Compulsory Maternity: a Form of Rape by the State
I follow libertarian commentator Connor Boyack’s work because he occasionally brings a fresh perspective to issues for Utahns who would otherwise rarely have any exposure to ideas outside the standard left-right dichotomy. Oftentimes, however, he let’s his true conservative colors show through.
Such was the case with his recent article, “Abortion: A Property Rights Issue?,” in which he rejects prominent libertarian arguments for a woman’s right to choose and instead champions the customary “pro-life” stance of the American right. I couldn’t resist a rebuttal to such low-hanging fruit from a writer who normally crafts fairly decent analysis.
Boyack does a fine job of explaining “evictionism,” a justification for abortion rights put forth by “Mr. Libertarian” Murray Rothbard and further developed by ultra Rothbard fanboy Walter Block. This justification is based on the notion of self-ownership, or property in one’s own person. If a person owns her body, then she can rightfully evict trespassers or problematic tenants therefrom.
This is where things get weird. Boyack attempts to refute such shoddy theory, not by attacking its flawed fundamental premises, but with a veritable mind vomit of naturalistic fallacy and ignorance of contract theory that I can only describe as an abortion of reason. Observe, for example, this slew of appeals to nature from Boyack’s article:
“Abortion is an attempt to evade the natural consequences of sex … To engage in such activities is to willingly subject one’s self [sic] to the natural consequences that follow. Personal responsibility demands this … If this woman did not want to be ‘enslaved’ by another human being, then she should not have engaged in the activity that naturally brought about the result she did not want … Appealing to the mother’s self-ownership is inadequate when that mother is subject to the natural consequences of her previous, voluntary actions. These consequences are observable, natural, and thus may be construed as implicit terms and conditions of a contract potentially and inherently created by the voluntary, sexual union.”
It reads like a parody of every natural rights libertarian you’ve ever heard. It would be comical if he weren’t dead serious. It seems that Boyack is truly asserting that whatever is observably “natural” is inherently “good” in a moral sense, despite the fact that philosophical powerhouse David Hume mercilessly destroyed this fallacy in the 18th century. The fallacy sounds something like this: “I have observed X occurring in nature; therefore, X is morally right.”
If his assertions are correct, then it would be morally wrong for me to eat: 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.
But then we come to Boyack’s most baffling statement: “Contracts trump rights.” What a succinct example of classic conservative contract fetishism! Where does one begin with such a nonsensical statement? I suppose we can start with the fact that it is self-contradictory. He explains that “rights can be restrained through contracts into which I have voluntarily entered”; yet an individual can only enter into a contract by virtue of her rights. As Walter Block and Thomas DiLorenzo put it: “But how can people give their consent to contract before it is clear that they have any rights to do so? Where do the rights come from?” Boyack is essentially claiming that the very right that enables a person to enter into a contract can be nullified by that contract.
If this is true, then rape, slavery and murder can all be perfectly legitimate interactions in Boyack’s eyes. Let’s say a prostitute enters into a contract to perform sexual services for a man on a specified date, but has a change of heart in the meantime and decides to turn her life around. On the date specified in the contract, the man would be perfectly justified in the use of violence to force the woman into compliance against her will.
Let’s say a worker enters into a contract with an employer to perform a certain labor for a specified period of time. Before the start date of his employment, he decides he no longer wishes to work for that employer. Too bad! The employer can now use violence to force the man to work against his will for the time period specified in the contract.
Let’s say a woman is dying of cancer and hires a doctor to assist her in terminating her life. Before her appointment, she finds that the cancer has gone into remission. Great news! Oh, accept for that pesky contract. Now the doctor is justified in terminating her life against her will.
Where Boyack errs is in understanding what gives contracts their legitimate force. As Rothbard explained:
“Unfortunately, many libertarians, devoted to the right to make contracts, hold the contract itself to be an absolute, and therefore maintain that any voluntary contract whatever must be legally enforceable in the free society. 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. But this can only be true if we hold that validly enforceable contracts only exist where title to property has already been transferred, and therefore where the failure to abide by the contract means that the other party’s property is retained by the delinquent party, without the consent of the former (implicit theft).”
