Asymmetrical Information

Your cultural evolution argument assumes that a significant number of parents will not adequately care for their offspring without the "assistance" of the coercive apparatus of the state. Do you really believe this is true?

Children are indeed an interesting case. Among other things, it is astounding how many people are holding children hostage for their own benefit.

How much push do you think we would see behind welfare in this country if not for children? Their parents are essentially using them as hostages to extort money from the public purse.

Then consider schools. A whole host of vested educational interests are extorting money from the public purse by holding children's educations hostage to their demands.

It should be noted that in all cases that come to mind, when children are held hostage to extort public money, those children inevidably suffer even if the ransom is paid. It's is only the hostage takers who profit from this system...

I'm saying that a society which behaves as if children are legally adults will end up in all kinds of trouble, not limited to the death of vulnerable children.

The hostage issue is quite interesting actually. One can make a very good case societally for supporting children collectively. The problem is, how do you do that without supporting their hostage takers (parents)?

We could always do away with welfare and agressively take away children who aren't being fed. But we'll run into a surprisingly large number of parents who are willing to see their children starve rather than let someone else raise them. Maybe that's cultural evolution - parents who are eager to let others raise their children don't pass their culture and attitudes down to as many children.

Now while it's evident that childhood is a necessary part of life, what isn't so obvious is the proper length of childhood. A shorter childhood that didn't include 5-6 of one's prime childbearing years would have several important advantages.

"provide high-quality education": why "provide" rather than "fund"?

Children are a choice. By aiding and abetting in the birth of a child, the parents consent to the undertaking of child rearing. The meaning of "rearing" is debatable but, at a minimum, it includes nourishment. The "age of consent" is also debatable.

Marcus,

While I agree with you that children are a choice, and one for which their parents ought to be responsible, this in no way mitigates the case for providing support for children. If parents *choice* to have children and then subsequently *choice* to neglect them, then I do not see why the child should suffer for the parents choices. Even if you want to say that parents are 100% responsible for the cost of rearing their children, what do you do about parents who either refuse to, or had children knowing they couldn't?

"Moreover, any society that did try to treat children and fetuses as adults, in the way that my commenters are advocating, would not be long for this earth. Evolution does not take cognizance of how beautifully consistently you have reasoned from first principles when it decides what behaviours will survive."

This is a nitpicking point: you can't really talk about evolution (at least in the natural selection sense, which seems to be what you mean here) at the societal level. Natural selection happens to individuals, not societies. To talk about evolution, you'd need to say "People who treat children as adults will not reproduce very well, so such behaviors will not survive over many generations" or something like that.

"If parents *choice* to have children and then subsequently *choice* to neglect them, then I do not see why the child should suffer for the parents choices."

People who choose to enter a contract can also choose to commit fraud. There are courts for this. If somebody wants to claim a neglected child, they should be free to sue the parents on grounds of parental unfitness. If nobody wants to claim a neglected child, then there is no conceivable solution and the question is moot.

"Even if you want to say that parents are 100% responsible for the cost of rearing their children, what do you do about parents who either refuse to, or had children knowing they couldn't?"

Back in the day, relatives would step in and take over or shame them into giving their children up for adoption.

I'm really not being snarky with this; I'm genuinely curious. Do you mean, then, that government should provide free, effective, contraception to everyone under 18? Or does that not count as health care? Because this strikes me as just the sort of policy that, though possibly illegitimate and rights-violating, would probably decrease abortions while keeping safety and legality constant.

Alternatively, one could treat minors' pregnancy as a public-health issue, and require girls to get Norplant to attend public schools, just as all kids have to get immunized. I don't think the analogy holds, but you'd prevent a lot of unwanted pregnancies.

I know this goes beyond what Peter suggested, but I'm just sayin'.

And while I hadn't noted the earlier comments Jane references, whooie! It's nice to be reminded of how libertarianism got a bad name.

