The Ethics Of Liberty - Children And Rights

 

I have to admit up front, this chapter contains my biggest disagreement with Rothbard so far.  In "Children And Rights", he starts with discussing the rights of parents to abort and neglect their children before partially redeeming himself by focusing his searchlight back onto government's aggression against children and parents.

He starts the chapter describing his philosophy on abortion.  I disagree out of the gate.  Uncharacteristically he provides no logical or natural law basis for his foundation.  Instead, he throws out an assertion and starts applying his normal deduction atop this faulty starting point.

                "[with] birth as the beginning of a live human being possessing natural rights...

                While birth is indeed the proper line of demarcation, the usual formation makes

                birth an arbitrary dividing line, and lacks sufficient rational groundwork

                in the theory of self ownership."

Everything following this is logical enough but it doesn't save his thoughts from entering into the realm of horror and abomination.  He assumes the above and the self ownership of the mother and then proceeds.  He even admits that in order to get pregnant a woman must voluntarily choose to do what is necessary, except in the case of rape.  But then he asserts that the mother has the right to change her mind and end the pregnancy at any time because she has "absolute dominion over her body".  But he willfully ignores the existence of the other human body.  Instead Rothbard dehumanizes the growing human life calling the preborn baby a "parasite" and an "invader".  The Bible shows us the humanity of babies still in the womb in the following verse.  By the way, the baby is John the Baptist.

                Luke 1

                "43 And how has it happened to me, that the mother of my Lord would

                come to me? 44 For behold, when the sound of your greeting reached my

                ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy."

Only real humans can experience joy regardless of where they reside.  Therefore, birth is indeed an arbitrary dividing line for assigning natural rights and should be rejected.  Further reason refutes Rothbard's definition of a baby being an invader.  Babies never invade anything.  They are the result of willful acts performed by adults.  He also characterizes a baby's existence after birth as aggression against the mother.  I see absolutely no examples of babies engaging in aggression in the real world. They don't have the capability to use force against anyone.   In order to see how the label of "parasite" is incorrect, you have to further develop natural law.

The natural law of a mother is a person who carries a baby in her womb and gives birth when the time comes.  Additionally, she is a person who feeds, nurtures, and defends her children until they achieve adulthood.  A bit broader, I define the natural law of a parent as one who loves, protects, supplies, makes decisions for, and trains a child for adulthood.  The difficulty lies in defining exactly what responsibilities a parent has like how much nutrition, what quality of training, or how much material provision a parent should give.  It must be proportional to the ability of the parent.  Other than that, parents should have broad rights over how to raise their children without government intervention.

The natural law of a baby or child is a human who grows within his or her mother.  Who then is given birth and raised by his or her parents.  Children by this definition need parents in order to attain adulthood.  The beginning of adulthood is murky and particular to time and culture.  Best case in the real world is probably to allow cultures to set the threshold even if it looks arbitrary.  Ultimately a person is an adult when they can survive on their own.

Following this kind of natural law means that when a woman becomes pregnant she is then classified as a mother and the man as the father.  If liberty is to be based on natural law then the natural law of parents and children needs to be understood and recognized by society.  Laws then should align with that natural law.  Laws legalizing abortion violate the natural law of parents and children.  Natural rights exist to protect the ability of people to live according to natural law.  They don't exist for any other reason.  Rothbard skips over natural law to rights and thereby treats mothers as non-mothers and children as non-children.

Therefore, abortion violates the natural law of parent and child.  If a parent aborts or neglects his/her child to the point of death, that violation of natural law involves a victim, the death of a human individual.  Rothbard categorizes other situations like that as crime.  Only by dehumanizing an unborn human, by calling her a "parasite" and "invader" and demoting a parent to a "trustee-owner" can he conclude logically that a woman has a right to abort or neglect her child to death.  I provide a quote if you think I am kidding.

                "the parent should have the legal right not to feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die.

                The law, therefore may not properly compel the parent to feed a child or to keep

                it alive."

He twists himself into a pretzel essentially claiming that a parent can't legally stab her baby to death but she can purposefully leave her outside to die by starvation or exposure.  His only caveat being that parents may have a moral obligation to keep the child alive regardless of the legal requirement.

Next Rothbard asserts that a child should have the right to leave her parents at any time.  This also ignores natural law as defined above.

                "the child has his full rights of self-ownership when he demonstrates that he

                has them in nature... when he leaves or "runs away" from home."

                "it is totally impermissible enslavement and an aggression upon his right

                of self-ownership for them to use force to compel him to return.  The absolute

                right to run away is the child's ultimate expression of his right."

Then Rothbard completely contradicts himself in the next paragraph (though he does start by saying "Now if") saying that parents should be able to give their children up for adoption or sell the rights to the child to another set of parents to create a free adoption market.  Regardless of where he is wrong, he get the next point completely right.

                "since the government prohibits sale of children at a price, the parents may

                now only give their children away to a licensed adoption agency free of charge."

This causes multiple distortions.  First, it shifts the financial reward away from parents to adoption agencies.  So even if you think it is distasteful to make money off of selling babies, the current system does the same thing but  shifts the profit to a government-certified entity.   This shift also reduces supply and leaves demand for adoption unsatisfied.  Without these government distortions there would be a much more mutually beneficial system for taking the burden off of overwhelmed parents and providing children to parents looking to adopt.

                "Everyone involved: the natural parents, the children, and the foster parents...

                would be better off in this sort of society."

Rothbard then details the ways the state violates the rights of parents and children.  First, it violates parental rights by setting up their own religious, moral, and economic tests to determine which parents are appropriately raising their children.  If the state disapproves of your religion, morals, or economic status they can forcibly take your children and put them in orphanages or a "better home".  The results of such policy would be abominable if carried out to its logical conclusion.

                "If the 'better home' test were the only test, public welfare officials could take

                children from half the parents in the state whose homes were considered

                to be the less desirable and place them in the homes of the other half of the

                population... Extending this principle further... the best home would have the

                choice of any of our children."

As bad as the state treats adults it is worse with children, who don't get the procedural rights adult defendants have.  The state justifies this under the legal doctrine of parens patriae (the State as parent). They then proceed to jail juveniles for things no adult would ever be arrested for.  

                "state juvenile codes... permits ... incarceration for various forms of

                'immorality', 'habitual truancy', 'habitual disobedience', 'incorrigibility',

                'ungovernability', 'moral depravity', 'in danger of becoming morally

                depraved', 'immoral conduct', and even associating with persons of 

                'immoral character' "

The problem is exacerbated by giving longer sentences to juveniles than adults for actual crimes.  Rothbard is pulling from examples in the 1960s and 1970s, so maybe the situation is different 50 years later.  There is a movement against such law and order type policies today.  However, it should be clear that the government sees your children as theirs and will intervene in family business as much as they can get away with or to further whatever political goals they have.

In summary, it seems to me that the government is on the wrong side of both subjects.  They don't intervene to prevent abortions even though they should according to natural law and natural rights.  Thank God abortion is no longer a protected "right"  according to the US federal government.  But it still is in many US states and countries around the world.  Then government does intervene in areas of family matters where they have no authority according to a natural law ethic, policing the suitability of parents and morality of children.  There are imaginable situations where the government could intervene based on objective values, but the parens patriae doctrine gives them carte blanche to act arbitrarily and they do.