Without this property-based legitimacy of contracts, the mere act of lying would be a gravely punishable offense.
Another problem with Boyack’s religious devotion to the type of contract he describes in this article is that he himself rejects it under other circumstances. In “Barack Obama, Business Owners, and the Social Contract,” he utterly dismisses the “social contract” so predictably called upon by statist apologists to justify the existence of coercive government. He calls it “a mystical document nowhere transcribed nor translated for the masses … [w]ith its terms and conditions nowhere defined” that only the state’s agents are “able to interpret and thus enforce, … one which was apparently implicitly agreed upon.” This sounds awfully familiar to Boyack’s non-existent, undefined and implicit “contract” into which a woman ostensibly enters with an unborn child, one that can only be interpreted and enforced by the state.
A third problem is another one of Boyack’s own self-contradictions as he actually advocates the use of state force to prohibit perfectly voluntary and valid contracts.
There are so many unanswered questions with this article. If the unborn child indeed has full legal status and an abortion therefore constitutes premeditated murder, does Boyack support the death penalty for the woman or the doctor who performed it? Does he support the use of violence against the woman in defense of the unborn child if he catches her attempting to abort? Does he make exceptions in cases of rape or incest or for the safety of the mother?
He also addresses only one libertarian argument – a fairly fringe one – and fails to address many other valid concerns, such as those put forth by Wendy McElroy in “Abortion Rights are Logically Required by Libertarianism.” If Boyack’s views on abortion contradict the basic principles of libertarianism, can he still call himself a libertarian? Perhaps when he wrote his own Wikipedia article, he should have described himself as “conservative” and used this article as a citation.
Children (and especially unborn children) present a formidable obstacle for any moral philosophy to overcome. This is no different for myself as an anarchist. One question is quite easily addressed, however: What should the state do about abortion? Well, it shouldn’t. A coercive, hierarchical and outright criminal institution should not be involved in anything, let alone a woman’s very personal decisions.
But what should I do? I personally find the practice of abortion to be grossly abhorrent and evil. In the absence of a state to pawn my conscience off on, how do I react to a woman I know plans to have or has had an abortion? Can I beat her? Can I kill her? Can I lock her in a cage? Can I do any of this to anyone who assists her? I wouldn’t feel justified in taking any of these actions, so I certainly cannot delegate their performance to another. But I can pursue every voluntary and peaceful means to work to reduce the number of abortions in my community, and ensure that they are as safe and humane as is possible with such a thing.
Views such as Boyack’s and other reactionaries have disastrous effects on society. Pro-life dogma leads to such atrocities as the recent case of a teenage Dominican girl who died from leukemia after being denied chemotherapy on the grounds that it may harm the fetus. Remember that “natural consequences” thing? Yeah, the fetus died, too. Or consider the case of an 11-year-old girl who was forced to give birth by authorities after being raped by her stepfather. Anti-abortion legislation does not reduce the number of abortions; it simply hurts women.
Boyack thinks abortion is wrong. Fine. What he doesn’t even try to touch upon is what he feels he is justified in doing to women who choose to do it. He has exposed what Rothbard called the least developed aspect of libertarian theory: punishment. Perhaps he should address this the next time he ventures to pass such fallaciously based judgment on such a large number of his fellow beings.
Nicholas Hooton is an editor and strategist for Utah Liberty Alliance.
If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal
[The following is the text of a leaflet entitled “The Folly of Voting” published by Freedom Press in 1904.]
I shall not vote in the coming general election.
I am fully aware that this will be of little consequence so far as the result of the contest is concerned, and that is one of the reasons for not voting.
But I have other reasons, chief among them being that I do not believe in government by the majority, nor the minority either.
I do not believe in government at all.
The ballot system of government is a dismal failure, even supposing it, for a moment, to be right in theory.
Thus, some of those who seek election do so either for direct emoluments they hope to gain, or indirectly to advance their own interests and satisfy their vanity. Such men will not sacrifice their own ends for the public weal.
