ABORTION: WHOSE ISSUE IS IT?
Conservatives and Libertarians differ on this sensitive issue, but now there's a third option
BY DOUG FRENCH

Doug French, associate editor of Liberty Watch: The Magazine is an executive vice president of a Nevada bank. He is the 2005 recipient of the Murray N. Rothbard Award from the Center for Libertarian Studies. Other stories by Doug French

Nothing separates Libertarians from conservatives faster than the abortion issue. These two groups can get together on many issues - lower taxes, smaller government and less regulation - but when the big A issue is thrown on the table, the groups might as well be the Hatfields and the McCoys. 

Most conservatives view abortion as murder, plain and simple - an abomination of their God's work. Many Libertarians view it as a property rights issue. A mother controls her private property, which includes her womb. The unwanted fetus is a trespasser on her private property. Thus, she has a right to remove the aggressing fetus. The whole Roe v. Wade privacy argument is never mentioned, because it is not valid. There is no such thing as a right to privacy that liberals claim. 

Up until now, there have only been these two choices on the pro-life/pro-choice issue. But now, due to technology, there is likely a third alternative that may bring the two viewpoints closer together. Economic professor Dr. Walter Block and business law professor, Roy Whitehead, develop the other alternative - Evictionism - in their article entitled "Compromising the Uncompromisable: A Private Property Rights Approach to Resolving the Abortion Controversy," recently published in the Appalachian Journal of Law. 

Both authors are well-acquainted with Libertarian theory, but interestingly, both are pro-life. They believe that science will bail us out of the very vexing abortion problem. Scientists are on the verge of perfecting an ectogenesis process that will allow a fetus to grow outside the biological mother in an artificial womb. 

Block and Whitehead believe that aborting a fetus is abominable, but that it should not be prohibited by law: for the same reason that a person should not be prosecuted for refusing to save a drowning swimmer. "Abortion is not, in and of itself," the authors write, "an act invasive of other people or their property rights, even when fetuses are considered persons."

And the two professors do consider a fetus to be a person, "with all the rights pertaining to any other member of the species." Thus the dilemma, the fetus is a person with rights, trespassing in a mother's womb. But, does a mother have the right to murder a fetus/person for trespassing? As it stands today, she has no choice, and proper Libertarian law must side with property rights. "This may sound harsh, but when the property rights in question are thoroughly analyzed, it is the only possible conclusion that may be reached."

But, soon the technology will be perfected for a mother to evict an unwanted fetus without killing it. And once that choice becomes realistic, Block and Whitehead make the case that a mother would be obligated to just evict the fetus, not kill it. Killing a fetus, when you don't have to, would be akin to abandoning a baby in the woods. 

As the authors describe, just because someone is on your lawn, you don't have the right to blow the trespasser away with a bazooka. But you do have the right to evict them in the gentlest way possible. 

A century ago, this discussion would be moot. It was not possible to evict without killing the fetus. But science is changing all of that, and Whitehead and Block wish to put the evictionism option on the table before the science is perfected. A hundred years from now, "it will presumably be possible to transfer [a fetus] to a test tube or a host mother without disturbing it in the slightest."

Evictionism provides a compromise for the warring pro-lifers and pro-choicers. The pro-lifers will see fewer fetuses destroyed. However, the compromise does not force biological mothers to carry babies to term. The pro-choicers will be happy that mothers are not required to carry unwanted fetuses for nine months, but mothers will not have a life and death say over the child. 

Block and Whitehead believe pro-life forces should embrace the evictionism compromise since the current strategy is clearly not working. And if both sides were to promote the idea, it would accelerate the timeline for when it would be scientifically possible. 

"If evictionism were to be instituted at present, at one fell swoop one-ninth or perhaps two-ninths of all babies would be immediately saved," the authors speculate. "Partial birth abortions would immediately become a thing of the past."

Is it possible for conservatives and liberals to unite behind Libertarian eviction theory to save thousands of lives? Stay tuned. LW