I have not noticed any libertarian commentary on the Planned Parenthood controversy. I assume that if there were such commentary, it would say
1. Planned Parenthood should not receive any government funding. Even if it gets out of the abortion business altogether.
2. There is nothing wrong with Planned Parenthood buying and selling organs from aborted fetuses.
Of course, as far as I know, there is no specifically libertarian position on when life begins. If a libertarian took the view that life begins at conception, then that would make abortion murder, and that would make commerce in organs problematic, because it would be an encouragement to murder.
But if you don’t think that abortion is murder (and please do not try to settle that issue in the comments section of this poor little blog), then should libertarians not be speaking up for the right to sell the organs of the aborted babies?
I didn’t comment on point (1), but I addressed point (2) in this post: http://euvoluntaryexchange.blogspot.com/2015/07/sweat-loaf-abortion-edition.html
It is a question of ownership. Who owns those body parts? The baby that was aborted? Then it is theft. The mother? Then it requires her agreeing to give away or sell the body parts.
I side the the first scenario, holding the unborn is a distinct individual.
There is no “libertarian position” on point 2, of course, because libertarianism, which rests largely on Mill’s harm principle, is an empty vessel into which one may pour his own definition of harm. A utilitarian libertarian (there are many, though most of them won’t admit it) will rationalize the trade in fetal tissue on utilitarian grounds, while avoiding the moral issue involved in abortion.
Why, then, is there a “libertarian position” on point 1, or at least something near a consensus among libertarians? Because it’s easy to oppose government action that involves the money that has been forcibly extracted from taxpayers.
Well, I did post this from a marginally pro-life libertarian perspective: http://specieaeternitatis.blogspot.com/2015/07/planned-parenthood-baby-part-sale.html
Wouldn’t the ultimate free market solution be for the woman to sell ‘the baby’ as awful as that sounds? The problem with market prices of a fetus is abortion clinics could give the abortion services away for free as I would guess the fetus is worth than the cost of abortion. (The $30 – $100 is a cost covering and not a sale.)
So the most free market and pro-life solution would be the women (and father) sell the baby. Then the women could cover the cost of the birth and have an incentive to have the baby. (I know this sounds awful and I am recommending it.)
This kind of question seems to rest on the conclusion that “Libertarian” is one set solvent in a bottle. There is another aspect:
1. Normative Libertarianism – which is concerned with the impacts of
“political” (external authority) on individual life in a social organization. Summed up as: ” Normative Libertarianism is framed by the impacts of the functions of governments on Liberty and thus to limit those impacts by limiting those functions.”
2. “Social” Libertarianism – which is concerned with individual determination of constraints in and delineations of relationships; individual determination of the allocation of obligations in the social organization and the choices of means to ends.
2(a) “Economic” Libertarianism – a sub-set of 2, above.
3. “Moral” Libertarianism – Individual determinations of “oughtness” that recognizes there are commonalities and differences among individuals in those determinations; recognizing also that the commonalities and differences are connected to the backgrounds and experiences of the individuals.
The Libertarian “outlook” (positions) of some people are limited to number 1 only. In others there may be a more common mix of 1& 2. There are some who have a mix of all 3; and, there are matters of degree.
” as far as I know, there is no specifically libertarian position on when life begins. ”
Walter Block’s “Evictionism” is a start.
Ironically I once had a friend 25 years ago say “you can’t define life ad beginning as dependent on technology” and Walter Block basically says “yes we can!”
This kind of stuff sounds wishy-washy to non-libertarians but isn’t our position that adults should be allowed to sell our organs? This would reduce the market for fetal organs.
“Walter Block believes the woman always has a right to evict but may only legally abort if the fetus is not viable outside the womb”
This runs into trouble at the point where an artificial womb is developed that can accommodate a fetus from the moment of fertilization. By Block’s logic, at that point, the morning after pill would not be permissible (since immediately upon fertilization, the fetus would be viable outside the womb).
I see what you mean but he is proposing that as a feature rather than a bug.
Let’s say you wanted to evict a tenant. You probably wouldn’t be allowed to shoot him and dump his body on the trash if there were some other way to do it.