Many candidates are, however, in the beginning, fairly honest in their motives and intentions. But a man who enters the political world soon finds out that, fraud, cunning, hypocrisy, and trickery, are freely used by his opponents, and to successfully cope with them he must adopt their tactics.
He thinks he is justified by expediency in doing this, and perhaps honestly believes that he can use these weapons to gain victory for an honest cause. But he is mistaken. Fraud and falsehood can never serve a righteous end. The man who uses trickery, even to vanquish wrong, is already a trickster and is no better morally, than he who uses trickery for avowedly dishonourable purposes.
But, unfortunately for the honest candidate, zealous for the public good, who refuses to sully himself with deception and fraud – all the political forces are against him. By refusing to be all things to all men, and failing to pander to popular prejudice and ignorance, he fails to secure the favour of the mass and the unscrupulous demagogue, who makes many vain promises, wins.
The really honest man who falls into the snare of politics ever figures as the unsuccessful candidate.
Political corruption and dishonesty is so notoriously apparent that even believers in government, advocates of the political action, are fully conscious of it. Yet they go on voting, with the faint hope that, in some mysterious way, conditions will be changed, and that, after a while, enough pure men will be elected to ensure an honest administration of public affairs.
Their hopes are never realised. New men are put in and new parties assume control, but the same results ensue. The real trouble is with the system, not with those who administer it. The very nature and principle of government, of human authority, is demoralising, corrupting, and wrong.
As long as human nature is what it is, we cannot expect men in power to disregard their individual interests, nor to escape the damning influences of power of their better self.
The man who votes, even though he votes for the defeated candidate, gives his sanction to the whole scheme, and process of election, authority, and coercion.
I do not wish to be governed, I do not acknowledge, and will not admit the right of any man, or body of men to rule over me; I do not wish to govern others. I know of no moral or social right that I have to do so, and consequently I decline to impose my views on others through the agency of the ballot, and thus set in motion; the whole paraphernalia of force and violence –policemen, judges, executioners, soldiers, tax gatherers, etc., used to coerce others into doing as I think they ought to do.
I want for every man, woman, and child, the right to govern themselves, to direct their own affairs, to live their own lives. This can never be whilst private property, the be-all and end-all of government exists.
Think, workers, and you will acknowledge that it is for the defence of property that all this electioneering, this legislating, this making and unmaking of laws whose name is legion, takes place. To defend the property you have created, the houses you have built, the food you have grown, the clothes you have made – from you, the rightful owners.
And you maffick and lose time and quarrel with one another and act like lunatics generally because your masters generously allow you to make a cross on a piece of paper; and if you have been good and voted as they wish you to, they throw you a crumb from the loaf you have toiled to make and which they have stolen from you and you smugly return them thanks.
Learn to be men, free men, who depend on no master, who feed no idle, gilded loafers, who cower not beneath oppression, but who assert their right to life, liberty, and all the pursuits of happiness.
I believe that you can become this; I believe you can if you will, attain a free life, socially, economically, industrially, that is why I beg you to leave off following the red herring of politics, and instead, to refuse to obey the dictates of the gabblers of St Stephen’s and to support the lazy thieves of the thrice damned trinity – landowners, capitalists, parsons.
He who must be free, himself, must strike the blow!
New Additions to the Liberty Library
I have added the following works to the Liberty Library:
- Studies in Mutualist Political Economy (2007) by Kevin Carson (html | pdf)
- Markets Not Capitalism (2011) edited by Gary Chartier and Charles W. Johnson (pdf)
- Everything Voluntary – From Politics to Parenting (2012) edited by Skyler J. Collins (html | pdf | epub)
Quote of the Day: David Graeber on Violence, Ignorance and the State
Violence, particularly structural violence, where all the power is on one side, creates ignorance. If you have the power to hit people over the head whenever you want, you don’t have to trouble yourself too much figuring out what they think is going on, and therefore, generally speaking, you don’t. Hence the sure-fire way to simplify social arrangements, to ignore the incredibly complex play of perspectives, passions, insights, desires, and mutual understandings that human life is really made of, is to make a rule and threaten to attack anyone who breaks it. This is why violence has always been the favored recourse of the stupid: it is the one form of stupidity to which it is almost impossible to come up with an intelligent response. It is also of course the basis of the state.