Parents can't legally neglect their kids, but they can legally give them up for adoption, with the state taking responsibility if no adoptive parent is willing to. Also, I don't believe that a parent is legally required to sacrifice his/her own body to keep the child alive. (For instance, if the child needed a kidney transplant and the mother was the only match, I don't think she can be prosecuted for refusing. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong about this.)

This plays into the abortion question because even if the fetus has the same rights and entitlements as a child, that still doesn't include an entitlement to live inside the mother's body without her consent. If it's possible to remove the fetus alive, then the mother can be required to do so and put the resulting infant up for adoption if she doesn't want it. But earlier, when abortion is the only way for her to get the unwanted visitor out. . . well, the violinist scenario fits.

Marcus, you are still treating the child as a non-person. That is not correct. If parents enter into an implied contract when they have children, who exactly do you feel they enter into that contract with? I would say the child. If nobody wishes to step up and claim the child, that doesn't mean the parents are filling the contract, just that no third party is willing to volunteer to do so. The point is not moot, the child is still harmed.

"The point is not moot, the child is still harmed."

An undertaking is not a contract but a binding pledge. If parents alone on a desert island have a child and neglect it, there is no alternative -no party to hold the parents to the pledge. The question is moot.

"Marcus, you are still treating the child as a non-person"

I am treating the child as a non-adult.
If a child were capable of holding parents to a pledge, then a child would be acting like an adult and there would be no need to bind the parents to the pledge in the first place.

"Evolution does not take cognizance of how beautifully consistently you have reasoned from first principles when it decides what behaviours will survive."

I love this sentence. Thank you.

It's too easy to forget that reality doesn't care about ideology. Not that ideology doesn't count, just that it's often beside the point.

Andrew commented that societies cannot undergo evolution on the natural selection level. While he's right that societies cannot experience significant genetic change in historic time (but cf the Black Death for the individuals that constituted Europe in the late Middle Ages), that is not at all what Jane is suggesting. Rather, she is relying on Richard Dawkin's idea of the meme, which is essentially an idea transmitted from individual to individual.

Societies adopt memes generally, just as populations of a species might have a specific allele of a gene in common. Societies that adopt memes which hurt them in competition for resources with other societies, or that fail to adopt memes which similarly hurt them, will eventually be outcompeted for resources and die out. Jane is quite right that adopting a meme such as parents not having an obligation to provide for their children would likely result in the decline and eventual extinction of societies that held that meme.

As a similar historic example, the Shakers believed that all sexual reproduction was sinful, and they did not sexually reproduce. Since their faith could only expand by conversion, once the initial converts started to die off, they went into a gradual decline. Now, there are virtually no Shakers left anywhere. Jane's no-support-for-children meme might cause a more gradual die-off, but the results would likely be similar.

Abortion is anti-libertarian, for reasons that I will give at some length. Hold your fire until you've read the entire comment.

Liberty requires each of us to pursue happiness without causing harm to others, except in self-defense. Those libertarian defenders of abortion who bother to give the issue a bit of thought try to build a case for abortion around self-defense, arguing that a woman who aborts is defending herself, and that no one should question her act of self-defense.

The self-defense argument -- which is sometimes billed as a property rights argument for -- goes like this: A fetus is an "uninvited guest" in or "invader" of its mother's body, which is the mother's property. The mother may therefore do with the fetus as she will.

But a fetus is neither an uninvited guest nor an invader. Rather, it is a life, and that life -- by biological necessity -- is its mother's responsibility:

• Conception, in almost all cases, is the result of a consensual act of sexual intercourse. (Rape, which accounts for a relatively small number of applications for abortion, is an exception. But it's an exception that shouldn't dictate what happens in the majority of pregnancies. If the state insists that rape victims give birth (as it ought to because of the state's obligation to protect life), the state then takes responsibility for the adoption of those babies who may be unwanted by their mothers.)
  

