Book Review: Ethics of Liberty -selected portions

"Most fetuses are in the mother’s womb because the mother consents to this situation, but the fetus is there by the mother’s freely-granted consent. But should the mother decide that she does not want the fetus there any longer, then the fetus becomes a parasitic “invader” of her person, and the mother has the perfect right to expel this invader from her domain."

The author states that the consent is not a contract. If the consent is a contract than the argument is invalid.

"there is obviously no “contract” here, since the fetus (fertilized ovum?) can hardly be considered a voluntarily and consciously contracting entity.And thirdly as we have seen above, a crucial point in libertarian theory is the inalienability of the will, and therefore the impermissibility of enforcing voluntary slave contracts. "

Who is the author to decide whether the ovum is a "voluntarily and consciously contracting entity"?. Are all ovum his slave? If I make a contract to build a table for a person in 3 months than how is that not a voluntary slave contract but the contract to bear a child is? Both involve the body. Does the author mean to say all contracts are void? It can be said that there is no proof that the child wants to live. But I use the assumption that every child wants to live unless he/she states otherwise. If this assumption is not valid than a person can murder another provided he/she is ready to pay the liabilities due from that person. The author says that a promise is a contract only if some property rights are violated by the non-performance of contract. Who is he to define a contract and what is property? Right to life exists and if that breach is caused, it is the breaking of contract.

"But surely the mother or parents may not receive the ownership of the child in absolute fee simple, because that would imply the bizarre state of affairs that a fifty-year old adult would be subject to the absolute and unquestioned jurisdiction of his seventy-year-old parent. So the parental property right must be limited in time. But it also must be limited in kind, for it surely would be grotesque for a libertarian who believes in the right of self-ownership to advocate the right of a parent to murder or torture his or her children."

What is bizarre or grotesque in this? Parents create the child without external help and hence have complete rights over it. The child is not even created outside the body. Thus as the child is created in the body and by using only the body. I don't think it is any more bizarre or grotesque than subjecting animals to human control or torturing them. Similarly, if people can capture runaway animals, why the same right is not permitted with regard to children? People don't create animals but they create babies.In the words of the author, whose property rights are violated if the parents kill the child.

"We must therefore state that, even from birth, the parental ownership is not absolute but of a “trustee” or guardianship kind. In short, every baby as soon as it is born and is therefore no longer contained within his mother’s body possesses the right of self-ownership by virtue of being a separate entity and a potential adult. "

My car does not exist inside me. Does it mean my right over it is limited? It is off course a separate entity? And who is an adult?

Hence, in my view, this chapter only shows the internal contradictions in anarcho-capitalism. It shows that most so-called anarcho-capitalists talk about freedom but in reality they support tyranny of the worst sort.