Today we are going to talk about the morality (or non morality) of killing your own unborn child, godammit this should be interesting. We are gonna tackle things like self-ownership, natural rights, private property and the non-agression principle (which are all kinda tied)
The moral basis
Before anything we need to stabilish the moral code i'll be using to start the discussion.
As you probably know if you read my intro (https://goo.gl/KddGR9) i'm an anarcho-capitalist and i usually take more of a jusnatutalist approach to this topics, i do care about the practical implications of a free society and i do have a ultilitarian side but i think that the first and main motivation to achieve a free society must come from moral and ethics, because we can end on some pretty dangerous places if we take any other approach to it.
As a jusnaturalist i defend the natural rights and as a consequence the non-agression principle and private property rights.
To sum it up pretty roughly the natural rights are characteristics that human beings have because they are human (just like fire is hot and will burn you if you try to touch it and if it isnt hot and doesn't burn your skin you can't call it a fire) if you don't have this three main characteristics you can't be called a human.
This three main characteristics consists of basically three axioms (which are affirmatives that you end up proving when you try to refute). Life, freedom and the search for happiness.
a. Life: Every living human being is alive and has the right to live, because life is an end in itself, the first value of a human being is his life and the first end to his life is to survive, stay alive protect his life, because if you aren't alive you can't really do nothing more. You can't try to argue that you don't want to stay alive because if that was true you wouldn't be alive, even a deprressed person with suicidal tendencies is struggling to regain his sanity and stay alive.
b. Freedom: Every human being is born free and is free to do whatever he wants to do, you can try to restrimge and oppress his freedom, but he will still be free to make whatever he wants and face its consequences. You can't argue that you are not free because you are using your freedom to argue that you are not free.
c. The search for happines: Every human being seeks happiness in his life, you can't argue that you don't seek happiness, because, if that was really true you wouldn't be arguing and the reason to make that argument is to fell happy, fell the satisfaction of being right.
This leads to the private property rights. Which are basically the only form of efficiently avoiding conflict between free living human beings on their search for happiness. There are three possible scenarios when you talk about private property:
Nothing belongs to anyone: in this case there would inevitably be endless chaos and conflict. Because if nothing belongs to anyone, everyone can take anything they want and when two or more people want the same thing they would have no legitimacy to claim who should have that thing. Lets say that thing was an apple, if two people are hungry and want to eat the same apple they would either end on an endless discussion with no solution or engage on physical conflict (and there would theoratically be no problem with physical agressions, since there is no property and nothing belongs to anyone than your body doesnt belong to you and anyone can do whatever they want with it, that would of course go against the natural rights and is illogical and immoral) and the weaker people would end up dying and there would still have endless conflicts and lot of deaths.
Everything belongs to everyone: A scenario everything belongs to everyone would also be inefficient, we can come back to the apple example: if you are hungry and want to eat an apple, you would have to have permission from everyone living in that society to eat the apple,a nd if two people wanted the same apple they would either agree to share it and have to ask for everyone else's permission , at the middle of the proccess of everyone asking for everyone's permissions everyone would probably end up starving to death.
Nothing belongs to anyone untill claimed: In this scenario the first to make use and claim ownership to something is the rightful owner of that property, your body is your first property since you are the first one to use it, and claim it and are the only one controlling it (everything you produce with your body is also yours, unless you are selling your labour and etc), if someone tries to claim your property you come with proof that you owned it before and ditch him off, if he insists on violating your property without your consentment you can use force to remove him from your property or call the private security agency of your choice to take care of the problem, if someone wants something that belongs to other person they can make voluntary trades or work for it and etc. You cannot initiate force agains anyone unless its for self-defense(in case they are violating your property and ignore your request to stop, that's basically the non-agression principle). And this is the most efficient morally acceptable way of organizing a society, by the way thats called anarcho captalism.
(For more in depth information about how the economy and society would work i recommend reading:
"ECONOMIC POLICY: THOUGHTS FOR TODAY AND TOMORROW": https://goo.gl/info/X0foWJ
"THE MACHINERY OF FREEDOM A GUIDE TO RADICAL CAPITALISM": https://goo.gl/C5ZSe6
And for the whole natural rights stuff: https://goo.gl/1CL8x4 )
That was the quickest and shallowest way i could explain natural rights, self ownership and etc, there are some variables i didnt consider and if i made any mistakes, please point it out so i can correct it. With all of that out of the way lets talk about the whole fetus murder situation.