• Conception is a known consequence of the act of sexual intercourse. And it has been shown that when abortion becomes less readily available (e.g., more expensive),

  [t]his induces teenage girls to avoid risky sex, which will likely have the effect of lowering pregnancy rates, abortion rates, and birth rates among this group of individuals. . . . Behavior is not static, and claims based on the assumption of static behavior are flawed. [That is, "they" will not "just get pregnant, anyway": ED]

• It has been shown, as well, that

  [l]aws requiring minors to seek parental consent or to notify a parent prior to obtaining an abortion raise the cost of risky sex for teenagers. . . . [O]ur results indicate that the enactment of parental involvement laws significantly reduces risky sexual activity among teenage girls. [So much for "back alley abortions": ED]
  

• Life indisputably begins at conception:
  

  Surely the child is alive then [at the tying of the umbilical cord]. It cannot be the mere act of tying the cord that produced life. Then when did life begin? With respiration? That is only one added function. There was circulation previously, and the power of nervous action and motion. Why is not a fetus alive when it is diving and plunging in its mother's womb? Simply because its lungs are not inflated? Out on such nonsense! One might as well say that a child born blind was not alive because it did not use its eyes. It is on the record, I believe that children have been born by the Caesarean section, after the death of the mother. If there was no vitality in the fetus previous to respiration, then why was it not dead, like the mother? There can be no doubt of it, there was vitality or life. Then if we acknowledge that the fetus had life, how can we say at what period of gestation that life commences? The period of quickening varies, and I do not see why a fetus is not quite as much alive just before it moves as just after. . . . [From O.C. Turner, "Criminal Abortion," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 5 (April 21, 1870), pp. 299-300. Quoted by Marvin N. Olasky in Abortion Rites: A Social History of Abortion in America, Regnery Publishing, Inc., Washington, D.C. (1995), pp. 121-122.]

• A person who conceives therefore has incurred an implicit obligation to care for the life that flows from her consensual act.

• Given that the existence of a fetus cannot cause harm to anyone but its mother, the only valid route for terminating the life of a fetus would be a legal proceeding that culminates in a judicial determination that the continuation of the life of the fetus would cause grave physical harm or death to the mother.

When that realization strikes home, the next step may be an appeal to the viability of the fetus. The argument that a fetus is "inviable" -- and therefore somehow undeserving of life -- until it reaches a certain stage of development is a circular argument designed to favor abortion. A fetus (except in the case of a natural miscarriage) is viable from the moment of conception until birth as long as it is not aborted. It is abortion that makes a fetus inviable. Abortion therefore cannot be excused on the basis of presumed inviability.

Drawing an arbitrary line, say, three months after conception does not change the fact that a life is a life. And if that arbitrary line can be drawn, why not draw it at birth or just after birth or at any time during a child's life? Remember, we are arguing here about libertarian principles, not legal niceties. If a child is a mother's "property" -- or if a mother always has a right to "defend" herself from an "unwanted guest" (in her womb or in her home) -- why stop at abortion in the first trimester? (Actually, the law hasn't stopped it there, which is a point that I'll come to when I discuss the slippery slope down which we're headed.)

Where, then, lies a valid libertarian defense of abortion? In privacy? Not at all. Privacy, to the extent that it exists as right, cannot be a general right, as I have argued above. If privacy were a general right, a murderer could claim immunity from prosecution as long as he commits murder in his own home, or better yet (for the murderer), as long as he murders his own children in his own home.

A "practical" libertarian might argue that legalizing abortion makes it "safer" (less dangerous to the mother), presumably because legalization ensures a greater supply of abortionists who can do the job without endangering the mother's life, and at a lower price than a safe abortion would command without legalization. I'm willing to grant all of that, but I must observe that the same case can be made for legalizing murder. That is, a person with murderous intent could more readily afford to hire a professional who to do the job successfully and, at the same time, avoid putting himself at risk by trying to do the job himself. "Safety" is a rationalization for abortion that blinks at the nature of the act.

