to kill their unborn or to evict them from their bodies. Mothers have the obligation, instead, to house and feed them and protect them in the womb. … Conceiving children may be unintentional on our part, but having sex is usually a voluntary act and most people know getting pregnant is a possible side effect. We have some choice in the matter of creating children. It is the children who have no choice about being affected when we experience the pleasures of sex. Not only are children not responsible for the consequences of a mother's pregnancy upon herself, neither are they to blame for their need to remain in the womb. This need is something we impose upon them when we create them. The child's life and needs are a package deal. Once having brought children into a state of dependency, we have the obligation to bring them safely out. This means we must wait until they are able to come "out" safely. This also means parental obligation continues after childbirth.

Gordon started the advocacy group Libertarians for Life, arguing against abortion on secular, libertarian grounds. Other contrubutors to Libertarians for Life made similar arguments against abortion based on the principle of parental obligations. For example, in his 1991 article Why Parental Obligation?, John Walker emphasised the that it is creation of peril, not harm, that obliges parents:

When we have sex, we know there is a possibility to bring someone into existence who will be in very grave danger, who will be in harm's way. …The responsibility of parents is, then, not to recompense for any wrong done, but to make sure it doesn't happen. Because they put their kids in that position. The kids are totally dependent upon them, totally subject to their control. They put them in harms way. Well, in some sense, there is no injustice committed by being put in harm's way. The injustice happens when they let the harm befall the kid.

Doris Gordon explains why abortion is incompatible with parental obligations:

Given that human offspring begin life when conceived, and then given parental obligation, it follows that parental obligation begins not at birth but at fertilization.

To deny this, one would have to argue that parental obligations begin only at birth, or at some later point in pregnancy. This position implies that an embryo or fetus does not yet qualify as a child to whom obligations are owed. However, to make this claim, one can no longer hold that parents are causally obligated to any child that results from making their gametes available for fertilization. Instead, one must hold that, at the moment of conception, neither parent owes anything to the offspring they have created.

Once this offspring– who is owed nothing– gains recognition as a "child" at some arbitrary later point, the cause of the child's existence, and any obligation towards the child arising from it, should logically be attributed to the decision not to abort, rather than to the act of having sex. After all, as already established on this view, sex that results in conception does not generate obligations to offspring.

This is the argument made by those who advocate a theory of parenting as voluntary social contract. In his version of a voluntary parental obligations theory, Roderick Long argues that the decision not to have an abortion gives rise to parental obligations for the mother:

if a woman gives birth voluntarily (where the availability of safe, inexpensive abortion may be among the criteria of voluntariness), she has an enforceable obligation.

But this is to argue for a theory of parenting as a voluntary choice, not a causal obligation. Therefore, one cannot deny that abortion is incompatible with parental obligations without abandoning the theory of causal parental responsibility.

The Theory of Voluntary Parental Obligations Cannot Hold Fathers Responsible for Their Children

Almost all recent philosophical writing on parental obligations is only comprehensible if you understand that it is written from the starting premise that abortion must be valid. The legitimacy of abortion is taken as a given, and all arguments concerning parental obligations or children's rights are made to conform with this assumption.

The fact that most people who write about the philosophy of the family hold the validity of abortion as a core value and starting premise explains the appeal of the theory of voluntary parental obligations. This theory has a big advantage for pro-choice advocates: it is the only theory which is compatible both with abortion and also with parental obligations. This seems to offer the promise of justifying two incompatible positions together.

If you accept the premise that abortion is valid, logically you cannot accept parental obligations, since the two positions are contradictory. Some pro-choice thinkers straightforwardly accept this inference and therefore deny that parents have any obligations. This was the position that Murray Rothbard and Williamson Evers took. Although I believe they were incorrect, at least their position was logically consistent.

However, many pro-choice thinkers do not want to accept the logical implications of denying parental obligations. Rothbard was honest enough to acknowledge that if you deny parental obligations, it logically follows that parents may legitimately starve their children to death. Although many pro-choice thinkers want a theory that justifies abortion, they do not want that theory to also justify abandonment or neglect.