I hope you have not fallen for the propaganda that Planned Parenthood is “selling organs”. That was a deceptively edited attack video with no connection to reality.
Reality: Women who have obtained entirely legal abortions sometimes wish to donate the remains of the fetus to science or medicine. Planned Parenthood provides a means to do this. Shipping those medical specimens costs a substantial amount of money (as does shipping adult human organs for transplantation). The research institutions that need the material for research willingly defray the cost of that shipping to obtain the specimens. Nothing is being “bought” from anyone.
From a libertarian perspective it seems that what Planned Parenthood is ACTUALLY doing is exactly correct. They are offering a legal medical procedure to women, and offering a means to allow those women to donate the remains to science. The institutions that needs those remains are covering the cost of transportation. There is not even an ethical question here, because any other arrangement would result in those remains being thrown in the garbage. The medical and scientific gains we’ve ALREADY achieved through research with fetal remains are tremendous, and we will continue to realize such gains.
It seems to me that if you know what is actually going on here, there’s not really any question of this being pro-liberty in every way.
Sure, except for the fetus part.
I think the original post makes a good point (and several comments raise caveats about the definition of property rights).
Regarding the paucity of “libertarian” analysis, my response is more prosaic: This emotionally charged topic is a loser. Why waste precious time and limited political capital on a debate with negligible chance of changing either minds or policy? Simple pragmatism leads one to choose other topics, either for impact or deep-felt conviction.
This actually I think correct. I don’t think libertarianism takes a position on the subject because it does not define when someone becomes an entitled person, just what the entitlement of personhood entails. Libertarians can of course have opinions on the timing as can everyone else.
Kling: “There is nothing wrong with Planned Parenthood buying and selling organs from aborted fetuses”
Agreed. But in the most naive sense of right and wrong.
Let’s say I manage to sell you a condominium in a private sale at far above the market value. In the process I make all the legal disclosures that are required of me. Although there are many things pertaining to the building that I am aware of that would be of value to you (the buyer) and would be ethical of me to disclose, I don’t have to, and so I don’t.
If you don’t have the good sense to ask the right questions or investigate all the possibilities, or make account of the current value and market trends, its hardly my fault. I have done nothing wrong.
That’s how I feel about Planned Parenthood. They have done nothing wrong, and they have done nothing right. They occupy that space that libertarians (unlike myself) proclaim that an ethical judgment would diminish the freedom of another.
I would ask this question: If you are okay with Planned Parenthood harvesting and selling organs, how would you feel about a hospital or city morgue doing the same for a deceased family member or friend? All done without consultation with any party. After all, you can’t use the organs anymore, someone else can.
There nothing wrong with that, is there?
The fact that there is such a strong consensus that it should be illegal to sell the organs of aborted babies tells you that a lot of pro-choice people haven’t really thought through their abortion stance and/or can only maintain it by not thinking about it.
There is no interesting question here for libertarianism specifically. There’s only the question of when life is entitled to protection. Once you determine that, the rest of the issues are easy.
Probably they should. But savvy (or cowardly) Libertarians know when to exercise a little strategic ‘political’ discretion regarding those logical implications of their principles that, if articulated, would immediately turn them into radioactive pariahs among the certain set of people for whom they believe it is important to remain in their good graces.
More more important than abortion is free association, and look at the lengths to which many Libertarians will go to remain silent on the subject and avoid being labelled as a defender of private discrimination against state intervention, or to produce hand-waving sophistry trying to justify such an invasive and harshly punitive enforcement role for the state as somehow being consistent with the principles of voluntarism and non-coercion. Indeed, it’s pretty clear that there is a kind of desperation behind the demand for ever more convincing versions of these Jesuitical pretzels, to avoid the obvious, because the social penalties to forthrightness are so severe.
When it comes to the recent stories about cake makers, for example, I hardly saw the whole Cato and Reason crowd scramble to quote passages from Forbidden Grounds. They probably should have, but, they probably also told themselves that “discretion is the better part of valor,” or some rationalization like that.