I never liked Murray Rothbard's take on abortion, but I realized I would enjoy a system laid out to his specifications because, in the long term, people would be incentivized to have the child. Of course, I still wanted a clear argument against Rothbard's argument anyway, which is much more logical than most, and hinges entirely on property rights.
I've heard of Walter Block's
"donut hole" argument. I think it works, but of course, I think one minor problem I have is that it allows Rothbard's characterization of the situation to persist. Block is jumping through hoops, or donut holes, in order to make a logical argument that fits.
It's much easier to point out that we have a few pre-existing conditions:
The woman acted in a way which often creates a new person within her.
The new person has not acted.
They both have property rights to their own bodies.
Put simply, should a woman decide she doesn't want the child, the child doesn't become a parasite- rather the child becomes a kidnap victim. A kidnapper may well own all the property around the victim, but Rothbard would admit that the transgressor in the kidnapping case is the kidnapper, not the victim. Therefore the kidnapper, and the woman, have no right to kill.
I'm sure someone else has made the analogy, but I wanted to put it up anyway. Rothbard claimed he could come up with a solution via property rights alone, but it turns out the fight is still over personhood. If he really accepted a fetus as a person, then he would have given equal weight to the two property claims involved and then considered the actions of the two parties.
Update: Sadly, Block's arguments aren't quite what I thought they were.
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