But the theory of voluntary parental obligations seems to offer pro-choice thinkers a way to have their cake and eat it too. If parental obligations are acquired by voluntary acceptance, then it follows that abortion is valid. A woman can choose not to accept parental obligations, therefore she can legitimately abort a child. However, once a parent has volunteered for obligations, then they cannot later abandon or starve their children. So the theory promises compatibility with abortion but not with abandonment or negligence. This pair of positions is what most pro-choice thinkers want to hold.

However, there are many problems with the theory of voluntary parental obligations. One of the biggest problems is this: If parental obligations only come from voluntary acceptance, then there is no way to hold men responsible for any children that they father. Any man who becomes a father can simply declare that he did not intend to or does not want to have children, and the theory of voluntary obligations would imply that he is free of any enforceable claim on him for parental care.

The advocates of the theory of voluntary obligations are reluctant to accept this clear consequence of their theory. Elizabeth Brake is notable as the only advocate who accepts the logical consequence that men do not acquire obligations to a child by fathering the child. She tries to find a workaround to hold men liable towards the women they impregnate. Her argument is that since pregnancy creates costs to a woman, a man can have some liability for his role in causing her to be pregnant. This argument only relates to the mother and still leaves the child without any claim against the father for parental obligations.

Other advocates of the theory adopt contradictory arguments to maintain that obligations are always voluntary but nonetheless argue that reluctant fathers have obligations even if they do not volunteer for them.

Roderick Long has put forward a mess of double standards in an attempt to provide a theory of parental obligations that would somehow achieve three conflicting aims. On the one hand, he wants reluctant fathers to be on the hook for parental obligations as a result of having sex. On the other hand, he wants reluctant mothers not to be on the hook for parental obligations as a result of having sex (because he wants abortion to be a legitimate choice). And to complicate things further for him, he also doesn't want to legitimise abandonment after birth.

These conflicting aims led Roderick Long to a bizarrely inconsistent theory of parental obligations. He argues that whether a father has any obligation to his child is entirely the choice of the mother, but if the mother does wish it, then the father is positively obligated to provide care based on the father's tacit acceptance of obligations via his action of having had sex. On the other hand, a mother has no positive obligations to her child based on her action of having had sex, but rather if the mother chooses not to have an abortion then this is tantamount to voluntarily accepting the positive obligation not to abandon the child once born. Go figure.

Joseph Millum is another advocate of the theory of voluntary parental obligations who nonetheless tries to argue the contradictory point that reluctant fathers are still obligated even if they don't volunteer. His argument is that social conventions dictate what constitutes tacit voluntary acceptance. In his view, abortion is socially accepted but being a deadbeat dad is not. Similarly to Roderick Long, Millium argues that women can decline parental obligations via abortion but men always tacitly accept the potential of parental obligations by the act of having sex. So men have obligations even if they didn't want a child but women do not. Millum thinks that an explicitly double standard like this is fine as long as it is in line with social conventions, since that is what counts for him.

Why Fathers Have Obligations

There is a theory of parental obligations that has no problem explaining why fathers are accountable to their children. According to the causal theory of parental obligations, this is why parents have obligations:

1. Parents are those who voluntarily make their gametes available for fusion, usually through consensual sex or sometimes through artificial means.
2. A forseeable outcome of making your gametes available for fusion is the creation of a child.
3. A consequence of the act of creating a child is that the child is in a state of peril.
4. Therefore parents are responsible for the state of peril of their child. This creates a positive obligation as a tort to get the child out of peril. This means raising the child to the self-sufficiency of adulthood.
5. Since the obligation results from the consequences of the parents' voluntary actions and not their intentions or agreement, parents still have obligations even if they didn't intend to create a child or do not want to be parents (with some exceptions).
6. Since both parents made their gametes available, both are jointly and severally liable for parental obligations.

Parents have obligations to their children as a result of their actions, not their declared intent. This account of parental obligations is entirely consistent and non-contradictory. It obliges both mothers and fathers. It presents a challenge for most writers on this topic though, because accepting the logic of the argument would force them to reassess one of their most deeply held premises: the assumption that abortion is justified.