I am unable to avoid the conclusion that abortion is an anti-libertarian act of unjustified aggression against an innocent human being, an act that is undertaken for convenience and almost never for the sake of defending a mother's life. Murder, too, is an act of convenience that is seldom justified by self-defense. Abortion, therefore, cannot be validated by mistaken appeals to self-defense, privacy, viability, and safety. Nor can abortion be validated (except legalistically) by a series of wrongly decided Supreme Court cases.

The state will take children away from neglectful parents, and it will take money from parents to support their children, but it will not force parents to physically take care of their children. I can't think of any situation where the state imposes anything as intrusive as pregnancy on one person, child or adult, for the benefit of another.

Personally, I find the whole argument about whether a fetus is a person kind of bizarre, because it's basically using "person" as shorthand for having a moral status that makes it wrong to destroy. And that's what we're arguing about. Trying to convert a moral question to a semantic question doesn't advance the argument any.

DaveL,

It falls to me to point out that the state does not, and to my knowlege has never, "imposed" pregnancy on anyone. Pregnancy happens entirely outside of the state's control; it can neither cause nor prevent it.

The state certainly does impose all sorts of duties on each of us as we go about our daily business, and if none of them are as "intrusive" as pregnancy, that's because there probably isn't anything else on Earth as intrusive as pregnancy.

As to the state forcing unwilling parents to care for their children, I would imagine that's less because the state is adhering to some great principle of liberty and more because someone who is vigorous enough in his objection to being a parent to come to the state's notice is already neglecting or abusing his child.

It falls to me to point out that the state does not, and to my knowlege has never, "imposed" pregnancy on anyone. Pregnancy happens entirely outside of the state's control; it can neither cause nor prevent it.

Here we go with the semantics again. A woman is pregnant. A medical procedure can make her not-pregnant. If the state forbids that medical procedure, what would you like to call that? Whatever the word is, the bottom line is that she has a legally-enforceable duty to stay pregnant, and I can't think of too many other places where the state enforces duties that involve anything like that level of direct, physical burden on an individual.

"There are a number of people arguing in my comments that abortion is fine even if the fetus is a person, because no one has a right to use another person's body for their support."

The corollary of this (mad, bad) argument is: a pregant woman who carries to term has somewhere along the way made an agreement - maybe a contract - with the foetus: something like 'I will allow you to use my body for your support'. The craziness of this should be self-evident, but let's spell it right out: a person (in the legal sense) can enter into such an agreement only with another such person. Those who claim that the foetus is a person mean something else by the term, i.e. a helpless human being.

But the shift in the meaning of 'person' is just a surface blip. The true, authentic nuttiness is the assumption that human beings are totally free to negotiate each and every one of their relationships, i.e. not in any sense whatsoever subject to nature. The social Ego rules supreme. It is a position indistinguishable from clinical paranoia.

Jane,

(or should it be Megan? If I'm breaching local etiquette, please forgive my ignorance)

You say "I...also believe that the state should provide high-quality education and health care for children under the age of eighteen "

You're stating that the state should "provide" education? From you I'd have expected something like "the state should ensure that marketplace competitors all provide for high-quality education etc."

I'm neither formal libertarian nor economist, but your statement reads to me as if you'd have the state be the monopolistic provider of education, rather than the arbiter/umpire of a competitive educational market.

While reading your site, my mind naturally sketches out a philosophical portrait of you. And at the moment, I've the same quesy feeling I'd have if the Mona Lisa suddenly sported a moustache.

Did you merely toss off an imprecise phrase, so that one could, say, substitute "ensure" for "provide" in your statement? Or do you actually believe that government should forego market competition and provide the service itself?

If so...

J'accuse! Who are you and what have you done with the real Jane Galt?!

Andrew:
you can't really talk about evolution (at least in the natural selection sense, which seems to be what you mean here) at the societal level. Natural selection happens to individuals, not societies.

