thanks

mike beck

If you are pro-choice legally, I hope you take the intellectually honest approach that no such distinction takes place.

They go into airplanes and boats and all sorts of analogies and disanalogies.

I like the airplane example of Jeremy’s because it properly portrays the hijacked aspect of pregnancy, another example is:

Imagine I enter into an agreement/contract with you for which you have already been compensated to watch over and act in my best interest medically because I had been bitten by a rabid dog and was going to undergo the Milwaukee protocol. I assigned over to you all of my legal rights and you are effectively the executor of my estate and the guardian of my person while the procedure is to take place. Then say this was begun. Would it be within your natural rights to change your mind after the protocol started and pull the plug?

The answer is yes and no. Mostly no, but there are exceptions. The only cases where it is yes is if you were 1) coerced into entering into the agreement beforehand or 2) that this somehow endangered your own life or my own well-being. The answer is no in all other instances including the basis for your or my ability to pay or any other consideration which might affect you…even negatively because the peril to me is much greater.

Coincidentally, this is the same situation and position that the church has taken on this issue of abortion. We are given rights from our creator. I believe that rights of children can and do outweigh the rights of their parents. For example, the following issuance of entitlements is not unjust:

“Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity.”

Because children are entitled to these rights it is a violation of their rights for a parent to give unto the child any other situation than that which is described. The the extent that the parent is derelict in this duty can and will be judged against them. They are culpable for this violation not under our legal law but under natural law.

If Rothbard, Mises, or any other philosopher does not describe it as just then it is their philosophy which improperly captures this truth and not the other way around.

For instance, you said, “I engage in various physical activities throughout the day that naturally deplete the energy stores and nutrients in my body, and this can observably and naturally result in death; therefore, to eat food in order to curtail the natural consequences of my actions would be avoiding my responsibilities and therefore evil.”

This comparison is not valid. In your example your supposed “evil” behavior cannot be said to violate any other person’s rights. There is no other human involved. In Connor’s example, the woman has effectively invited another human being into her body. Such babies cannot be considered, as you put it, “trespassers or problematic tenants.”

Do you see where your comparison breaks down? In his example, there are two humans involved, a mother and her baby. In your comparison, there is no second human that might be party to the contract, whose rights might be violated.

Let’s put it this way. Suppose you invited a child onto your boat, you sailed to the middle of the ocean, and then you decided that the child was a trespasser or a problematic tenant. Would you be justified in throwing him overboard to his certain death? Would natural law dictate such? Would libertarian principles dictate such?

The baby’s case is even more compelling. The child might have at least had the ability to choose whether to board the vessel. The baby had no choice. The mother made the choice to bring the baby aboard. This is where the contract concept comes in. I believe natural law would hold that if you were to voluntarily bring a child onto your boat (your private property), there would be an implication, whether explicit or not, that after reaching the middle of the ocean, you would not throw the child from the boat under the guise of exercising your private property rights. For that same reason, a woman, after having voluntarily brought another human being into her body (her private property) has agreed not to later evict that baby to his certain death.

Your “I have observed X occurring in nature; therefore, X is morally right” statement is just a giant straw man. It is not the argument Connor was making. The argument that Connor was making was that the woman must be deemed to have voluntarily brought the baby into her womb because she knew that her actions would naturally lead to that. To reiterate, if there was no other human involved, then her actions to curtail the natural result of her previous actions would be irrelevant, but once she effectively enters into an agreement with another human, she cannot arbitrarily change her mind later.

Your entire diatribe against Connor’s statement that “contracts trump rights” is basically irrelevant. I personally wouldn’t have said that contracts trump rights. Contracts do not “trump” rights because as you pointed out, men voluntarily enter into the contracts, which means that the contracts cannot violate or trump rights. That said, I think we both know what he meant. He meant that after entering into a contract with another individual, a man then has the “right” to expect the other individual to fulfill his side of the contract. In other words, man cannot default on a voluntary contract based on any rights that he has voluntarily waived by entering into the contract. In this case, the obvious example would be an attempt to evict a tenant from one’s private property after entering into a voluntary lease agreement, giving the tenant the right to possess the property. The contract trumps the previous right the owner would have had to evict the tenant. You state, “Boyack is essentially claiming that the very right that enables a person to enter into a contract can be nullified by that contract.” Umm.. Yup. My right to control my private property gives me the right to contract with another individual to possess my property, and therefor nullifies my right to possess the property and/or to evict the other individual.

This is not disputable. As such, your attack on his statement means that either your reading comprehension is lacking or you are just happy to battle straw men.

Your subsequent examples examples of forcing a woman to perform prostitution against her will, or using violence to force a man to work, or terminating the life of a cancer patient, are just as absurd as you thought they were, but completely irrelevant. Contracts give the participants the right to be justly compensated by those that violate the contracts for any damages they incurred. Most contracts, like an employment contract, specify what the damages would be. If the potential employer suffered a loss because the potential employee made a promise to work and then did not work, the employer would not have the right to force him to work, but would have the right to seek compensation for the loss suffered.

An agreement, such as the prostitution example, are not likely written and specific. But naturally, if the “John” had already paid for the services, he would have the right to get his money back, not the right to force the prostitute to have sex with him.

In the case of the doctor terminating the life of the cancer patient, he might have the right to be compensated if, for instance, he turned away another paying customer when the cancer patient entered into the contract to be seen at a certain time.

Regardless, your comparisons are ridiculous any way. They are not comparable. The first two do not involve killing another human.

A valid comparison would go like this. Suppose that a pilot voluntarily contracted to transport a man from Utah to Hawaii in his plane. Suppose that half way there the pilot changed his mind. Under your theory, he could simply evict the passenger as a trespasser or problematic tenant. Just throw him out of the plane and let him fall to his death. Under Connor’s theory, the passenger has the right to stay in the plane since the pilot voluntarily contracted with him and voluntarily brought him on the plane.

As to your quote: “Their error is a failure to realize that the right to contract is strictly derivable from the right of private property, and therefore that the only enforceable contracts (i.e., those backed by the sanction of legal coercion) should be those where the failure of one party to abide by the contract implies the theft of property from the other party. In short, a contract should only be enforceable when the failure to fulfill it is an implicit theft of property.”

It’s a great point actually, and supports the idea that a woman cannot violate the “contract” entered into if doing so means she will kill the other party to the contract (kind of like the pilot example above).

As to your assertion that the state “should not be involved in anything”, why are you quoting Rothbard in his insistence that certain contracts should be “legally enforceable in a free society…” if you don’t believe that anything should be legally enforceable?

You bring up a great question, one which Connor did not address, and one which is difficult to answer. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be answered.

And exactly where did the author “dog the mormons”? The fuck? He *is* a Mormon. He stated that very clearly. He called it “my religion, the faith that I hold as dear as my family” and could not possibly have sung its praises any higher.

The fuck is wrong with you?