Abortion Is The Worst Violation of the Nonaggression Principle

In much of the world today, a similar proportion of pregnancies end in abortion as the fraction that in centuries past ended in infanticide… If abortion counts as a form of violence, the West has made no progress in its treatment of children. Indeed, because effective abortion has become widely available only since the 1970s… the moral state of the West hasn’t improved; it has collapsed.

- Stephen Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature

Worldwide, 73 million abortions take place annually. That is equivalent to the total deaths of the Second World War, taking place every single year. Over a third of all innocent children that start life in the modern world are killed by abortion.

Given these numbers, this single issue surely represents the worst violation of the nonaggression principle in our times. It is far worse than any government program. It is a more egregious violation of the nonaggression principle than war, taxation, or fiat currency. Yet libertarians not only fail to criticise it, they actually provide moral sanction for this practice.

If libertarians argue that abortion is justified, they cannot object to any particular motive for abortion. They cannot object to the extermination of children with down syndrome for eugenic reasons. They cannot object to the extermination of girls for misogynist reasons. From 1970 to 2010, approximately 105 million females were missing in China and India due to selective abortion. Their own logic compels libertarians to view such practices as perfectly legitimate.

In the late nineteenth century, the leading classical liberal thinker Herbert Spencer pointed to the improved protection of the rights of children as a sign of civilisational progress:

Thus an extreme contrast exists between those early states in which a child, like a brute, could be killed with impunity, and modern states in which infanticide is classed as murder and artificial abortion as a crime, in which harsh treatment or inadequate sustentation by a parent is punishable, and in which, under trust, a child is capable of valid ownership.

- Herbert Spencer, Principles of Ethics (1888)

Spencer specifically listed the criminalisation of abortion as one of these signs of civilisational progress. It is notable that this was such an obvious argument at the time that he felt no need to justify it. He saw abortion as a blatant and straightforward violation of the nonaggression principle.

In the twentieth century, abortion was decriminalised and there was a widespread cultural shift from abhorrence to acceptance. Libertarians not only went along with this moral and cultural change, they led it. In doing so, they did immense damage to libertarian theory.

Both for Western countries and for the world as a whole, the number killed since 1970 by abortion is at least 100 times greater than the numbers killed by murders, war, or democide.

In the West, abortion deaths are between 3 and 40 times greater than each of the top causes of early death by illness such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease, and diabetes. Abortion deaths are equivalent to roughly the top 6 leading causes of early death by illness combined. Worldwide, abortion deaths are between 3 and 20 times greater than each of the top causes of early death by illness and are equivalent to roughly the top 6 leading causes of early death by illness combined.

Not only is support for abortion incompatible with libertarian theory, it is arguably the worst thing that libertarians could possibly choose to support in present times.

Support for Abortion Has Corrupted Libertarian Theory

Rightly conceived, libertarian philosophy can provide a beautiful moral understanding of parental responsibility. It provides a philosophical foundation for parental authority, as well as delineating the limits of that authority. Only libertarianism provides a sound philosophical basis for respecting children as individuals with rights.

It is utterly strange that modern libertarian theory does none of this. Modern libertarianism denies parental obligations, denies parental responsibility, and has nothing coherent to say about parental authority. Libertarian positions on family matters are often criticised and ridiculed. Unfortunately some of the criticisms are well founded, but not because of a fault of libertarian principles.

As I tried to understand why libertarians have adopted some absurd positions on parenting, I realised that many of the worst ideas can be traced back to one key assumption. What seems to have happened is that libertarians adopted a huge error in the mid-twentieth century that has profoundly distorted their principles. For whatever reasons the error was made, it has had devastating consequences on the wider libertarian theory of the family.

The error is the assumption that libertarian theory necessitates a defence of abortion. This is incorrect. On the contrary, libertarians departed from their own principles in significant ways in order to accommodate a justification for abortion.

This article identifies a series of errors in modern libertarian theory and shows how each one can be traced directly back to the position libertarians adopted on abortion in the mid twentieth century.

The Denial of Parental Responsibility

Support for the right to abortion is one of the main reasons that libertarians give for denying that parents have positive obligations to their children. One cannot accept the validity of both parental obligations and the right to abortion without contradiction: the two arguments are incompatible. Libertarians who have written on the subject have chosen to deny parental obligations.