Actually, I think you have this profoundly wrong -- in fact, the converse. Evolution happens to, if not societies, then races/breeds/classes. (Can a biologist help me out here?) A creature does not evolve; no dog evolved from wolves. A creature lives or dies. When enough creatures with a particular new characteristic survive, then a species evolves from another species -- and if that isn't represented by a society evolving, I'm not sure what is.

Not being a specialist in any relevant field, I hope someone will point out if I got anything important wrong.

Shelby,

You misunderstood my point: natural selection acts on individuals but causes effects at the population level. That is, natural selection favors traits that help *individuals* to reproduce; then over many generations the population will gradually change to comprise individuals that have more of these reproduction-favorable traits. Natural selection doesn't act on *societies* - for example, a society where everyone co-operated with each other altruistically might outcompete a society of selfish bastards, but natural selection won't favor this, because all it takes in the altruistic society is one mutant who's selfish and will outcompete his/her selfless brethren, and selfishness takes over the population. My only point was that group selection does not happen.

Now as for Sisyphus's point on memes, I see that. One might similarly say that societies that adopted the meme of agriculture outcompeted those that stayed with hunter-gathering for whatever reason.

DaveL,

It isn't merely semantics because of how women get pregnant. Hint: it isn't the stork.

Look, I could drink a couple of bottles of wine right now, and the state can't and won't stop me. If I do so, however, the state will insist that I refrain from getting into my car, no matter how pressing my need to get somewhere is.

No woman has to get pregnant. But if she does, it isn't insane to say that her condition imposes duties on her.

Now, pregnancy is indeed a large burden (although I would argue less of a burden than parenthood itself), and maybe it is so large that the state should tilt in favor of the woman rather than the baby. But don't act like it's the state's fault that she is pregnant.

A different question:

When is a child not a child, but an adult?

You can't only name one definite age, but rather a periode of transition (from 16-21 or something like it) and even this is hard to do. So, I think that we have a problem when distinguishing between "children" and adult rights...

I also think, Jane, that you are wrong to suppose that children without the help of the government would be lost.
It is not easy, but I think private charity could help a lot to improve the situatione, especially if people start acting locally and stop shooting their money into foreign countries they know nothing about.

Another question is whether the state should intervene when adults are abusive. The answer is, what will the state do? If the children are too young, it can send them to grand-parents or try to find a new family for them. We still have the problem to define, what "abusive" means? Is it already the fact that the mother uses the child to complete her own dreams (f.e. do what she had never the courage to do), or is it as extreme as beating a child bloody.
It is hard to determine and there would be too many examples of government gone wild (a mild spank on the cheek might be the source for an intervention of the state out of any proportion).

Also, there is the problem that the state shows us that he is ineffective in handling child-abuse. I have been living in Germany and we have something called the youth safety department, which exactly acts on the "behalf of children" and it only makes things worth all the time.

So, I think the less the state does, the better the children will fare, but only if we start thinking about being more benevolent and conscious about charity and sponsoring of orphanages and such. This goes hand in hand.

Another question is, whether you accept state intervention on behalf of disabled (mentally or bodily) people? Do you?

"This plays into the abortion question because even if the fetus has the same rights and entitlements as a child, that still doesn't include an entitlement to live inside the mother's body without her consent."

There is more than one way to give consent. For example, by flying on a commercial airline, you automatically consent to having your luggage searched. That consent is of the package. You can't choose to fly, but refuse consent to the search.

I would argue (as I believe Rob Lymon and some others here would) that at least in most cases, pregnant women have consented to the pregnancy by voluntarily engaging in the activity that causes it, and failing to take the measures that prevent it. It's not a question of blaming anyone

On the earlier thread I mentioned that once someone donates a kidney, they can't come back after a couple months and decide they want it back. Once you've consented, you can't unconsent.