- David Graeber, Fragments of An Anarchist Anthropology, (2004)
Anarchists of Utah: Come Write For Us!
Utah Liberty Alliance seeks to be the voice of anarchism in Utah. We publish articles and media that give an anarchist perspective to issues and events that affect Utahns, make our work free to share and republish without permission, and submit op-eds to publications throughout Utah. If you can write and want to raise awareness and inspire action in the Beehive State, please submit your work to us using one of the following methods:
- Register for an account at utahliberty.org/register. You can write and submit your article using our platform, after which it will be published after approval by the editorial staff.
- Submit an article without registering at utahliberty.org/contact. Although it is not required, we suggest you include some valid way to contact you (email is fine) in case we have questions about your submission.
- Email your work to contact@utahliberty.org.
Aside from op-eds, we welcome other articles, poetry, photos, art, music, podcasts, or any other medium whereby the message of anarchism may be conveyed.
Help tear down hierarchy in Utah and bring liberty to those who thirst for it!
“If you didn’t vote, you have no right to complain…”
If you have ever expressed disappointment or frustration with the electoral process, you have probably had this condemnation thrown at you at some point: “Well, if you don’t vote, then you have no right to complain!”
Those who have said this to me have probably taken my dumbfounded silence as a sign of my awed respect for the light they brought into my life. The truth is that I am dumbfounded by what an absurdly and patently idiotic statement it is, and there isn’t much I would be able to tell a person who believes it.
“He doesn’t vote?” they think, floored by such blasphemy. “I know! I’ll use this tired old thought-terminating cliché I heard from some authority figure or public relations campaign. Oh, look at that. He’s so impressed with my wisdom, he doesn’t know what to say.”
It is easy to see how daft this notion is if you rephrase it in order to more accurately reflect reality: “If you don’t participate in the corrupt, illegitimate and criminal system of state corporatism, then you don’t have a right to complain about it.” Or, to make it even clearer: “If you refuse to answer your assailant when he asks if you’d rather be beaten with a club or a whip, then you have no right to complain about being assaulted.”
My new response to this drivel is to turn the condemnation right back around on my accuser: If you do vote, you consent to this laughably abhorrent system and have no right to complain! I refuse to go along with the state mysticism of “consent of the governed” and “government of the people, by the people and for the people” as the charming but irrational sentiments of a juvenile mind, much like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny; but you, you who go along with it and permit yourself to be herded into the voting booth to cast your vote for the lesser of two atrocious evils – you made your bed, now sleep in it. To those who understand and see the corruption of the U.S. political machine but nevertheless vote for the lesser of two evils, I now respond: How has voting for evil been working out for you?
We’ve all heard that if voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal. We know the wealthy will never permit us to vote their wealth away. And deep down inside, I think we all know our vote doesn’t actually matter. So what is the purpose of voting? Why does the state push it on us so? To create the illusion of self-government, of course!
Teller of the famous illusionist duo Penn & Teller once broke character to reveal some secrets about the art of illusion, one of which was this: “If you are given a choice, you believe you have acted freely.” Or, as noted anarchist Noam Chomsky put it:
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”
The last couple hundred years of electoral history in the U.S. has taught us one thing: Voting has yielded nothing but more of the same, defended nothing but the status quo, and championed no one but the already privileged.
But consider the alternative! A disturbing, almost bone-chilling realization ought to grip the rational mind that contemplates this fantasy: What if your vote did matter? What if you could employ the full brutal force of the state to impose your will on your fellow beings? What if, through this electoral process, you could be king for a day?
It is far better that our votes mean nothing and accomplish nothing. We can leave tyranny to the tyrants and pursue other venues. But once we see that we cannot beat the behemoth of the corrupt state at its own game, what then? Well, we simply follow David’s example in his fight against Goliath. We follow the example of every underdog who has every bested a bully: We refuse to play by their rules, to live on their terms. We take the battle to our turf and employ strategies we concoct.
If they don’t like that, let them try to vote us out.
Nicholas Hooton is an editor and strategist for Utah Liberty Alliance.
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