For an intellectual tradition that is supposed to emphasise taking personal responsibility for one's actions, this has led libertarians to adopt truly bizarre arguments on parenting. Their denial of parental obligations has logically compelled them to conclude that

• deliberate starvation of children is permissible,
• all forms of neglect are permissible, and
• parents can legitimately abandon their children whenever they want. Libertarian principles do not demand such conclusions. There is a coherent libertarian theory of parental responsibility which does not imply any of these positions. It is just not compatible with abortion.

The Distortion of Rights Theory

Libertarianism draws on a long-established argument that rights are inherent and inalienable. This argument was made as far back as the Levellers and is famously expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

In order to accommodate abortion, libertarian rights theory had to be changed from inherent rights to acquired rights. The only way to justify abortion is if there is a window of time in which a child does not have rights, and the only way to achieve this window is to change your theory from one in which rights are inherent to one in which rights are acquired. This is what libertarians have done.

Adopting a theory of acquired rights has terrible logical implications. It implies that children can be owned, at least for a period of time. This means that libertarians must concede that the ancient, illiberal idea of parental ownership is valid in some circumstances.

In order to accommodate abortion, libertarians have had to concede that killing innocent children can be justified in certain circumstances. Having conceded such a vital principle, libertarians are unable to provide consistent theoretical grounds for opposing infanticide. Any theory that states a child may be owned logically permits infanticide. The point at which a child is said to acquire rights in this theory is arbitrary (which is why libertarians can't agree on when this takes place). There is no objective reason under the theory of acquired rights that a newborn infant can't also be treated as property. How can libertarians who advocate a theory of acquired rights give a principled rebuttal to Peter Singer's argument for the legitimacy of infanticide? Singer's justification is grounded in the same theory of acquired rights that pro-choice libertarians have adopted.

The correct libertarian theory is that rights are inherent and inalienable, and that humans cannot be justly owned under any circumstances. The crucial error preventing libertarians from theoretical clarity on the subject is their support for abortion.

The Abandonment of The Presumption of Innocence

Libertarian theory holds that the burden of proof is always on those who wish to deny an individual's rights, just as the burden is on those who wish to deny the legitimacy of an existing owner's property rights. Rights are only forfeited through criminal act. If there is any doubt as to an individual's rights, he or she must be presumed to be innocent. Denying rights to the innocent is always unjust.

The only way to accommodate support for abortion is to abandon the presumption of rights. Libertarians are engaged in a reverse burden of proof fallacy whereby they presume to ask for proof of rights for an unborn child, despite the fact that the burden of proof is always on those who deny rights. Abandoning the presumption of rights undercuts the philosophical basis for such liberal principles as the presumption of innocence. It leads libertarians to advocate a conflict-generating norm: the idea that it is legitimate to start from the assumption that strangers are non-persons (and therefore fair game for aggression) unless and until their rights-worthiness is proven.

The Invisibility of Fathers in Libertarian Theory

Another logical consequence of support for abortion is that libertarians must deny that men have any responsibilities as a result of fathering children. This is a consequence of rejecting parental obligations in order to accommodate abortion. It is ironic that although libertarians distorted their principles in support of an ostensibly feminist cause (abortion), this has ultimately led them to adopt the position that however many children a man fathers, he has no obligation to support them or their mothers.

The distortions of libertarian theory has also led libertarians to exclude fathers from any authority over their children. Having been forced to deny parental obligations, libertarians have had a problem with how to explain parental authority. They have adopted a muddled version of homesteading theory applied to children, arguing that children come into the world with a right to authority over them available for homesteading. Most theorists end up arguing that this right applies only to the mother who homesteads authority over the child through the act of giving birth. Fathers don't get a look in.

If you follow the logic of current libertarian theory, fathers have no responsibility for their kids and no parental authority. Any involvement in their children's lives only comes by contract with the mother (and only if desired by her).

The correct application of libertarian theory to parenting acknowledges parental obligations for both mothers and fathers as a consequence of responsibility for their actions. It also provides a justification for parental authority of both mothers and fathers and objective criteria for the limits of that authority. The main barrier to adopting a correct libertarian theory of parenting is the theoretical compromises that have been made to accommodate abortion.