The question then is when the consent to pregnancy occurs, and I don't think my answer is unreasonable. It certainly seems more sensible than saying that a woman hasn't consented to a pregnancy until it has ended in a live birth.

And, by the way, having recently been pregnant, I would like to point out that if everything goes well, it's not such a terrible burden. My feet got swollen and ugly, and I couldn't drink alcohol, eat swordfish or sit in a hot tub, but other than that, it was mostly enjoyable. People were really nice to me; my hair and skin looked great; and I never got better sleep in my life. People around here talk about pregnancy like it's a prison sentence, but I suppose that rhetoric is necessary to their points about governmental intrusion.

A thought experiment might help work out opinions on this issue: what if one day it is possible for a couple to have a child in vitro, where the woman's body is not being used to nurture the child? Should the parents then have any choice as to whether the fetus continues to live or not? If so, until how late in its development? For most people who want abortion to be available, the reason is not "a woman's control of her body". That's a red herring, a straw man, in plain terms, a lie. It's because the baby is inconvenient, it would interfere with a lifestyle as it grows up. A baby grown in a test tube would interfere just the same way. So it would be interesting to hear pro-choicers' opinions on the scope of parental power. The same kind of dilemma presents itself in proxy births. Do the biological parents have the right to force the proxy mother to have an abortion if they suddenly decide, "Hey we want to go to law school - a baby isn't really convenient right now."?

Jane Galt (who has apparently gone off her meds) wrote: "...[I] also believe that the state should provide high-quality education and health care for children under the age of eighteen (plus pregnant women who can't afford prenatal care)..."

Please say it ain't so!!! Didn't you really mean to say that the State should require *parents* to provide education & healthcare for their minor children; and that if the parents are truly unable to do so -- through no fault of their own, then and only then should the State start paying for (not 'providing') them.

And if a pregnant woman can't afford prenatal care, shouldn't the SOB who got her pregnant be forced to provide it, not the taxpayers???

Actually, I find myself in complete agreement with you on the principles. However, you overlooked the most persuasive libertarian argument *for* your position. Libertarianism is based on contractual, voluntary interactions between parties. Children do not and cannot enter into their status as dependents voluntarily. No explicit contract can exist between a parent and a newborn baby because even if that baby could understand the terms of it, there was no choice.

I'm deliberately trying to dance around the issue of whether or not the state is the appropriate entity to enforce the terms of an implied contract upon the parents. Part of the problem with any other solution is that it becomes mostly an argument over the choice of words. Any entity that has the power to enforce a child's "rights" without, and possibly against, the child's expressed wishes, has the de facto powers of a state in that respect. Allowing the parents to choose on the free market another guarantor of their child's rights would be tantamount to giving the parents the final authority over the scope of those rights.

This is perhaps the very reason why the excuse that something is done "for the children" has been used to justify so many horrors. It is an attempt to extend the powers of the state at the expense of the parents. It is generally based on the assumption that the solution must be imposed on unwilling parents. Although I have never met a perfect parent, most love and adore their children. Every choice carries with it opportunity costs. When parents are required to do something, it eliminates other options.

Denise, I agree with you up to the point where you say, "Once you've consented, you can't unconsent." I would say that when there's some kind of ongoing process involved, consent may be withdrawn. The donated-kidney example doesn't apply because it's a one-time act; the recipient needs nothing from the donor afterwards. If, say, the patient needed regular blood transfusions from the donor to prevent rejection (I know it doesn't work that way, but just suppose), then the donor's continued consent is involved, and I believe he has the right to withdraw that consent and quit giving blood.

I trust the analogy with pregnancy and abortion is clear.

"You can't only name one definite age, but rather a periode of transition (from 16-21 or something like it) and even this is hard to do. So, I think that we have a problem when distinguishing between "children" and adult rights..."

Even if we assume that identifying the moment of transition is difficult, it doesn't follow that we should have a problem when distinguishing between child's and adult's rights so long as we are talking about children in the 0-12 year range.

