Abortion

A human zygote cannot be understood to be anything other than an individual human being. This makes it a person, in the medieval sense of the word, although possibly not in every modern sense of it; at any rate, I have no use for the term.

There are various types of abortion procedures. Some of them can only be understood as destroying the unborn human being in the womb, and this is, in every respect, a kind of homicide.

Some others, however, could possibly be understood as Rothbard understood it, that is, “as the expulsion of an unwanted invader from the mother’s body.” (The Ethics of Liberty, §14, page 98)

This expulsion would still be, morally speaking, a kind of homicide, since the pregnant woman understands that the unborn human being will die as a result. This is true, after all, generically of unwanted invaders, if they are kicked out into a fatally hostile environment.

But unlike most homicide, and indeed unlike the case of an abortion which manifestly destroys the unborn human, such mere expulsion cannot be proved to be deleterious to the general welfare, since it does not interfere with the satisfaction of any desires that are demonstrated in action. So, it cannot be recommended for coercive punishment, according to the doctrine I have given before.

Nevertheless, like all evil actions, it is just, in principle, for a legitimate state to punish it. And it seems that Catholic papal and magisterial teachings have taught us that legitimate states should punish it in practice – besides more modern stuff, we may cite Casti connubii, §§63–67.

This can be perfectly understood as a judgment that, in this class of cases, a legitimate state ought to subordinate the general welfare to a special concern for virtue, although the justification for the judgment is mysterious, and cannot be rationally understood.

However, it is the same papal magisterium which tells us that, as of today, there are no legitimate states on the earth.

While pure reason could not tell us, then, that this kind of abortion should be coercively punished by legitimate states, the papal magisterium could, and did; but the magisterium has also, more recently, told us that there are no legitimate states, which means that nothing at all should be coercively punished. The magisterium’s teaching about what legitimate states should do has, therefore, become a mere academic question.