Conclusion

Rather than developing a view on abortion that is consistent with libertarian principles, libertarian principles have been deformed until they are consistent with abortion. Accommodating one error has led to a propagation of errors that reach far beyond the issue of abortion itself.

Libertarianism can provide a coherent and beautiful moral philosophy of family relationships. At present, it does not. As long as libertarians start from the assumption that abortion must be justifiable, they will be unable to apply their own principles correctly to parental obligations or children's rights.

Consequentialist Arguments Against Parental Obligations

As discussed in my previous post, most postwar libertarians have denied that parents have positive obligations to their children by arguing a theory that parental care is a form of voluntary charity. However, libertarians also make three consequentialist arguments against recognising the validity of parental obligations:

1. It would be a slippery slope to recognising general welfare obligations

2. It would entail denying the validity of the right to abortion.

3. It would legitimise totalitarian state interference in families

Are Parental Obligations A Slippery Slope to Arguments for Welfare?

This first objection is simply false. Parental obligations do not entail general welfare obligations because:

1. the justification of parental obligations is specific, not general.

2. The justification is based on responsibility for an individual's own actions, not some general responsibility for humanity arising from membership of the human race.

Without contradiction, we can both

• acknowledge the validity of chosen positive obligations (including those obligations one must accept as "chosen” as a consequence of one's actions); and

• deny the validity of unchosen positive obligations.

Therefore the first objection can be dismissed.

Are Parental Obligations Incompatible With the Right to Abortion?

This is true: one cannot hold both that abortion is just and also that parental obligations are valid without contradiction. Something has to give. For many libertarians, the mere fact that an argument is incompatible with the right to abortion is considered a refutation of the argument. They hold the right to abortion as axiomatic. Even many libertarians who are unsure about the validity of abortion appear to assume that the right to abortion is the libertarian position, and that the burden of proof is on those who think otherwise.

This is a big topic for another day but in short, I believe the assumption of a valid right to abortion is another huge error in libertarian theory, one closely related to the error of denying parental obligations.

Pointing out the incompatibility with abortion is not a valid objection to recognising parental obligations, it is merely a logical consequence. Which of these ideas is philosophically valid needs to be decided on the merits of the arguments, not the fact of incompatibility.

Would Acknowledging Parental Obligations Give the State an Excuse for Totalitarian Interference in Families?

Another argument made against acknowledging parental obligations is that it would give the State excuses for totalitarian interference in families. The two ways that this are envisaged is:

1. The State would have excuses to check whether parents are fulfilling the care that they owe their children, such as checking on diets etc.

2. The State would have excuses for massive interference in women's privacy to check if they are having illicit abortions.

There are two problems with this kind of argumentation. Firstly, why should one assume that these empirical predictions are correct? They are merely someone's guesses about the future. As a simple point of historical fact, up until fairly recently abortion was illegal in Britain, the US and other western countries and this state of affairs did not entail totalitarian SWAT teams breaking into homes to check for illicit abortions.

The more important problem with this objection is that it is motivated reasoning. It is of the form "If I accept an argument is true, it might provide the State with excuses to do things, therefore the argument is false". This is unsound reasoning. Either principles are correct or they are false. One cannot decide the veracity of an argument on the basis of whether the State will use it as an excuse to do bad things.

The fact that State power can be abused is not an argument against the validity of an ethical norm. Laws against child neglect can be abused, but that does not distinguish them from every other law that the State can and does abuse for illegitimate overreach of authority. The State's laws against homicide can be abused to frame innocent people when authorities want to show a prosecution regardless of justice, but that is not an argument for viewing homicide as morally acceptable.

Conclusion

According to Argumentation Ethics, ethical norms must be aprioristic not consequentialist because one has to be able to act on them. Only an aprioristic rule is available to act on at a specific time. If one accepts this approach, then consequentialism itself is invalid as a basis of forming or evaluating ethical principles.

Nonetheless, it is still useful to address the three consequentialist objections to parental obligations raised by libertarians. The first is simply false. The second is not an objection but rather a logical consequence. The third is a group of empirical predictions that can be denied by historical precedent and are also examples of motivated reasoning.