Rex, your analogy is clear, but it's less than perfect too. There is no suggestion that the kidney donor created the situation.

Let's say the person needs the kidney because of something you did wilfully. Say you punched him really hard in the lower back, thereby destroying his only good kidney, thereby causing him to need your kidney and ongoing blood transfusions. You agree to give the kidney and blood, but change your mind some time later. Does that change the outcome in your mind?

And if you don't agree it's different as a legal matter, then can we at least agree to think less of someone who would wilfully set in motion those events and then decide later to let the guy die?

(And by the way, even in your scenario, I would think the donor was a jerk, and I doubt Hollywood would be lining up to make movies about how brave the donor was to stand up for her rights to quit giving blood.)

Rex,

If kidney donation worked the way you posit, I would imagine we would put in place a legal regime that obliged the donor to provide blood to avoid making the donee a slave of the donor's whims.

We would, in other words, require some way to make consent binding. That would of course be a process considerably more complicated and less pleasant than sex.

"can we at least agree to think less of someone who would wilfully set in motion those events and then decide later to let the guy die?"

Absolutely. And I have no problem with someone who thinks the same about a woman who has an abortion or the doctor who performs it, even though I support their right to do so.

The extent to which state meddling in the market for childcare and education has badly harmed women and children is difficult for people not attempting to give their offspring a normal, healthy childhood and not go crazy themselves to comprehend. Women caring for our own children have been shunted into a backwater almost totally segregated from the world of economic activity. And the same time, we have huge numbers of people whose paychecks depend on families not being able to provide basic services to their dependent members (I am including primary education in basic services). It is in the interest of social services and public education for family pathology to continue to grow. This is basic. Family life doesn't operate outside of economic laws. If you pay people to take care of other people's children, you have created a class of people who are benefited by family pathology and who are going to work to create more of it, most especially by the creation and support of single mother-headed families. And what do you know, that's exactly what we have.

Pregnancy happens entirely outside of the state's control; it can neither cause nor prevent it.

Not a fan of science fiction, I see.

Call me naive (go on then) but I never heard anyone suggest anything so outlandish that there is a contract (real or implied) between parent and child. I obviously need to get out more.

There's no such thing as a contract between parent and child. There is an emotional relationship and a tie that is not readily reduced to mere words and which transcends anything so objective as a contract (where contract must at least involve two parties, both of whom understand its terms and who both enter into the contract's obligations of their own free will).

Nowhere does 'consent' enter into family ties.

You get no argument from me when you say that children have no obligations and a lot of entitlements; however it's also true that nobody would consider compelling a person to donate a part of his or her body to an already born child. In this regard, children are already treated the same as adults and I'm not "advocating" anyting.

An infant has no more right to a slice of its father's liver than the guy's grown-up cousin. In terms of rights it puts already born persons on one side and fetuses on the other and that's the way it already is. It has nothing to do with the parents' obligation to share their income or to treat their children decently because again, sharing your resources or labor is radically different from literally sharing your body. You don't seem to see the difference, though.

Bruce: mad, bad argument, eh? Let me spell it out as well: it's in your imagination that a woman is freely (or not) negotiating with a fetus, not in mine. Not being a libertarian, I don't even understand what with the contracts and negotiations. To me it's much simpler: a woman carrying a fetus still has the same exact right to her bodily integrity she had before she became pregnant which used to be quite non-negotiable. No one could force her to donate the use of her lungs to another organism against her will, for example. You happen to think that it's only natural that the presence of a fetus because of its "innocence" and inability to stop bothering me, in Jane's words, automatically cancels my ability to have a say in whether or not I want to share each and every organ and system in my body with another individual -- well, just say so.

The question of whether you consent to pregnancy by engaging in sex: do you consent to being in an auto accident by engaging in driving? Moreover, do you sign away the right to medical help the moment you get behind the wheel? You accept there's a (rather significant) risk of bad consequences, true, but you don't lose your ability to ameliorate these consequences.