The two main valid arguments about aborption
For the sake of the length of this text i'll analyze two arguments about aborptions and some of its variations to try to get you guys thinking about it.
The scenario: A guy and a girl meet, they like each other, they probably had some dates (or not this is not relevant) and they decide to...you know do adult things with the full explicit consentment of each other and BAM!!! The girl start having these weird morning sickness, she may fell or not something in her belly, she takes one of this pharmacy pregnancy tests, and another, than another they are all positives, she's pregnant but for some reason the couple doesn't want the son (well, they could just give him for adoption) is it moral to just get the child outta there ?
You can argue that the womans body belongs to her, its her property and she can do whatever she wants with it, therefore its her choice to make the aborption or not, i found this to be wrong because the fetus is another being, he isn't part of the mother, if you kill him the mother doesnt die, he is just parasiting the body to grow up and survive untill he's ready to go out, you don't say that a tick is part of the being he's parasiting, or even a bacteria, they are different beings. You can still argue that the body belongs to the mother and if the body belongs to her, is her property she doesn't have to accept another being parasiting her, this is both true and false at the same time, different from the bacterias or ticks that are not human beings under formation and are on the womans body without permission the fetus is a direct consequence of the womans voluntary choice of having sex, a consequence that everyone knows that has a risk of happening when they partake in such activities, if she knew that this had the possibility of happening, had sex voluntarily than she vonluntarily let the sperm get into her and it fecundated generating the child and if she kills the child that she voluntarily generated and that is another being separated from her she is violating the non agression principle
From this point some questions and counter arguments arise and i'll try to cover some of them
The first and most common counter argument is "oh, you know condoms can fail, it's not my fault". First: There are 20 different birth control methods and some can be used at the same time, so it's VERY unlikely every single one of them fail, Second: condoms have 98% effectiviness when perfectly used, it's really unlikely that you end up on this two percent, and even if you do its even more unlikely that the other birth controls method fail as well. and even if they do, they are not advertised as 100% efficient, you know there is a risk on using them and you should be ready to face the consequences if they fail.
Most condom failure cases are due to incorrect use or storage. 17-51% of people reported putting the condom after the intercourse has already begun other studies reported that this happens on 1.5-24.8% of sexual encounters (you can see other common mistakes here: https://goo.gl/YU0zBj ).
The other most common argument i found is that the fetus is not alive and it's not human before 26 weeks therefore it's not a violation of the non agression principle.
I'm no biologist but i think there is to this date a debate trying to define life and to define if even a virus is alive, the answer that i like the most is that life is distiguished of non-life by methabolism and growth, the fetus is both growing and has a metabolism and it IS human, it comes directly from a human and it shares a lot of characteristics of post-natal humans, and if it's not a human what is it ? A fish ? A bird ? Some kind of alien ? I don't think so. And also it doesn't matter if it's alive or not, if it's human or not before 26 weeks or even if you consider it to be a freaking zombie fish alien of some sort before 26 weeks because the same fetus has about 94% of chance of being born and become a full fledged human baby if you dont consider it to be an alive human being before 26 weeks you are simply killing something that was voluntarily generated by yourself that's in your body because of you and will almost certainly become a human baby (well, if doesnt it will die and you will not have to worry about it) if you kill it before he's born you are killing a human being in formation you ARE initiating force against it and you ending a human life. I do think this is a violation of the non-agression principle, i do think it's absolutely imoral and should not be tolerated in case of voluntary sex.
The only two scenarios that i think aborptions can be considered moral are in case of non voluntary sex because the being was forced into the woman and in one of those cases where giving birth can kill the mother, if that is the case she should be able to decide between her life or the child's life because in that case she really didnt had prior knowledge that this could happen to her (it's almost the same thing as letting a murderer you dont know is a murderer in your house, you are not consenting with your death and you have the right to defend yourself if he tries to kill you).
Well, that's it, this is a complex topic, i made tried to keep it short. i hope you got all of it and i wanna hear what you guys think about it, sorry for my clumsy latino english and fell free to correct typos and grammar, any logical failure, counter argument and etc