Denise, I'm glad your pregnancy was great for your hair. It just happens to be a medical fact that a pregnancy puts an enormous strain on a woman's body. Your body dealt well with it, good for you. But if you think it's always a walk in the park you simply don't know what you are talking about.

Regarding babies in test tubes and woman's control of the body being a red herring. Guess what, we agree that if you can have a fetus develop outside a woman's body the mother won't have the right to remove it from that auto-womb. Until that time, those of you who think that it's right and good to force unwilling women to carry to term by criminalizing abortion have to accept the underlying assumption that as a society we prefer to see women as someone whose right to bodily integrity is rather ephemeral and is easily taken away because we as a society are willing to sacrifice it for a supposedly greater good. If that's ok with you we have nothing to argue about.

I think the argument about using another person's body for support really was given force by Judith Jarvis Thomson's violinist thought experiment.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Jarvis_Thomson

I've never thought that too compelling for the reason many have discussed here, namely where a woman consents to sex she is assuming the risk of pregnancy. It is unlike the violinist case where someone just attached the violinist to you without your knowledge or consent.

With this in mind, one might take the next step to say that the woman has impliedly consented to allow the fetus to use her body, in much the same way that if a woman invites you into her boat, she can't throw you out mid-voyage if she changes her mind.

"Denise, I'm glad your pregnancy was great for your hair. It just happens to be a medical fact that a pregnancy puts an enormous strain on a woman's body. Your body dealt well with it, good for you. But if you think it's always a walk in the park you simply don't know what you are talking about."

I don't think I ever said it's always a walk in the park; my remarks were prefaced by "when everything goes well," which of course it does not.

Women's bodies are designed for bearing and delivering children. Don't forget that either. (It's not the only thing our bodies are designed to do, but it's one of them.) It is the most natural of processes, and it is mostly amazing and wonderful. Miraculous even, if your belief system runs that way.

I just hate to see pregnancy presented in terms more fitting for a stay in a concentration camp. I've talked to so many women who enjoyed being pregnant. But they never told me that until I was pregnant. I don't know why.

Anyway, I loved the "great for your hair" line. I appreciate your humor, and I needed a good laugh today. (I'm not being sarcastic.)

Moreover, do you sign away the right to medical help the moment you get behind the wheel?

Well, no, but if emergency room care for auto accidents had as a guaranteed consequence the death of someone who was not in any way involved in the decision to drive, then I suspect that we would be a lot more inclined to legally restrict it.

Of course, we need not regard a fetus as a person, but your argument is that even if the fetus is a full person, his mother may still opt to kill it. I don't think we'd permit that argument in the driving/ER case; we'd probably say that drivers accept the risk by choosing to drive, and should leave innocent non-involved parties out of it.

No one could force her to donate the use of her lungs to another organism against her will, for example.

Well, in that case, she would of course lose the use of them herself, which might be one factor in the difference.

While it is certainly true that pregnancy is a strain on the body, it's not as though a woman really experiences the use of her kidneys by the baby as an independent sensation and resents the baby for it.

"There are a number of people arguing in my comments that abortion is fine even if the fetus is a person, because no one has a right to use another person's body for their support.

Well, in the classic libertarian formulation, no one has a right to my income either. But it would take a pretty hard core libertarian indeed to say that the state should allow parents to kick their children out on the streets if they tire of them."

Being a libertarian... I can't see this argument either. If anything, I would say that it falls well within the libertarian ideals to force parents to care for their children. I say this, because one of the important ideals (as I see it at least) is that of binding private and social contracts. Being a parent, can be thought of (as cold as it might seem) as a contract. You take on that responsibility for 18 years (and hopefully you decide to extend beyond that with some limitations). If those contracts don't exist, you don't have libertarian ideals, you have social anarchy. While some may argue that libertarianism and anarchy are quite analogous, those who make that argument are usually the detractors.

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